Musings on the Middle East

Thoughts on two weeks traveling the Middle East, in no particular order.

----------

For reasons passing understanding, restaurants in Jordan and Egypt often provide kleenex instead of proper napkins for wiping one’s hands. All over the place – everywhere from the Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum to the posh seafood restaurant where we had supper in Dahab, Egypt, there were boxes of kleenex on the tables. At first I thought they’d been hauled out because the place had run out of proper paper napkins and was improvising, but in fact it seems to be the norm. As you’d expect, it sorta works, but not really.

----------

I'm finally – FINALLY – running again. Not regularly, but I ran twice in Amman on the treadmill in the Magic Hotel. And I hashed in Amman in the torrential rain. And best of all, I got to run outside twice, once along the waterfront in Luxor and once again in Aswan. I was a bit worried that I’d get hassled by the local men, and I did get quite a few comments, but they were all positive. “Good exercise!” and “Very nice!” and “Strong Woman!” and stuff like that. I even got some sporadic applause when I passed by one or two different groups. It was a nice change from the hassle you normally get when walking along touristy spots. Then it’s a constant barrage from touts selling felucca cruises or carriage rides or from taxi drivers or people manning the endless stream of stalls selling tourist tat. It’s exhausting trying to stay pleasant but asserting, for the eight hundredth time, that no, you do not want a taxi, or a felucca or a papyrus print or a scarf or a crystal pyramid with a 3D image of King Tut suspended inside it. When I was running I was immune to all that, maybe because I was moving too fast for them to bother with me.

The view along the Nile

And the other nice thing? I’d forgotten how good it feels after a run. It’s been so long since I’ve done regular exercise that I was surprised by the wave of contentment and happiness that washed over me after my run in Aswan. Great.

----------

Tipping – baksheesh – is a way of life in the Middle East. Hotel receptionists, bellmen, housekeeping staff, local guides, camel drivers, station porters, donkey wranglers, dive shop owners, felucca sailors, taxi drivers, guys at checkpoints, police, waiters - basically anyone drawing breath within a 10 metre radius of any activity in which you are involved - will expect a tip of some kind. As the Imaginative Traveller trip notes say:

Throughout the Middle East, tipping is part of the fabric of life. The local word is 'baksheesh', which when translated into English falls somewhere in between 'tip' and 'bribe'. Everyone constantly tips everyone else and foreign travellers are expected to comply with this system. It is part of everyday life and is a form of remuneration for doing something, regardless of the standard of service. This is quite confusing for those used to the western concept of tipping as a way of showing appreciation. Over the years we have found that most of our customers find this constant need for tipping to be both tiresome and embarrassing, especially if you don't have the correct small change.

No kidding – in Jordan this was a nightmare. Imtrav (T.W.T.C.K.C.I*) usually suggests that the group establish a “Tipping Kitty” of about $3.00 USD per day to cover all these sort of tips, handled by the guide. This sounded like a really good idea, but our Jordan guide said that the suggested amount there was 5 JD per day, which is closer to $7.00 USD and seemed quite high to those who’d already been travelling in the area for a while and were familiar with the system. This dissention meant that we didn’t use a group fund in Jordan and therefore were each expected to tip all the appropriate people the correct amount at every turn. This was frankly impossible because you almost never have enough small change, and I, at least, am usually oblivious to when a tip is appropriate anyways. It was extremely frustrating to feel like you were either constantly being hit up for money, or constantly (and unintentionally) offending everyone around you.

In Egypt, with our fabulous guide Ahmed, the Tipping Kitty was back, including documents that showed exactly how much is allocated for each different service in each place. (why didn’t we have this in Jordan?) I simply gave Ahmed my 165 Egyptian Pounds (about $35 CDN) and most circumstances were taken care of for my entire time in Egypt. It may not be in the spirit of the region, but at least it was off my mind.

The fabulous Ahmed. He was very creative about distributing baksheesh. Sometimes it was just cash, but sometimes it was a small bottle of cold water given to a guard at a checkstop so that he wouldn’t make us all show our passports or open all our bags. Once he even promised a cell phone top-up. Crafty.

----------

Ok, here’s the most annoying thing about the Middle East – it’s really hard to find a beer! Turkey was 98% Muslim but it’s still a very secular state, and it’s easy to find alcohol wherever you want. In Jordan and Egypt it’s frustratingly rare. Very few hotels we stayed at (including the magical Toledo Hotel in Amman) had alcohol available on any menu. Similarly, restaurants will usually offer soft drinks, smoothies, fresh juice, four kinds of coffee and 98 kinds of tea, but no alcohol. It was a rare event indeed to have a drink with dinner, which was annoying (though it did mean the bill was usually a lot cheaper). There were bars in Aqaba, which was good, and Ahmed told us we could walk down to the corner store for beer and bring them back to the posh seafood place in Dahab, but it would have been nice to see beer show up on a menu with food. And please God, let me never have to endure another bottle of Amstel Zero non alcoholic “beer”. Ugh.

