Wadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley) is one of the most sacred parts of Lebanon to the Maronite Christian faith. With one of the last remaining copses of Lebanese Cedars near it's head, and a promising day's-worth of hiking through gorgeous mountain terrain, we expected a great day. It was not without it's surprises. Having wandered through the ancient and majestic cedar trees, we were dropped at the village at the very top of Wadi Qadisha, Bsharri. Relying on some fairly loose directions from a guide book, we then proceeded to plunge down the steep steps through the village and out the other side onto what degraded very quickly into little more than a goat path - something which became a theme as the day went on.
Picking our way down, with several enforced back-tracks, we made the first monastery, carved out of the rock wall of the gorge. These places of isolation were selected not only for their conduciveness to monkish activities such as prayer and meditation, but also due to their inaccecessibility for enemies - at the time of their foundation, the Maronite monks belonged to a branch of Christianity persecuted by their powerful Byzantines neighbours. What remains are incredible, and still operational, remnants of a fascinating period of time - here a small of Christianity aligned with the far-off Catholic church survived in a region where it was not only unwelcome to other Christian faiths, but soon became completely dominated by Islam.
What we hadn't taken into account was that the day we had chosen to make this hike was the Assumption of the Virgin (celebrating Mary's elevation to the Top Floor) - one of the holiest days of the year to the Maronite faithful. So with extra-special-uncomfortable-tourist-respect we continued on our way through this amazing outdoor gallery of Middle Eastern christianity, down onto the valley floor to continue our hike to our eventual destination, the Monastery Saint Anthony de Qozhaya.
The valley floor is accessible by car, and we were therefore presented with a much clearer route for us to follow. It was also quite busy with Lebanese families taking time over the holiday (in the literal sense of the word) to spend with each other picnicking or lunching at one of the lovely riverside restaurants. When we stopped at one of these for lunch and took a table in one corner of the deck overlooking the valley below, it was politely pointed out to us that we had taken a table reserved for family celebration - two cheerful banquet-table loads of whom were next to us. The staff needn't have bothered requesting us to move in the end, as within 30 minutes we had been absorbed into the family's celebrations - on the invitation of a matriarchal grandmother, who was clearly the oldest there, and even more clearly the life and soul of the party. An hour or so of Lebanese dancing and chatting in bad French later (well, mine was bad - the other members of the party were native speakers, and French is the second language of Lebanon) we exchanged farewells and continued on our way - amazed at our good luck in finding what had been one of the absolute highlights of the whole trip.
The final leg of the trip proved the most challenging - deteriorating paths meant that we had to forge our own at times, sometimes virtually climbing vertically to pass certain areas, and often pushing through thorns to go forward. Becoming increasingly unsure of our location and selection of route, we finally made it to a village - via the chicken coop at the rear - to find, upon asking a local for directions, something I was certainly not expecting. Having attempted French and not knowing much Arabic, I began to despair at finding out the route onwards to the Monastery - until on in desperation trying to ask in English I received an answer in a broad Lebanese-Australian accent! "Aw mate, yeah, for sure I know the way - it's just down that way, round to the right, 30 minutes easy" - as it turns out his cousin lived in Sydney, and he'd spent 6 months there learning English, in possibly one of the most specific and instantly recognisable mini-dialects there is.
With one member of the party flagging badly with stomach problems, we managed to make it (I think the accent was not the only thing our friend had picked up in Australia - the time required had been understaded in a typically Aussie way, as we made it there a good hour later over some very rough terrain), to be greeted by the magnificent site of the monastery bathed in the glow of the lowering sun. As we arrived, so were hordes of Lebanese Christians, dressed in their finest, for the official observation of the holiday - and, after having had a look around, we left them to it and returned, exhausted and satisfied, to the coast.
Once inside the temple site however, the outside world and it's current round of troubles seems to fade. Here was stone that had been in place through over two millenia, and had seen dozens, hundreds of problems like it, and will doubtless see hundreds more. The only thing to break the solemn peace of the ruins is the occasional fly-over of a patrolling helicopter, but even that could not distract from this monumental complex - a brilliant final taste of Lebanon and the Middle East, a part of the world I cannot wait to return to, and that I hope will find itself in an increasingly peaceful state over the coming years.
