Author: Neera

The last few days of a trip are hard. We were all feeling tired, missing sleeping in our own bed and had picked up local bugs. After visiting Petra we didn’t care about the rest of the itinerary as we didn’t know any of the places mentioned there.

That was where the tour operators had a few surprises in store for us. First was the Dead Sea.

From cold Petra, we drove to the warm Dead Sea. Where Petra is 810 mt above the sea level, the Dead Sea is 400 mt below the sea level. It is the lowest point on Earth. Despite the dry and harsh surroundings, the land around the Dead Sea is surprisingly fertile. The villages in the area are the supplier of fresh produce such as tomatoes, cucumber, eggplants, melons, bananas, and citrus to the whole of Jordan.

Our hotel was conveniently located on the beach (which has retreated 1.5 km). Catering for wellness tourists it had its own piece of beach where the black mud (supposed to have therapeutic and cosmetic properties) in puddles was absolutely free. I was not a well – sore throat, cold and feeling feverish. Knowing if I didn’t float in the Dead Sea, I will regret it all my life, so I popped in two panadols and jumped in. In fact, you can’t jump in, in order to avoid extremely salty water to get in your mouth or eyes you carefully lie down on your back and let the water support you.

Although it is recommended you don’t stay in the water longer than half an hour, we floated to our heart’s fill and then jumped in the heated pool in the hotel. The Ramada Resort where we stayed had the best food on the whole trip. The whole experience gets my full marks

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The next day we drove to Madaba. Madaba is an easy-going small town known for fine Byzantine mosaics preserved in its Churches and museums. We walked the narrow but beautiful lanes of the inner city to see an impressive sixth-century mosaic map of the Holy Land in the Greek Orthodox church of St George.

The plain exterior of the Church doesn’t prepare you for the beautiful interior. The tiny church gets more than a thousand visitors a day.

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About nine kilometers from Madaba is Mount Nebo, the peak from where Moses finally the Promised Land. The beautiful vantage point has been turned into a memorial park with an old center which is a sacred place not only for Jews but for Muslims and Christians as well. The 394 AD church has gone through very clever renovations to protect the priceless mosaic work on its walls and floor.

It is still a practicing church and we get to witness a beautiful service there during our visit. A group of pilgrimage and their accompanying priest was being blessed by the local priest. All very moving and soul touching.

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From Mount Nebo, we drove to the capital of Jordan.

The first known settlement in Amman was a Neolithic farming town, dating back to nine thousand years.

After Alexander, the Great conquered the region in 332 BC his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus rebuilt the city and named it Philadelphia (which meant the city of brotherly love).

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Amman is populated on seven hills. When you are at a higher point, like the Citadel hill in the center of the city, you see houses and houses all around you.

Citadel Hill has been a focus for human settlement since the Paleolithic age. It is an archeological site as well as the place we city people congregate for the big celebrations. Of the archeological remains, the most impressive are – the Umayyad Palace that dates from the first half of the eighth century and Temple of Hercules from the second century.

Close to Citadel Hill is the Roman theatre. With a capacity of six thousand, it was the centerpiece of Roman Philadelphia and is still used for occasional concerts. One of the wonderful experiences of any Roman theatre is to hear your normal speaking voice echoing when you stand at a specific point on the stage. Move away from that point and there is no echo.

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On our last day in Jordan, most of us were tired and battling either tummy bugs or flu viruses. Half of the group decided to stay behind. Those brave souls, including me, who decided to go to a day full of the outings were duly awarded.

Ajloun Castle, a military outpost built on the command of Salahuddin as a part of a major military tactic to stop the expansion of Crusaders territory in the region and protection of communication routes between Damascus and the south of Jordan was an engineering feast. With walls one meter thick, secret passages and round cannon boulders, it was a true castle. It was built to last. It is no wonder that it is still standing after so many major earthquakes in the region.

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But like a true showman, our tour company kept the best attraction for the last. The well-preserved Roman city of Jerash lay buried in the sand for 1100 years and was accidentally discovered just seventy years ago.

It is said that only half of the city is unearthed so far, the other half is underneath the densely populated area across the road that the Jordanian government will need billions of dollars to buy the land from its current owners. But whatever has been unearthed is majestic. One could spend the whole day and still can’t see all of the public buildings that include two massive temples – The Temple of Zeus and The Temple of Artemis.