----------

It seems to be a universal truth in the Middle East that no one ever has change. Bank machines spit out £100 and £200 notes, or £50s if you’re lucky. Admittedly, a £200 note is worth about $40, which is a lot of money in this neck of the woods, so I can understand why someone would be reluctant to change it if you were buying a $1 can of pop. But I bought two 10 dinar SD cards for my camera in Aqaba and the shopkeeper only agreed to change my 50 dinar note when I said I’d buy a third card. I think they see it as a game, and whoever ends up with the small bills wins. This is probably because the small notes - £1 and £5 in Egypt – are the ones you need for the endless stream of baksheesh that’s constantly flowing out. Usually this means you have to lie about what’s in your wallet. You hand over a £20 note and the shopkeeper shakes his head sadly. “Oh, have no change. Anything smaller?” You shake your head sadly… no, you have nothing. “Ah, is problem.” You stare, unflinching. It’s £20 or nothing. You are prepared to walk out without making the purchase if no change is available. The trick is in who backs down first. If it’s something you don’t really care about, you can hang on until the shopkeeper relents and sends someone off to find change, or magically produces it from his pocket, and you win. If it’s something you really need, you pull out your wallet again and perform a much more thorough search than before and – remarkably – discover that you do have a smaller note, and the other guy wins. I sometimes wonder if they actually keep score.

Exact change! I lost this round.

----------

We spent a lot of time in small buses and minvans in Egypt, and though it’s a warm part of the world, it’s still January and temperatures are not always comfortable. Nevertheless, the drivers we had almost always kept their window at least partly open, creating a cold draft (or in Cairo, a smelly one) that just added to the discomfort. Once we asked that the window be closed and Ahmed told us that it’s normal for Egyptian drivers to keep the window open, so they don’t fall asleep. Naturally this begs the question: If you’re so tired that you need a cool breeze to keep you from falling asleep while hurtling down the road at 120 km/ph, then should you really be behind the wheel?

----------

It’s weird to me that in a region that produces an infinite variety of sticky, honey-soaked treats, the most common thing we are offered for dessert in a restaurant is… fruit. And I’m not talking about a nice fruit salad. I’m talking about a whole orange, unpeeled, and rolling around on a side plate. It’s terribly disappointing that no one seems to understand that fruit is not dessert. Fruit is… fruit. Dessert is sticky and sweet and should involve licking fingers and aching teeth. Come on Middle East!

THIS is dessert – at a nice sweet shop in Amman

----------

Ok, I realize this might all sound a bit whiny, so I'm going to close with a couple of my favourite and most recently discovered things in the Middle East. Naturally, they are both edible. First, lemon juice. This is NOT lemonade. I'm not sure what makes it different, but it definitely is. Very. It's got a sort of creamy frothiness that makes it taste a bit like a lemon julep. It's tart and refreshing, and I think there's a bit of the lemon zest in it. And it's always freshly made and served icy cold and it's very very very good.

Second, roasted sweet potatoes. I only found these on my second-last day in Cairo, but I wish they'd been everywhere. There was a street vendor selling them outside our hotel - he had a cart with an oven on it where he was burning some kind of charcoal. And he had a bunch of the roasted potatoes on the top of the oven to keep them warm. When you bought one (or two, if they're small), he'd pluck them off the top slice them open, and serve them on a random scrap of paper. The first one I got was on a glossy KFC menu, the second was presented on what appeared to be a photocopied page from a UK personal income tax form. And they were great. I'm not sure if you're intended to eat the skins, since I think they go straight from the ground into the fire, but the skins had a nice smokey flavour, and I think they're the best part, so I gobbled them down along with the soft, sweet flesh, and probably a thousand thousand thousand germs and gunk. But they were fantastic, and only £1 each - about 20 cents.

The Potato Man's cart. The Potato Man himself declined to be photographed.

----------

And those are parting thoughts on the Middle East. By the time this is posted I'll be in Delhi starting another 2 week tour of northern India and Nepal, accompanied by my friend Patti. The Middle East was good, and I'm glad I got to tick off all those amazing sights - Petra, the pyramids, and the Valley of Kings. But despite my constant complaints about being tired and moving around too much, I'm ready for something new. On to India!

* That’s What The Cool Kids Call It. (And to Rob H: Yes, the asterisks are back, in moderation. I am making an effort to include my parenthetical statements in the body of the text, but sometimes I just feel the need for an asterisk. Plus Steven G. likes them, and I like Steven G.)

Steve's Weird Food for the Middle East: Three for One!

Steve’s Weird Food for Jordan: There hasn’t been a lot of weird food in the Middle East, but there’s one thing that I think should qualify for Jordan: zaatar. It’s “a fragrant mix of sun-dried thyme and sesame seeds” (LP) that shows up on buffet tables. I gave it a try on our last morning in Jordan, and it was quite inoffensive.

A dish of zaatar at the breakfast buffet

It’s generally served sprinkled on pita bread, with olive oil drizzled over the top, and that’s how I had it. It was a bit crunchy, and not nearly as strong-tasting as you’d expect. In fact, zaatar was a bit of a non-event and hence merits no more effort on my part, or yours.

