Our day began at 5 A.M. to catch the flight from Riyadh to Gurayat, near the Jordanian border. On arrival there, a mini-bus took us to where the truck had offloaded the twenty Harley-Davidsons. They were sitting in a car park, still safely strapped to their pallets and covered with dust. Immediately, all the owners took out dusters and began to clean their precious bikes. By 9.50 A.M. we were at the border and checked out of Saudi Arabia quite quickly. It was a long, slow process going through the Jordanian side as all the documents for people and vehicles had to be checked. The Triptik is the most important one for each bike, and then everyone has to buy temporary insurance for riding through Jordan. Special permission has to be obtained to ride through Jordan as motor bikes are not allowed there – there is a Jordanian HOG “Chapter” but it is unofficial and only exists on Facebook. The most noticeable thing about biking through Jordan is the roads: the main road, with the exception of a few stretches of dual carriageway, is two-way traffic on a relatively narrow road, with no hard-shoulder. It is in poor condition and heavily marked by the constant traffic of huge trucks. The country is flat, sandy desert and fuel is expensive too. When we arrived at the Syrian border, we were greeted by 26 bikers from Damascus. They waited patiently while we went through the border procedures and we finally set off at sunset on a relatively good dual carriageway in a convoy of 48 bikes (two other bikers had joined us, and I was both the only woman in the group, and the only pillion rider). We had a police escort the whole way to Damascus. By 8 P.M. we hit the heavy evening traffic, but our police escort, with two motorbikes as well as a car, took us all the way into downtown Damascus where our Syrian hosts treated us to dinner. The arrival of 48 bikes caused a stir as motorbikes are also prohibited in Syria. We felt like celebrities, being interviewed for television, and photographed for magazines like Sayadity. After dinner, the police escort took us on a night “Thunder Parade” up and down the main highway in Damascus and eventually led us to the Sheraton Hotel. We had covered around 310 kms. - SG Tomorrow, we head to Beirut to embark on our Lebanese adventure. __
