The best Lebanese tradition | Cedars of God | Bsharri
morning my friends, to show you, look at the view from my room oh my god let's open it must be it must be cold outside but let's still open let's go outside a little bit look at that quite close to the snow now oh my god you see the old house there nice anyway so today i'm gonna stay around here but i'm gonna do some visits in the neighborhood look my bags are ready actually my bike is here in the garage of the neighbors of the view lodge the view lodge guest house which is just here where i'm staying that's the garage of the neighbors i think their house is somewhere up there and uh so that's uh where i went uh where i was invited that's where i was invited yesterday basically the plan is gonna be for today first i'm gonna go to the cedars of god so it's higher up at one thousand nine hundred meters to go to see the famous cedars of lebanon then i'll go a little bit down to see the grotto of kadisha valley that's where the basically that's where the khadisha river starts and uh and then we're gonna try to go down the down the kadisha valley which is very narrow and very deep and it should be a monastery around there so that's that's the plan for today visit around uh bsharri, let's let's enjoy basically life in the region of in the region of bsharri, but first first i need to get my bike so i need to go to see the neighbors because my bike is inside here i need to go to see the neighbors so they so i can get my bike i love this door so now i'm inside the the house as you can see inside again and uh hello and of course they offered me coffee and now there is a manouche coming so it's the manouche with sesame and... zaatar thyme, oh thyme, oh the plant, ah okay wow lovely so manouche and coffee manouche is so good and i said i had breakfast but and lebanese coffee very good, very strong let's go let's go let's go get the bike and up is also you yes also your house my father oh your father okay okay so here is the bike ready to go guys let's go to the cedars of god first and let's see maybe we're gonna meet with paul there, but starting my way to the cedars of god and it's funny i just went to take my bike but then i don't know how it works they just only get in, sit, they gave me coffee they gave me two manouche lebanese style so to the cedars of god it's about 600... it's just eight kilometers eight kilometers but it's 600 meters climb so it's not far but it's gonna take me quite a while so just to remind to remind you i'm going to the cedars on a day trip because basically the pass is already full of snow so so i won't be able to do it with my bags yeah it's already full of snow maybe it's possible to do it today but tomorrow there is a snow storm coming so i decided i'm going to visit the area and then i'm going to head south to catch another road with a a pass going to baalbek that is less high what a landscape i start to have the feeling that i'm arriving at the at the end of the world not the end of the world but uh yeah something like that it has a small feeling of of end of the world with the trees without the leaves the snow-capped mountains the bold snow-capped mountains such a beautiful place i can't wait to see the cedars so my bike is parked here and uh i film a little bit François my name nice to meet you... my name is french many people have french names here okay let's go to the cedars yeah from here it's much more impressive here so big 32 meters high ah oh look at that that's quite unbelievable and can you imagine all those trees date back from before jesus christ before alexander the great before it's probably maybe even some date back before the iliad and the odyssey before homer so there is a church as you can see in the... so they are still uh the cedars are still part
of the religion of the christian religion here in lebanon that's why they are called the cedars of god they were in the religion and the phoenician times and they are still in the religion now for the christians at least so here they do uh some wood carving in the in the dead cedars actually it's the top of the forest the forest of the cedars of god, how beautiful is that look at that so you have the face of jesus inside the tree there and all the all the several thousand years old cedars around look at that what a beautiful place amazing trees huh so we are at the church now, and actually it's funny because you can see there is the cross so this is the outside part and paul told me that they do some mass here actually and and people even come to get married here on this uh on this platform under the cedars the cedars of god what a beautiful name for the second oldest trees in the world and people the lebanese people come to get married here well, under the cedars under the several thousand years old cedars of god that were that are revered that are religiously revered here in lebanon since the time of the phoenicians so basically all the mountains here probably until a certain uh altitude were covered with cedars and apparently the, probably the phoenicians cut most of them and um and they only left those ones probably for uh it is assumed that it was they left them for religious purposes so that's why that's the only only cedars only like uh truly lebanese cedars so basically this forest is uh is the pride of lebanon let's go to the grotto let's go to the grotto to the source of the kadisha river now the bike is parked let's go to the let's go to discover the the source of the kadisha river what an amazing place wow i have to say it's it's less than a week i am in lebanon but so far i'm really blown away by the country the people the history the food the landscapes everything basically this country has everything well except a government that that makes the economy work basically it's very sad but apart from a government apart from the government they have everything it's crazy ah so it's what they said ah it's closed why did they close it okay guys so well the grotto the cave was a was a big miss but well