----------

Steve’s Weird Food for Egypt: When I asked Ahmed our guide about what I should eat as my weird food for Egypt, both he and Anna - the half-Egyptian woman in our group - instantly had the same answer: Molokhiyya (pronounced sort of like "Moll – uh – KHAY – uh” where the KHAY is that throat-clearing guttural sound like in the Scottish pronunciation of “Loch”). The LP describes molokhiyya like this: “...a slimy but surprisingly sexy green leafy vegetable known in the West as mallow. In Egypt it’s made into an earthy garlic-flavoured soup that has a glutinous texture and inspires an almost religious devotion among the locals.”

Molikhayya

I tried it in a fast-foodish place that Ahmed took us to in Cairo, and found it exactly as described. It’s very green, and a bit earthy, and decidedly slimy. It was certainly edible, but the texture left a lot to be desired and the overall experience was a bit like eating a bowl full of stewed grass clippings suspended in snot. Molokhiyya probably will not make it onto my “Try Again” list.

----------

Bonus Weird Food for Egypt (The Birthday Supper Edition): It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for a birthday supper, but I long ago stopped thinking I’d get what I want when I want it on this trip, so it was all fine. We’d arrived in Aswan after a long day of sight-seeing and driving and Ahmed took us out to a local place to try a specialty called koshery. It’s a vegetarian mish-mash served in a bowl and consists of: rice, three different kinds of pasta (spaghetti, tubetti – like short macaroni, and something like those tiny noodles that come in Lipton chicken noodle soup), chick peas (of course), crispy fried onions, black lentils, and tomato sauce.

The koshery as served, with the tomato sauce on the side and extra chick peas, lentils and onions available too.

It was tasty, especially those crispy fired onions. In fact, it had the feel of something that someone made up out of a fridge full of leftovers. I liked it a lot, though it was a big bowl of food to get through, especially with all that pasta. I think it would be the kind of thing you’d really crave late at night in a less-than-sober state.

As we were finishing supper Ahmed and a guy in our group, Ron, went off so Ron could "help fix the computer" of the guy who ran the restaurant. This seemed a bit weird, but Ahmed is one of those guys who knows everyone and so no one questioned it. It turns out, though, that it was all a ruse and they came back with a big tray of birthday treats for me!

Yum! And there was a piece of cake too! I may not have got a beer on my birthday, but this definitely made up for it, and was a really nice gesture. There was even a big piece of chocolate cake that I ate all by myself!

Ahmed and Ron, the Birthday Rescuers - thanks guys!

Climbing Mount Sinai

You have to give Moses some credit, because he was not a young man when he went up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments, at least not if you believe the pictures of him with the flowing white beard and all. Plus he had to come all the way down hauling a couple of stone tablets. I just had to haul myself and a light pack of extra clothes, snacks and water, and I was seriously huffing by the time I’d trudged to the top, 2,285 metres up, and back down again.

We have a new guide for Egypt, and we’re all thrilled. Ahmed is a young and enthusiastic Egyptian who gives us more information in 10 minutes than our Jordanian guide gave us in four days. Ahmed is FANTASTIC, and makes me realize exactly how crappy our Jordanian guy was. Always trying to please, Ahmed gave us a choice about the climb up Mount Sinai. We could either get up at about 3:00 am and climb through the pre-dawn hours to get to the summit in time to see the sunrise, or we could climb at about 2:00 pm and get there in time to see the sunset. Happily, the group agreed that the sunset option was better, a decision for which I am still profoundly grateful. Doing the climb in daylight and relatively warm(ish) temperatures was taxing enough. Having to do it in the middle of the night, in the dark, in the freezing cold would have been no fun at all. Luckily, the evening climb worked better with our schedule. It meant that the group of us who wanted to see the famous St. Catherine’s Monastery, home of the burning bush (yes, that burning bush) could go there in the morning, while those of us who wanted to go snorkeling in the Red Sea could do that. Later we’d meet at our hotel so the mountain trekkers could head out, and the lazy bastards who were not trekking could lounge about eating bon bons and napping.

I decided to skip the monastery, even though the LP calls it “unmissable” (apparently this isn’t strictly correct, because I missed it and lived to tell the tale). Instead I went snorkeling, and it was fantastic. The water was chilly, but not nearly as cold as we’d been lead to expect, and the sea life was the best yet. Spain’s snorkeling was fun because it was the first time I’d done it, though there wasn’t much to see. There was more to see in Zanzibar, but the water was a bit cloudy. In the Red Sea, near Dahab, the views were just great. We snorkeled around the top of a popular dive site called the Blue Hole, and it was just lovely. The water and the sky were both clear and blue, and we slipped easily into the sea right at the top of the Blue Hole.

Right away there was lots to see – schools of striped fish, coral reefs, anemones and plant life. The sun shone full on the face of the reef so you could see everything. And if you floated over the top of the deep area where the SCUBA divers were heading the sunlight streamed all around you almost like it was being poured into the water. It honestly looked like a Hollywood special effect. At one point I just floated there motionless, watching the light play through the water and feeling supremely content, when a big school of fish swam by right underneath me. Monastery be damned, the snorkeling was the right choice on that morning.

But back to the mountain. Ahmed hired us a local Bedouin guide named Nasr who purported to speak English, and who would be paid only if he delivered us all safely back down the mountain in five or six hours time. Nasr was an ok guy, but his English was limited (though miles better than my Arabic), and he seemed most concerned with getting us to slow down.

