how to get from Bethlehem to Damascus in eight hours.

Leave the phoenix centre at 7am in a servis that takes you directly to the jericho station for 50 shekels. Try not to get stuck in the centre due to the somnolent state of the gate man. If in doubt, get the servis driver to bang on the door of his hut so that he knows that someone wants to escape.

Having successfully navigated the checkpoints, arrive slightly bemused at jericho station whereupon your luggage will be seized by enthusiastic porters who help (no charge) to separate you from your suitcase. Purchase a bus ticket to take you to and across the border for 14 shekels. Enter ticket/waiting hall having no idea what exactly one should do with the newly purchased ticket in your hand. Go straight to the front of the hall and look shifty. Show your ticket to someone who looks like they may know what to do, get told to sit and wait. Wait for ten minutes still very uncertain as to whether you have not accidentally entered a Kafka novel. Ask another couple of men you overhear talking about the ajnabia which must be you as there are no other foreigners within the next twenty miles. They look at your ticket, grimace and say you should wait for at least another hour, talk with the guard who lets people through to the palestinian passport check, who then lets you through, obviously thinking that a young female foreigner should not be kept waiting. Ever bemused, go through, hand your passport to one of the people behind the glass panel and then board the bus through the small door on the left hand side.

Whilst wondering where exactly your luggage is, sit in bus as it drives to the Israeli border control on the Jordanian border. You will recongise this as the same place you entered Palestine from. Almost leave your violin on the security conveyor belt and be called back to claim it amongst looks of disgust of Israel security guards. Approach Israeli passport check and get told that you shouldn't be here because it is forbidden for foreigners to use the same bus as palestinians and the same border control. Leave one part of the border control and get ushered into another area for the foreigners. Pay 167 shekel exit tax (in shekels or dollars or both in my case) and then hand your passport over to another soldier who does let you through. Search in vain for your original bus and get told that you cannot use it and instead you must use another bus. Query this man with hilarious stereotype jewish accent about where your suitcase may or may not be. REceive the answer that it'll be around somewhere and that on the way the bus will stop to allow you to look for it. Secretly wonder whether they will just drop you somewhere along the way and leave you for dead and raid your suitcase for pairs of socks and persian dictionaries.

Engage a Parisian couple in conversation. Reclaim luggage from random bus stop just before the Jordanian border control. Enter Jordan, paying $11 for the privilege of this other bus. Take luggage and self through another x-ray machine and wonder whether it does any long term damage to do it so very often. Hand DIFFERENT passport over to jordanian guard. Worry about the fact that your Jordanian visa ran out two weeks ago and that if they stamp your passport with anything that suggests you were on the border with Israel then you will not be going to Syria any time soon.

Receive passport with visa extension (free) on a piece of paper. Sigh with relief.

Share a taxi into Amman with french couple and a canadian 50 something campaigner called Kate. 7JD per person. Get to Abdali station and haggle (not very much) for a 11JD ride in a serivs to damascus. Drink tea and get complemented by odd jordanian man on your cursive handwriting.

Take taxi with a mother, two small children and their grandmother. Spend most of the journey making silly faces at the young daughter and letting her pull your hair. At the border hand your passport to the jordanians. receive quizzical look as to what exactly you are doing, then get passport back with exit stamp and the piece of paper with the condemning israeli/jordanian border stamp gone. Smile at the guard.

Wait at the Syrian border crossing behind a woman in an electric blue headscarf. feel superior that you have used this border crossing before and so you know what happens. Tell the guard that you are staying in bab sharki and that you are studying persian. Feel embarrassed when they ask you about how exactly you lost your passport in december and the pitying glance they give you, like a slightly retarded and clueless child.

Carry on the two and a half hours or so through to damascus. Call friends on old Syrian sim card to warn them of your imminent arrival. Laugh at the taxi driver who tries to charge 300 SYP for a short ride from where the servis drops you into bab touma. settle on 75 and arrive 15 minutes later in bab touma. Buy orange juice, meet Marta, travel to Yarmouk. Lug suitcase four floors to flat where you will stay until you find somewhere more permanent. Dheisheh camp, Palestine to Palestine street, Yarmouk Palestinian camp, Damascus in several stages. Welcome to Syria.