This is the last of the travel posts. Thank you for reading and providing your comments, they kept me motivated to keep writing.

From Monday I will be starting a new series, this time on writing.

The story of finding the lost city of Petra is as strange as its conception and ultimate construction.

In the early nineteenth century, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, a Swiss traveler, geographer, and orientalist, disguised as a local overheard a conversation between Bedouins about ancient ruins in a narrow valley near the supposed biblical tomb of Aaron, the brother of Moses. The Bedouins have been living there for centuries but kept the knowledge to themselves for 1200 years.

Johann made up a story that he was a Bedouin himself and wanted to bury his dead father’s remains in Petra as per his wishes. He was allowed to visit the place and in his own words…

An excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller, after having traversed for nearly half an hour such a gloomy and almost subterraneous passage as I have described. The natives call this monument Kaszr Faraoun, or Pharaoh’s castle; and pretend that it was the residence of a prince. But it was rather the sepulchre of a prince, and great must have been the opulence of a city, which could dedicate such monuments to the memory of its rulers…

Wikipedia

He could not remain long at the ruins or take detailed notes due to his fears of being unmasked as a treasure-seeking infidel. Seeing no evidence of the name of the ruins, he could only speculate that they were the ruins of Petra. 

For nine years he kept the knowledge to himself. At age 32, around 1817, realizing that he was dying due to illness, he wrote a paper about his find to let the world know of the lost city.

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The conception of Petra was equally dramatic. Roughly around third century BC, Nabataeans, one amongst several nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed the Arabian Desert, controlled much of the trade routes of the region, amassing large wealth. Having lost their lucrative trade route to Roman’s alternate routes which were quicker and cheaper, in desperation to attract caravan’s they decided to build the city of Petra in the beautiful setting of mountains with more entertainment than the Roman alternative.

There was only one problem. The site they chose was a graveyard. A burial ground with several caves and tombs. So desperate was their need to get the caravans back they masked the tombs by erected facades and carved out gigantic pillars and monuments. Because of the local knowledge about the frequent earthquakes in the region, they carved the caves out of the sandstone mountains which withstand the shocks much better than the man-made structures.

So complete was their knowledge of the desert that they devised techniques for water collection and flash-flood management which are still serving the area. In 1963, twenty-two French tourists and a local guide were killed in the canyons by flash floods because a tunnel that Nabataeans’ dug to carry the water away from the canyons was found blocked with sand.

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One cannot come out of Petra without being marveled at the ingenious imagination of the generations that passed before us. The whole city, which is massive and is dug out of mountains with two simple tools – hammers and chisels.

It took Nabataeans 40 years to build the city, and they managed to get the caravans back to the Spice road but only for a little while. But with the discovery of the monsoon winds caused the shift of trade routes from land to sea. In 106, after the death of the Nabatean king, the entire kingdom passed peacefully into Roman hands.

An earthquake in 363 AD leveled half of Petra. By the time of seventh-century Islamic invasion, Petra was more or less deserted and the earthquake of 749 AD forced the final stragglers to depart the crumbling city.

Around that time Bedouins from the south discovered the deserted city and started moving in the empty caves. They kept it as their secret for 1200 years successful guiding any caravans away from it until it was discovered by Swiss traveler Johann Ludwig Burckhardt.

In 1839, a British artist, David Roberts, did a number of drawings of Petra at that time which is an authentic source of information on the condition of the buildings and the life of Bedouins.

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Another account of Bedouins’ life in caves of Petra was written by Marguerite van Geldermalsen, a NewZealand nurse who visited Petra in 1978 and fell in love with a Bedouins. She married him, lived in the cave with him for seven years and had three children there. She wrote her story and her book is available from her stall inside Petra.

I bought the book from her son Rammi who looks very much like his father.

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Close to Peter is Little Petra, considered as a suburb of Petra. It is believed to be a hideout for the rich travelers who were able to enjoy all the luxuries money can buy, including women and wine (there were many exhibits of wineries and wine houses in the vicinity to prove that claim).

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We spent two days in Petra and barely scratched the surface. We walked up the monastery climbing about 900 stairs and uneven rocks but didn’t have enough time to climb to the High Place of Sacrifice or visit Aaron’s Mountain where Moses’ brother Aaron is believed to be buried. One can easily spend three to four days exploring the mountains which has a lot to offer along with a good dose of history.