But back to the mountain. There are two routes up – the more gentle camel trail and the punishing 3,750 “Steps of Repentance”. Despite the fact that I’ve probably got lots to repent for by now, we took the camel trail. It started out as a gentle switchback trail that wound back and forth along the side of the mountain.

The camel trail, with camels. You could hire a camel to ride most of the way up, for about 90 Egyptian pounds (about $18)

The trail started out quite gently, but it became steeper and steeper the higher we got. The whole climb is supposed to take about three hours, and includes a very steep set of 750 steps at the end. Even if you ride a camel most of the way up, you still have to climb those 750 steps on your own. Luckily, there are a lot of small stalls along the way where locals will happily try to sell you souvenirs, tea, coffee, hot chocolate and Snickers bars.

Sole Man Coffee Shop (scheduled to be replaced by a Starbucks in April)

I climbed mostly with Emma and Fabio, two of the gang I’d walked around Petra with (Jammal left us in Aqaba to head for a skiing holiday in France. Jerk.) We figured that the camel trail part would be no big deal, and the 750 steps at the end would be a lot like the climb up to the monastery at Petra. In fact it was quite a bit more strenuous than we expected. The camel trail became steep enough to be an effort, and the steps were a real challenge. In fact, calling them “steps” is perhaps a bit generous. They were uneven and rough and sometimes non-existent. It wasn’t as hard as a marathon or anything like that, but I would equate it to a really hard track workout (Something like 10 x 800m intervals, for those who’ve had the pleasure). Add to that the fact that the temperature in the sun was quite warm, but it was quite cold in the shade, and the fact that I was sweating quite a bit, so it was really easy to get chilled from being wet at the same time you were being baked in the sun. I was constantly adding and removing layers of clothing to try and stay comfortable and dry, without much success.

But I did it. Fabio was the first to reach the top, and I was close behind. We made it in just under two hours, which makes me wonder how many cups of tea you’d have to stop and drink for it to take three hours.

Me, at the top of Mount Sinai, looking surprisingly fresh.

There’s really not a lot to see at the top – a small Greek Orthodox Church, a mosque, some random steps and rooms that were all closed off, and one of the Top Five Worst Toilets of the Trip. I’m not kidding, it was bad, and don’t forget I’ve been to Africa now and have seen some doozies. (Photo over at Flickr, but I figured I did not need to subject you to it here.)

Because we’d climbed so quickly we had about an hour to wait until sunset, so we sat around and tried to dry off and warm up. I put on all the extra layers of clothing I had, and we accosted some friendly Belgian ladies to take our picture.

Emma, me, Jessica, Fabio, Anna and Ron. And it was quite windy – that’s why my hair looks weird and big like that. And yes, I am obsessed with my hair these days. Get used to it.

Scholarly opinion among the real photographers in the groups was that the light would probably have been better at sunrise, but everyone was grateful we’d done the hike when we did. The closer it got to sunset, the more people arrived, though it was never really crowded. This was another advantage of doing the afternoon trek. Apparently most people prefer the sunrise, so there are a lot more people around for that. The LP says that in the busiest part of the year there can be up to 500 people at the summit, though I can’t imagine where they’d all stand; it’s really quite a modest spot.

Finally, the sun set and we all took loads of photos and then scurried off so we could make it down the nasty steps while there was still some lingering twilight.

My camera is really not smart enough to take great sunset pictures, but here’s one of the better ones, including a group of insanely fit Austrians who left us in the dust on the hike down.

The trip down was not bad. We all had flashlights or headlamps because it was completely dark by the time we made it down, which took about an hour and 45 minutes. And Ahmed was waiting for us at the bottom, bundled up and complaining about the cold that his skinny Egyptian body is not equipped to deal with. The whole trek really was quite an effort, and by the time we got into the warm bus for the short ride back to the hotel I was exhausted. Then there was a reasonable buffet supper back at the ranch, made memorable by the fact that the place actually had BEER for sale. It was an outrageous 30 Egyptian pounds for a bottle (about $6.00), but it was also the first time I’ve been able to have a beer with a meal since arriving in the Middle East, so I paid it grudgingly.

After supper I managed to stay awake long enough to clear my luggage off my bed and watch about 3 minutes of “Shaolin Soccer” on Fox Movies, originally in (I think) Chinese, but dubbed into English, with Arabic subtitles. I’m sure pulled up the covers and closed my eyes before 9:00 pm. It had been a long day.

As for Moses, I really hope that when he made it all the way down with those stone tablets someone was waiting for him with a beer, and I hope it didn’t cost him £30. I mean, really.

Pick of Pics: the Dead Sea

I'm not backtracking to Israel - the tour I'm on included a visit to the Dead Sea, so I went there again, to the Jordan side. I didn't go in this time, but I did take lots of pictures for other people, and a few for myself. I have no idea why these chairs were in the sea, but I thought they were interesting.