it doesn't matter let's go to the valley let's go down the valley and see if we can at least because the valley is basically the holy is full of holy monasteries for for maronite uh catholic maronite which is a most of the christians in lebanon are the catholic maronites because the saint maroon maroon comes from somewhere down this valley the khadisha so it's full of monasteries so let's go down the valley and at least at least visit one of the monasteries of the holy maronite valley here the kadisha valley here in lebanon okay wait wait uh okay yeah so this man is saying me coffee so you want sugar yes okay so then let's stop for a coffee lebanese coffee kifak means how are you... good no i don't smoke we are lebanese he is syrian syria syria joke, brother syrian brother you are from... france Macron in Lebanon before Macron loves Lebanon yes, he came here to try to find a solution for the problems but... no solution, he tried you work with cars you repair cars? your job... cut wood, okay after 10 or 20 days, it's gonna be full of snow here ah, you cut wood to heat the house for winter so you have to cut a lot of wood oh, the birds electric, with battery it's crazy here they were drinking coffee so it's like okay you pass by just come have a coffee let's go down to the kadisha valley so actually i stopped at a viewpoint i'm gonna leave my bike here and i stopped at a viewpoint and and i saw there's the path going to the monastery the old road of saint elishaa hermitage so that's saint elisha hermitage look at the wonderful valley so now we are finally deep inside the the valley of kadisha look at that what a beautiful place so we can't see, bsharri is over there, over the cliffs so we can't see bsharri anymore, and uh yeah let's take the path to go to the saint elishaa hermitage let's go there to finish our our visit of the region of bsharri look at that and the kadisha river, it's quite surprising to see such a tiny river able to to make such a deep valley, dig this deep valley it's funny and as you can see some people live down the valley oh it's crazy to come to build a monastery here so that's the hermitage of saint elishaa okay so let's go back to the bike let's go out ah okay i'm exhausted guys so let's go out, well we are out i don't know what i'm saying anymore let's go back to the bike and go back to bsharri and uh so that will be probably that's crazy so i met this uh i guess this uh french man lives uh from normandy so for the americans he's from uh omaha beach no he's uh well he's from normandy but he lives here and he explained me a lot of a lot of things about the history of the kadisha valley the situation in lebanon the kadisha valley so basically is the the stronghold it's really the heart of christianity here in lebanon it looks like let's say somehow it's it's that and what he explains uh let's say the most important thing he explained about the the kadisha valley is that uh basically you know the people from the coast are more open to the to the to the outside world while the people from from the mountains are much more close and then and they want to stick to their traditions than that so it took uh so the the coast was christianized quite uh quite fast but then the mountains remained uh were not christianized and but at some point i can still see my bike that's good um at some point basically on the in the fifth century or something like that, a village somewhere here finally got christianized and and slowly slowly the valley got christianized and then and that's how basically the region become become christian and after the the invasion of the of the arabs the so first you had the arabs and then you had the ottoman empire so during all this period this region succeeded to to resist the the pressure to become muslim while all the coast which is more open to new ideas became muslim the mountains especially this valley remained remain christian so that's the main information he gave us, and also he was saying also that basically this valley was very was like the jungle it was a green desert uh was very isolated from the rest of the world so that's why you had um it was also a great place basically for christian to hide from the uh from the persecutions uh by uh the different uh different tribes who wanted to collect taxes and and stuff like that, who wanted to collect taxes or who wanted to convert people so so that's that's why this valley is basically the the real hurt of um of of the maronites of the lebanese of the maronite church the catholic maronite church basically, that's a summary of what he said probably quick and full of flaws but roughly that's what i understood okay so let's get back to the bike and uh and let's go back to bsharri, and let's have food i'm starving it's probably three o'clock now and i'm starving and i didn't have lunch this country is really fascinating you have the history of the world around here because originally the phoenician also he told me a story about some phoenician, a village that somewhere is called according to some phoenician goddess and and the phoenicians are at the origin of the where they were the first kind of mediterranean mediterranean civilization before the greeks and they were in... their their main cities were established on the... here on the coast of lebanon
in tripoli in what is now tripoli, in saida, and in tyre, that was the three cities the three big phoenician cities, probably like something like i don't know 4 000 years ago or something like that and let's go back oh my god 500 meters to climb again okay parked the bike here uh and there is a restaurant that is open, even though it's half past three something like that i'm starving i didn't have lunch so let's say let's have some food guys look at the view from this restaurant so it's called francis restaurant in bsharri let's try the lebanese burger very good see you later guys that might be the the end of this video ciao why do you give me so much food later you eat me ! it's just for tasting
2022-02-06 17:43
