This is mount Hermon in Syria but has been occupied during the Israeli-Syrian War, so it now unofficial in Israel.
At the end of this trench is a peacekeeper soldier. He's actually training the other soldier, they work for the UN.
He is monitoring the cease fire between Israel and Syria. He is looking for troops crossing the cease fire line just in front of the mountain. Very friendly guy chatted for ages.
This is Syria, which at this point also has a ceasefire in its civil war. When the war was on, you could literally stand here and watch it.. And on the other side of the mountain is Lebanon which has had years of war. The Middle East is a mess! He said he didn't see any solution to the problems here
There are high powered pay to use binoculars on the mountain and we were looking at this whole area with them. All this area is deserted, you can see whole towns with nothing but empty streets and ruins, very surreal! But I did see one man on a motorbike. The soldier helped us understand where we could or couldn't go. We'd been detained by the Israeli army earlier in the week so we had no intentions of encountering them again. They'd stronger suggested we spent the remaining holiday in coffee shops. However, to the best of my knowledge, I think there is no actual border so you could just drive into Syria and explore (I think).
This is an old French army base.
More peacekeeping activity.
Someone left their tank here.
This was either a hospital or school. We think it must have been a hospital.
On the map the ceasefire line is directly behind this building.
Lots of war damage on all the buildings in the area.
There were a lot of highlights to this trip but speaking with the UN peacekeeper was awesome. Travel is at its best when you do things you can't book on tripadvisor. And we felt perfectly safe here.
At the end of this trench is a peacekeeper soldier. He's actually training the other soldier, they work for the UN.
He is monitoring the cease fire between Israel and Syria. He is looking for troops crossing the cease fire line just in front of the mountain. Very friendly guy chatted for ages.
This is Syria, which at this point also has a ceasefire in its civil war. When the war was on, you could literally stand here and watch it.. And on the other side of the mountain is Lebanon which has had years of war. The Middle East is a mess! He said he didn't see any solution to the problems here
There are high powered pay to use binoculars on the mountain and we were looking at this whole area with them. All this area is deserted, you can see whole towns with nothing but empty streets and ruins, very surreal! But I did see one man on a motorbike. The soldier helped us understand where we could or couldn't go. We'd been detained by the Israeli army earlier in the week so we had no intentions of encountering them again. They'd stronger suggested we spent the remaining holiday in coffee shops. However, to the best of my knowledge, I think there is no actual border so you could just drive into Syria and explore (I think).
This is an old French army base.
More peacekeeping activity.
Someone left their tank here.
This was either a hospital or school. We think it must have been a hospital.
On the map the ceasefire line is directly behind this building.
Lots of war damage on all the buildings in the area.
There were a lot of highlights to this trip but speaking with the UN peacekeeper was awesome. Travel is at its best when you do things you can't book on tripadvisor. And we felt perfectly safe here.