Jordan's greatest hits

It was one of the places on my “must-see” list for this trip, and I think it’s safe to say that Petra did not disappoint. What did disappoint a bit were the Imaginative Traveller trip notes, which clearly said we’d have some time on the afternoon of Day 3, and most of Day 4 at the site. Instead we left the hotel in Amman a bit late on Day 3, then we stopped so our guide could pick up his credentials, then we spent an odd amount of time touring around Amman through some of the posher neighbourhoods. After that there was a pitstop at a convenience store so we could pick up some supplies for lunch, because we were told there wasn’t a good place to stop on the way. Once we finally got on the road lo and behold, there was a lunch stop! We were supposed to be there for half an hour, but that turned into an hour. All of this meant that we didn’t roll into Wadi Musa – the town closest to Petra – until dusk, and during winter months the entrance to Petra closes at 4:00pm. Needless to say we were not impressed, especially when we didn’t even get to do the cheesey “Petra by Night” walk because it’s not available on Tuesdays. (It really would have been nice if our guide had known that before he asked us all if we wanted to go.)

But nevermind all that, it turns out that one long day was enough at Petra. We were smart enough to go for an early start, leaving the hotel at 7:00am (early in Jordan and early in Africa are two very different things, thankfully). When we got to the site there were already several large tour buses in the parking lot, but a few of us surged ahead past the inevitable gift shops and headed into the Siq.

Best snack shop EVER.

The Siq is the legendary 1.2km long high-sided canyon sort of thing that leads into the city of Petra. The LP takes pains to point out that it’s not actually a canyon but a “rock landmass that has been rent apart by tectonic forces” but whatever the geological cause, it’s a spectacular walk.

Emma, my roommate, demonstrating the scale of the Siq.

Most people probably know Petra from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and it’s such a spectacular setting it really seems like it must have been designed by Hollywood rather than formed naturally. It’s really fantastic. You wander for about half an hour among these towering rocks and then suddenly you’re staring at the most famous site in Jordan

My first view of the Treasury

It is seriously amazing and improbable - carved right out of the pink sandstone cliff and really well-preserved. I can’t imagine how they managed to plan and carve it out. Access to the inside is blocked off, but there’s not much to see there anyways. It’s called the Treasury because locals mistakenly used to believe the Pharaoh hid his treasure in the top urn of the facade. Whatever it was, though, it must have been important. (I took a lot more photos of it, and of the whole site, but it’s just not practical to include even a fraction of them here. If you haven’t looked already, click on over to the Flickr feed and look at the Petra set.)

It was at this point when we saw the wave of Japanese tourists returning from their visit to Petra. They must have arrived when the site opened at 6:00am, walked from the Treasury to the end of the main part of the valley, and then jogged back. Incredible. I speculated that they probably had the rest of Jordan all of Egypt to see that day, so they were moving fast (“Ok, Petra from 6am to 8am, then Wadi Rum from 9:00 to 9:30. Fast ferry to Nuweib and at the Great Pyramids by noon. 3 minute lunch stop. Pyramids from 12:03pm to 12:30pm. Photo op with the Sphinx 12:30 to 1:00pm. Helicopter transfer to Luxor for King Tut’s Tomb from 2:00pm to 2:15pm. Felucca ride on the Nile from 2:30pm to 2:45pm. Helicopter back to Cairo, visit the Egyptian Museum from 4:00pm to 4:30pm. Free time from 4:30 to 4:35pm… etc.)

Once we had our fill of the Treasury, we wandered along Wadi Musa, taking in the other sights of Petra. “Wadi” is Arabic for valley, so “Wadi Musa” means Moses Valley. The town we stayed in is named after the valley, and Petra is situated in the valley. We passed through the Street of Facades – an area riddled with about 40 rock-cut tombs. Some were quite plain, but the rock itself was really beautiful – much of it was striped and swirled with different shades of red and orange and purple.

Inside one of the tombs

And of course there was the mandatory theatre, and main collonaded street, all familiar from my many forays into Roman ruins. Petra was originally built in 3rd century by the Nabataeans and was a major stop on the caravan routes from Damascus to Arabia. It was abandoned – probably in 555 AD after a major earthquake – but the Romans inhabited it for a while too before it fell into disuse, so that may be why it’s got a Roman feel in parts. Remarkably, it was only “discovered” by the western world in 1812. And that’s all the history you’re getting from me, because I really didn’t pay that much attention and totally cribbed that whole last bit from the LP.

What I did do was take the long hike up a winding path to one of Petra’s better-known monuments, called the Monastery. The hike itself was a bit strenuous, and though the morning was cold I ended up stripping off more and more layers the higher we climbed and the sweatier I got. It was about a 35 minute trek at a steady, heart-rate-elevating pace. Some of the lazier/smarter among us hired donkeys and rode up, though we heard that was a bit scary. The donkey themselves are amazingly sure-footed on the steep steps but have no qualms about passing on the outside to try and get ahead of their mates. Though it was an effort, I’m glad I did it on foot

Some of the 800 steps up to the Monastery.

Our timing was really good all day. When me and my three compatriots (Emma, Fabio and Jammal) arrived at the Monastery we had the whole site to ourselves except for one insanely fit German guy who passed us on the way up. It’s an impressive facade – even bigger than the Treasury, and modeled after it, but you really don’t take in the scale of it unless you see it with a person in the picture.