Jordan is everything that Egypt was not, plus it has the history, culture, and climate of Egypt. Ignored by the Westerns for a long time, Jordan came to tourist’s map when Petra was listed as the world heritage site in 1980.

More than deserts, camels, and Petra, the tiny country of Jordan has more than its share of biblical references, monuments, ancient churches castles, and geographical wonders. It is by far is the most rewarding destination in the Middle East.

After a very tiring day (3:30 AM start, a long drive through Siani, and two border crossings) we reached Aqaba, Jordan’s only beach town, and our spirits lifted instantly. We had never heard of the place and never expected a half-Western and half-Middle Eastern town. The place was bustling with people. Our hotel was right in the middle of the town which was full of restaurants most with alfresco dining. The spirit of festivities was everywhere. Upmarket shops, friendly people, music, mild weather; it was as if everything was Goldilock’s ‘just right’.

We dumped our luggage in our rooms and went to explore the surrounding on foot. Aqaba is a weekend destination both for the Jordanians (who come for Fridays and Saturdays) and Europeans (who drop by on Saturdays and Sundays). Aqaba’s population swelled from 40,000 to 200,000 in recent years to take advantage of its booming tourism. On top of that, it is a ‘tax-free’ port hence many businesses are moving here.

We didn’t get to spend much time in Aqaba, just enough to recover from two days’ tiredness in a nice hotel and enjoy an excellent dinner of Tikka Chicken and Jordanian eggplant dishes. The next day, we headed for Wadi Rum at a leisurely pace.

At just a two hours drive from Aqaba, Wadi Rum is the most spectacular natural environment in the desert and was the major highlight of our visit to Jordan. The word ‘wadi’ means a valley, and it is a sequence of parallel faults in the south of the Shara mountains.

Come to Wadi Rum and you feel you are on planet Mars. The red sand, the dramatic mountains, and the dry heat. The mountains ( composed of granite, basalt, and sandstone) rising up to 800 meters from the ground. No wonder the movie Martian starring Matt Damon was shot in Wadi Rum. Lawrence of Arabia, Alladin, Mission to Mars and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and many more are also filmed here.

Although arid and open desert the Rum area is far from depopulated. Nabateans and Bedouins (both Arabian nomads) have been living in this area for millennials. This four minutes video about Nabateans is worth watching.

We stayed in a camp in Wadi Rum which looked like a tribal tent from inside. It was surprisingly well-equipped. It had its own bathroom and supply of freshwater which comes from the underground.

Wadi Rum has become the supplier of fresh water to the whole of Jordan since the discovery of an underground sea under the red sand.

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After lunch, we went for desert safari on four-wheel drives, witnessing many prehistoric inscriptions and carvings on rocky caverns, Lawrence Spring and canyon (named after British lieutenant T. E. Lawrance or Lawrance of Arabia) and Mr Trump rockface.

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We climbed a hill to get a panoramic view of the mountains and watched the sunset against the backdrop of camels which came just at the right moment.

Jordan is the part of the land bridge linking Europe, Africa, and Asia and has seen countless armies come and go. Greeks, Roman, Muslims, Christians Crusaders and they all have left evidence of their conquests. There are literally thousands of archeological sites from all periods in every corner of the country.

Amman is the capital and the country is ruled by King Abdullah II (who is said to be a direct descendant of prophet Muhammad from his daughter Fatimah’s side). King Abdullah II has been able to keep pro-Western and pro-Arab policies founded on the bedrock of Muslim authority. Although there is no oil in the country, the economic conditions are much better than the neighboring countries. Women have much more freedom and many of them work. People are soft-spoken and traditions of hospitality are ingrained.

Tomorrow, I will take you to a tour of Petra.

On the sixth day of our journey through Egypt, we reached Ashwan a place where the Nile is wide, languorous and stunningly beautiful flowing gently down from Lake Nassar around dramatic black-granite boulders and palm-studded islands.

In ancient times Ashwan was Egypt’s southernmost frontier, a place of strategic importance to launch military campaigns against Nubia. When the High Dam was constructed on the river Nile, many of the Nubian villages were drowned in the biggest man-made lake created as a result. Many Nubian now live on the islands in the Nile.

