Homs is where the country's roads meet. The M5 comes up from Damascus and carries on north to Hama and Aleppo, the M1 turns west through the Homs Gap to Tartus and the sea, and the desert highway leaves the eastern edge of the city for Palmyra. Car rental in Homs makes sense the moment you look at that map: the city itself is flat, gridded and small enough to cross in twenty minutes, but almost everything people come for sits between forty-five minutes and two and a half hours out.
We deliver to Homs for a flat $50, added to your quote before you pay. You pick the handover point when you book — a hotel, your own street in Khalidiya or Inshaat, a relative's building, wherever suits the start of your day.
Krak des Chevaliers — 40 km west, about 45 minutes
Take the Tartus road and turn off at al-Husn. The last stretch climbs out of Wadi al-Nasara, and the castle appears above you well before you reach the car park. Deir Mar Jirjis is a short detour off the same road, so the two together still make a comfortable half day.
Palmyra — around 155 km east, two to two and a half hours
One long line across open desert. Fill up before you leave Homs and carry water; there is very little between the last outskirts and Tadmor. Leave early. The colonnade is at its best in the first hours of light, and the return leg is not a drive you want to be doing in the dark.
The coast and the north
Tartus is roughly 90 km, about an hour and a half, straight through the gap in the mountains — the same low corridor that put the castle where it is. Hama is 45 minutes north on the M5, close enough for the norias and back before dinner. Closer still, Lake Qattinah lies about 10 km southwest of the city.
In town
Homs is worth an evening of its own: the Old Clock Square, and the black-and-white banded stone of the Khalid ibn al-Walid Mosque, which is basalt from the plain around the city.
Booking
Send us your dates, the car you want and the address in Homs. We confirm the total with the $50 delivery included, and the car reaches you where you asked.