Fabio standing in front of the main entrance. His head just reaches to the bottom of the doorway. I told you it was big.

We stopped for an extortionately expensive cup of hot, sweet tea with mint (1.50 dinars! They were only 0.50 dinar near the Treasury) and enjoyed having this incredible place to ourselves before we struck off for a nearby viewpoint and then did the long hike back down to the floor of Wadi Musa. After a short, cold, expensive and unsatisfying lunch the four of us went over to the see the Royal Tombs – more impressive facades cut into the rock.

And then, not satisfied with having negotiated the 800 steps up to the monastery, we decided to try and find the back route behind the Royal Tombs to a ledge overlooking the Treasury. And we found it – after another long and sweaty trek up more steps and some serious doubt as to whether were were on the right track. Being the only ones in the area is nice most of the time, but on this occasion I would have been grateful to have run into some people coming back the other way who could have confirmed that we were on the right track. Nevertheless, we persevered and finally found it, and it was a fantastic view.

Here’s a perspective most people don’t get. I do have a couple of pictures of me at this ledge but they are perhaps the worst pictures of me EVER. My now mostly unmanageable hair is frizzed out in all directions, my mouth is hanging open and I look like I’ve gained fifty pounds, not fifteen. Needles to say, those did not make it onto Flickr.

It ended up raining while we were trekking back down from that viewpoint, and we got quite wet. In fact, a lot of our time in the desert was marked by unexpectedly torrential rains, which seemed bizarre. We were actually lucky, though. We heard from our guide that the entire site had to be closed a few days before we were there because a huge rainfall made the place impossible. As we were walking out, it was easy to see how large volumes of rain would make the Siq an ankle-deep river of mud.

We met back at our bus at 3:00 pm after about 7 hours of sight-seeing, climbing, getting rained on, and generally exerting ourselves. All I wanted was a short ride in a warm bus to a comfortable hotel with hot showers and wireless internet. Instead, we drove through more rain to a touristy Bedouin camp in the Wadi Rum desert, about two hours drive away. It was dusk when we arrived and were shown to our “rooms” in goat-hair tents.

Jammal, checking out the accommodations

Let there be no doubt – the desert is COLD. Especially at night, in January, after a large rainfall. Luckily, they had a nice kerosene stove in a big common area kind of tent, and we had our supper in there and hung out enjoying the warmth, thawing out, and relaxing after a long day. My mood was much improved by the time I’d sat near the heater for a while and had some hot food and lashings of sweet tea with sage, so by the time I went to bed I felt pretty good. I even managed to have pass a reasonable night, though it was a bit tricky keeping the mountain of covers balanced on top of me, and I turned out to be absolutely irresistible to the sand flies, which left me with a dozen or more tiny red blotches on my face.

Nevermind all that, though, because the next morning we got to ride camels! After the standard middle eastern breakfast most of us saddled up and went off for an hour of camel riding. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, camels are exceptionally smelly, mostly ornery and kind of ridiculous. Getting onto a camel is not hard, but you really have to hang on tight when they stand up because they accomplish this is a series of three lurching back-and-forth movements, any one of which could pitch you off into the sand. And once you’re up, it’s a looong way down. I think I had the biggest camel in the group, because I towered over some of the others.

Me, waiting for the big lurch

Each camel was lead by a handler, or tied to the camel in front of it, and we walked for about an hour, making a big circle that lead us back to the camp. I managed to get a few photos even though camels do not exactly provide a smooth, camera-friendly ride. Still, it was pretty cool, and I enjoyed it.

Here’s my camel and my camel-driver, neither of whose names I managed to discover.

So we had Petra and Bedouins and camels, and it was still only about 10:00 am – just enough time to pile into the back of a couple of pickup trucks and zoom around in the desert for a few hours! I was looking forward to this too, because we really hadn’t been properly IN the desert yet – like out on big sand dunes – that kind of thing. The jeep drivers delighted in racing across the wet sand (remember, there had been a LOT of rain), and they zipped up dunes and down the other side and generally behaved like boys do when given an accelerator pedal and an open space. It was fun, but breezy. We also stopped a few times to take photos, and we visited another Bedouin guy who made us coffee and tea and tired to sell us stuff.

Inside the Bedouin tent. My driver was the one on the right in the traditional clothing. He was insane, but fun.

When the sun came out it warmed up and the views were quite fantastic. Wadi Rum isn’t a Sahara-style desert with endless ranks of sand dunes and nothing else – it’s got a lot of rock formations and some scrubby vegetation and it was really quite beautiful.

Wadi Rum desert

It seemed like a long drive back to the camp, and I was grateful to finally get back onto our warm and comfy bus. The desert was fun and beautiful, but I was tired and dirty and cold, and very much looking forward to getting to Aqaba, a properly touristy place that promised to have the hot shower and cold beer I’d been craving since Petra. And it did. And it was good.