We woke up at three-thirty am to make an early start for a three and half hours trip to Abu Simbel Temple, a 3500 years twin temples by Ramses II which were going to drowned in the Lake Nassar as well, but was heroically relocated at a higher ground with the help of UNESCO.

The international campaign to save the remains of Abu Simbel and Nubia between 1964 and 1968 was initiated by UNESCO in cooperation with the Egyptian government at a cost of $ 40 million. Moving the temple by dismantling the parts and statues of the temple and re-installed in its new location at a height of 65 meters above the river level, is one of the greatest works in archaeological engineering.

The twin temples of Abu Simbel temples, a lasting monument to the king Ramses II and his queen Nefertari, were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh.

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It is said that the sunrays on the Holy of Holies in the Temples of Abu Simbel twice every Year 22 February and 22 October. The Sun passes through 200 meters long front corridor of the entrance of Ramses II temple until it reaches the Holy of Holies.

The Holy of Holies is a platform that has the statue of King Ramses the Second sitting next to it the statue of the god Ra Hor his sister and the god Amun and the fourth statue of the god Ptah. Interestingly, the Sun does not perpendicular to the face of the statue of “Ptah” which was considered by the ancient god of darkness. The phenomenon of sun-aging lasts only 20 minutes on that day.

The following map by the Ministry of Antiquities lists 132 archaeological sites in Egypt and most of them are along the Nile. Hardly there is any country in the world that has such a rich inheritance. But the country is suffering from corruption, poverty and tax evasion. All through Cairo and along the Nile we saw building after buildings and thousands of houses which were unfinished so the owners do not have to pay taxes. That not only made the cities look ugly but lead to a lack of funds for the betterment of the country.

We visited another temple, the Temple of Isis on Philae Island which was not so lucky to be saved like the temple of Abu Simbel. It remained under-water for six months each year between 1902 to 1972 after the building of the old Aswan dam before being disassembled, stone by stone and moved to higher ground with the help of UNESCO.

Aswan was the source of Egypt’s finest granite, used to make statues and to embellish temples, pyramids, and obelisks. In the Northern Quarries, just about 1.5 km from the town, is a huge discarded obelisk which would have been the largest of all (42 meters) but was abandoned because of a crack in it.

The unfinished obelisk has given archaeologists valuable insight into how these obelisks were created. The groove on three sides of the already polished and shaped obelisk shows how the exact rock was identified and separated. To separate the base, wood would be inserted and soaked in water for a few days allowing it to expand and separate the obelisk from the rock.

One of the things to do while cruising the Nile is to take a Felucca ride, catch the afternoon breeze, and watch the sunset.

We said goodbye to Aswan and flew to Cairo for our last night in Egypt. The next morning a very early start again. At 4:30 we started an eight-hour journey by bus to Jordan.

One the way, we witness another of Egyptian engineering feat.

One hundred and twelve years after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Egypt constructed an 1164 mt long tunnel under it to connect the Sinai Peninsula to the town of Suez with the help of the Japanese government. The tunnel has two lanes, one in each direction and reaches a maximum depth of 51 mt below ground level.

As soon we crossed the tunnel we were in Sinai, rugged and barren and starkly beautiful where the dry wind blows with such a ferocity that it creates holes in the mountains.

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In Pharaonic times Sinai was responsible for providing turquoise, gold, and copper; but most of us know it for its Biblical reference of the Red Sea parting and Israelites passing through it in search of the promised land.

Only after one has traveled through the land (and stepped out of the air-conditioned bus to actually experience the dry heat and wind) one can begin to appreciate what Moses and his people would have gone through while wandering this land for 40 years. This 30-secs video will give you the feel of the place.

What intrigued me were hundreds of developments by the Red Sea coast which looked deserted or maybe abandoned. There was no soul in sight, not even a car as if everyone had disappeared overnight leaving behind half-finished buildings. The Red Sea is a tourist destination for diving and coral watching but it seems like they have all gone for safer and newer resorts.

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At 3:00 pm we reached Taba and crossed the border after dragging our luggage through two customs controls and passport checks.

To our horror, we were in Israel rather than in Jordan.

Along the Red Sea coast, there is about nine-kilometers stretch that belongs to Israel. Four hours and two more customs controls and passport checks we were finally in Jordan.