A slow start in Jordan

Gratuitous picture of crazy man-made islands at Dubai. I flew out of Dubai on the last leg of my trip from Livingstone*

It was a great hotel. I mean, it wasn’t the Burj Al Arab or anything like that, but it was exactly what I needed. It was not, however, the first hotel I tried in Amman. I’d originally booked at a place recommended by the LP, but it turned out to be a bit grim. It was certainly not the worst hotel room I’ve stayed in – that distinction still goes to the Baronie in Utrecht - but it really wasn’t what I was looking for. After 23 days of overland truck travel in Africa I wanted somewhere to hole up for a couple of days and just enjoy the comforts of first-world existence, and the Palace Hotel was not that. I hemmed and hawed a bit, and then opened up the LP again and cast my glance away from the “Budget” section and into the never-before-tried “Midrange” section, and found the Toledo Hotel. “Modern rooms with subdued lighting boast business-friendly amenities such as satellite tv and wireless internet, and the bathrooms are spacious.” It was 3 times more expensive than the Palace, but as soon as I walked into the room I knew it was worth every dinar.

There was going to be a video here of me narrating about my lovely hotel room, but the connection the hotel in Wadi Musa just can't handle that. Instead, you get a picture of the weird market that was right outside my room on Friday. The whole area across the street was filled with stalls of clothing and you could hear the din from six floors up inside the room.

The next day, it was completely gone - just an empty parking lot.

Not only was there satellite tv and wifi (though the wifi was 15 dinar for 24 hour worth of access – about $22.50!), there was cheap room service, and air conditioning, and an extensive breakfast buffet, and a fitness centre and a business centre where you could print stuff. There was even a Qu’ran in the wardrobe and a sticker on the ceiling pointing the direction in which to pray. Oh, and crisp white sheets and fluffy pillows and a Do No Disturb sign for the door. And they brought me a complimentary plate of fruit and bottle of water after I arrived. I got there at about noon on Friday and I did not leave the building until I had to check out at noon on Sunday. I napped, caught up on the blog, uploaded all my photos from Africa, Skyped, watched tv, slept in, and ordered room service for supper two nights in a row. I even got the chance to run again for the first time since Nairobi – on a treadmill in the hotel’s fitness centre. It was PERFECT.

Sadly, on Sunday I had to move hotels to join up with my Imaginative Traveller “Jordan and Egypt Adventure” Tour. The new hotel was somewhere between the Palace and the Toledo, but sufficient for a couple of nights. I met some of the group on Sunday night – at least the ones who were continuing on from a tour that had started in Turkey and moved on through Syria before arriving in Jordan. There was Emma, my roommate, from England; Jamal, also from England; Fabio from Switzerland, Leslie, a retired chap from England, and Fitz, a peach farmer form Fresno. They all seem like a nice bunch. We’re also joined by seven others – an even mix of Americans and Canadians.

A view of Amman houses – the city is built on seven hills and navigating is a constant up-down battle, with lots of stairs. It reminded me a bit of Lisbon in this respect.

Our first day was pretty grim – it was pouring rain outside and we were scheduled to go on a walking tour of Amman. (In fact, it was also pouring rain inside, because the five-storey “atrium” of the hotel was leaking quite badly, making it a treacherous trip from the breakfast buffet to a table.) The walking tour was ok, but the group seemed unenthusiastic. We’re split between people who’ve been travelling for a while - me and the Turkey/Syria gang – who are a bit jaded, and people who’ve just started and are fresh and keen and want to do everything and go everywhere. This has already created a bit of friction, but so far no big blow-ups.

We visited the Citadel, a hilltop archeological site in the centre of Jordan. It’s got some excavated ruins – Roman and Byzantine or something. I wasn’t really listening. Mostly I was huddling under my new 2 Dinar umbrella and trying to stay warm. The citadel is also the site of Jordan’s National Archeological Museum. It was small and kind of sad, and had the feeling of something from the 1950s. I think the only reason one would tarry there is that they’ve got a few scraps of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were tucked away in a room at the back and uninsipring in the extreme, though perhaps this was mostly due to the setting and my generally grey mood.

See what I mean about the weather?

We also stopped at Amman’s Roman theatre, but I am really, really done with Roman theatres. I’ think this was my seventh Roman theatre of the trip – I’ve seen them in France, Italy, Turkey, and now Jordan. I didn’t even bother to climb to the top of this one. But I did have a nice lunch with Jamal, Emma and Fabio, at a place where they’d been the day before. We got two plates of hummus, two plates of fuul (pronounced “fool”, a mixture of beans), a plate of tomatoes and onions, cups of sugary tea and a mountainous stack of pita bread for a grand total of 7 JD in total, for all four of us. Yummy and filling and very local.

After lunch I wandered a bit an invested 2.50 JD in a pair of wooly gloves and a toque. We’re going to be spending a night in the dessert in a few days, and I thought it was worth it. I also had a look around the souk (market) and it was appropriately colourful. But as a measure of just how jaded I’ve become, I didn’t take a single picture of the market. What I did do is walk back to the hotel and have a nice nap while listening to the rain outside start up again, then get worse, then turn to hail, and then turn back to rain.

I was conserving my energy because I knew I was about to have a challenging evening. I was going to hash with the local gang, the Hashemite Hash House Harriers. (Jordan is more properly known as The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, for reasons the LP does not care to explain. But it does make for the perfect place to have a Hash.) I had a bit of trouble getting ready for this run - I really don’t have the wardrobe for running in Arabic countries, where shorts are sort of inappropriate for women. Add to that the fact that it was still bucketing down with rain and much colder than I’ve experienced in some time, and you can see why I was having a bit of a wardrobe malfunction. In the end I wore my shorts with grey cotton sweats over them, and a long-sleeved shirt with my running shirt on top, and my rain jacket, and my new wooly gloves.

We met at the house of a local hasher, which was a huge stone place with big pillars out front and a swimming pool in back and a big open basement suitable for a group of drippy hashers. I was curious about how the hares would manage to set a trail in darkness and torrential rain, but it turns out that the Hashemite HHH don’t bother with setting a trail a lot of the time. The hare just heads out, and the runners simply follow behind. This doesn’t seem quite in the spirit of things, but it was a good arrangement for that night because there was no chance of getting lost and we could request a turn for home when we’d had enough. We ended up running for about 45 minutes and when we got back I was as wet as if I’d been standing in the shower that whole time. Once I got into the bathroom I stripped off my cotton sweats and wrung about 2 cups of water out them.

Circle was short but raucous, and the Hashemite HHH has the distinction of being the only place I’ve hashed other than Winnipeg where they actually had songbooks. It warmed my heart, which needed warming, let me tell you. And there was cold beer and a big pot of chicken soup and bread, which also helped warm things up. Finally I got a ride back to the hotel from a very friendly ex-pat American hasher, and was careful to leave one of my new wooly gloves in his car as a memento.

And now we’re on our minibus on the way to Wadi Musa, the jumping off point for anyone visiting Petra, “the ancient rose-red city of the Nabateans”. There’s a bit of concern that the extreme rains may affect access to the site, which actually had to be closed yesterday. But today has been sunny, and frankly even if I have to snorkel my way to the site I’m still going, so stay tuned.

* I flew from Jo’burg (that’s what the cool kids call it) to Amman on Emirates Airlines, which instantly became my favourite airline EVER. The plane was a huge 777 with the most fantastic back-of-seat touchscreen entertainment system I have ever seen. It had a huge selection of on-demand movies and tv, 9 zillion channels of music (including the top hits from every year), games, news, and the ability to send and receive SMS and email ($1.00 each). And the flight attendants wore these funny veils along one side, and there were fibreoptic stars in the ceiling when they dimmed the cabin lights. I transited through Dubai, which is the hub for Emirates, and the terminal has free wifi everywhere and loads of places for charging computers and things. And it was a hive of activity with all the shops open even though I arrived at 5:15am. I’ve already booked with Emirates for my flight from Cairo to Delhi and have joined their frequent flyer program. And if they’d like to give me a free upgrade on that flight for mentioning them so favourably in my blog, I would not be too proud to accept.

This time next year - December 9

POP QUIZ: Can you guess today's "This Time Next Year" location from this audio clue?:

If you guessed the Lost City of Petra, you're correct! (And you know me well.) To quote Wikipedia:

Petra is an extraordinary archaeological site in southwestern Jordan, lying on the slope of Mount Hor in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. The site was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1985 when it was described as "one of the most precious cultural properties of man's cultural heritage".

To quote me: "Petra is dead cool!"


The best known site at Petra is the iconic Al Khazneh, or Treasury Building, but the whole site has a lot more to see. I'll admit that when I thought of Petra, I really just thought of that one building, but it turns out that Petra is not just the Treasury, a souvenir stand, and a guy selling falafel from a cart... its a whole CITY, and they think most of it hasn't even been uncovered yet. There's the remains of the fantastic Ad-Deir monastery, along with "rock-cut tombs, obelisks, temples, sacrificial altars and colonnaded streets". One website claims you need 4 or 5 days to really explore the whole city so I'm a little worried that my proposed itinerary will rush me through Petra too quickly. (Of course if I wanted to do it really quickly, I should run the first ever Petra Marathon on September 26th, 2009.)



I'm actually planning on seeing Petra as part of a package tour (more on the whole idea of package tours is probably coming in a later post). The particular tour I've got my eye on is called the "Jordan and Egypt Adventure", and just reading the itinerary makes me positively buzz with excitement:

This tour combines our ‘Petra to the Pyramids’ and ‘Nubian Sailtrek’ tours to give you the highlights of both Jordan and Egypt. We’ll see the hidden city of Petra, take a camel ride amidst the weird rock formations of Wadi Rum, sail along the Nile on a felucca and explore the Pharaonic treasures left by the Ancient Egyptians.

• Camel ride in Wadi Rum
• Overnight in Bedouin camp
• Full day guided exploration of Petra
• Sunrise on Mt Sinai
• Pyramids & Sphinx at Giza
• 1 day felucca cruise
• Horse-drawn carriage ride to Karnak Temple
• Donkey ride to the Valley of the Kings

Seriously? A camel ride? A bedouin camp? A felucca cruise? Pyramids? It's like the Greatest Hits of the Ancient World. How is it that YOU have not already signed on to come with me on this? I mean look at this map:

The Jordan and Egypt Adventure, December 7-22, 2009. You know you want to.