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Having finally escaped the leaden clutches of Egyptian Customs, we joined the queue to get on the ferry. Enter Ali, a Jordanian truck driver we got chatting to, who was taking Egyptian spuds to McDonalds in Jordan – “Egyptians dirty and stupid – the women are the most beautiful in the world but only for fuck1ng”.
On the 4 or 5 hour ferry crossing to Jordan, we got talking again to the French couple we’d met the night before in the Soft Beach campsite in Nuweiba, who’d been all around India and central Asia on their tandem, plus Baptiste Marmier – a Swiss chap in a Kenyan-reg Peugeot 504. He had been working on some sort of VSO-like medical project in Kenya and was driving back to Switzerland at the end. He’d crossed Sudan and had been stopped at the Egyptian border because – wait for it – his Kenyan Carnet didn’t cover Egypt. After 10 or so days in bureaucratic limbo, he eventually managed to negotiate with Egyptian Customs that if he was able to get a letter of no objection from the Kenyan AA, they would let him in. A quick hunt on the internet turned up the logo and address of the Kenyan AA. He then constructed a fake letter of no objection from the Kenyan AA, complete with their letterhead, and emailed it to his girlfriend, who was luckily still in Kenya. She printed it out and faxed it to the Egyptians at the Sudan border, who could see that it came from a Kenyan number. It worked!
Ali and his truck driver friends all did trips once a month to supply provisions to Occupation – sorry, Coalition – forces in Iraq. For this, they got paid $6000 a time, with the promise that the US Army would buy them another truck if any righteously-indignant insurgent fired a rocket at it. Gave me his phone no, and I am sure we’d have had a good time if we had been able to hook up with him in Zarqa, his home town near Amman. Odd how the no didn’t work even though I repeated it back to him, as I always do with phone nos.
First stop in Jordan was Aqaba – not surprising, for this was where the ferry docked! Getting into Jordan was, like most countries, easier than Egypt, but odd that such a relatively switched-on Arab country didn’t have ATMs at the border crossing. Threw ourselves at the mercy of the tourist police hoping he’d shepherd us through the formalities a la Egypt, but not so, beyond allowing us to get a taxi into Aqaba to get cash. Wanted to conserve our then-precious USD travellers’ cheques and cash, but in truth it would probably have been more economic to just take a hit and use them instead of paying for the taxi.
Later that evening, while ambling along the seafront, I was distracted by the absolutely huge flag of Jordan, playing lazily in the breeze atop its Eiffel Tower-sized pole. While gazing up at this, my leg – and half of I – dropped down a hole, formed where a number of prefab concrete slabs had met. In the day, I would have seen it but in the dark the shadow from the nearby streetlights cast a shadow over it, rendering it invisible. Bloody painful, with scratches down my leg to accompany the twisted knee. The hotel, near the waterfront, that had looked so (reasonably) respectable when we had taken a room in it by day, turned out to be in a red-light district. Yes, I know – unusual to see it so blatantly on show in an Arab country.
The next morning, before leaving for our fast run to the Syrian border to enquire re getting a visa for there, we had breakfast as one does. In the restaurant, we were much amused to hear a child in a family on an adjacent table fart and then to see the burqa-clad mother start belting it.
Straight to Syrian border to enquire about getting a visa for Syria – it only took 4 hours to get across Jordan. We had been told by the Syrian Embassy in Cairo, where we had passed through on our way here, that we wouldn’t be able to get a visa at the border and that we should have applied for one in London. This, as you can imagine, worried us a lot – so much so that this was why we drove straight to the border to ask as soon as we entered Jordan, the reasoning being that if they did refuse us we then had 2 weeks to do a little side-trip back to the UK and apply from the Syrian Embassy in London.
We didn’t need to worry. They sent a fax off to Damascus, then 20 mins later the answer came back that when we chose to enter Syria, we could have a 15 day transit visa – which isn’t any different to a tourist one from what we could work out. 2 weeks later we duly entered Syria and it was all OK.
While we were up there, we thought we might as well stop by Jerash
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| Jordan – Jerash |
After that, Amman, the Jordanian capital. Jordan in some ways feels like the Ealing of the Middle East and this reaches its zenith in Amman – a pleasant, liveable but not outstanding place, without that much in the way of specific attractions. Amman was also a nightmare to get around, with higgledy-piggledy street layouts and fuck1ng one-way systems galore.
I remember also there were 2 very good fresh juice bars. They were right next to each other, just across the street from the hotel and would clamour loudly for our business as we approached. Ever the diplomats, we ended up alternating each time we went there!
The Blue Fig café is recommended in the Lonely Planet and so, sheep-like, we ended up going there. And it was in this way that I encountered the first amazing coincidence of the trip. For those of you reading this who don’t know me, I used to go out with an Indian nurse called Alphonsa (Alfie). When we split up at the end of 2003, she had just got a new job as an oncology sister at the Royal Free hospital in London. All taxis in Amman (some are even Subaru Imprezas!) are beige-coloured and so we flagged one down at random, agreed the price with the driver and off we went. So far so good. The driver – who we soon found out was named Ali Labadi – asked where we were from and replied “ah, my brother works in London”. ‘Yeah yeah yeah’, I thought – they all say that.
“So what does your brother do, then?” I asked.
“He works in oncology at the Royal Free Hospital.” Jesus! Turned out that Ali’s brother was only Alfie’s line manager! What an absolutely amazing coincidence.
Another worthwhile way to use a spare day in Amman is to do a desert cities tour. The old buildings in the desert (mostly caravanserais) were all taken on this, and it is nice to let someone else do the driving every so often. The tour we did was arranged by the Palace Hotel we stayed at – www.palacehotel.com.jo tel (if it still works) + 962 6 4624327. No complaints about the hotel.
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| Jordan – Amman and around |
Being such a compact country, a little like getting around Tunisia only even more so, everything is close together. And so it wasn’t that far at all from Amman to the Dead Sea. Everything you’ve read or heard about the Dead Sea is true, with quasi-oily swirling patterns in the water when you agitate it and extreme pain if the water gets into any skin lesion, no matter how tiny. But don’t do what we did, which was to penny-pinch and enter it from a public beach rather than a private one, with resultant staring at Amanda by locals, excrutiating pain while picking one’s way over the sharp and painful rocks to the faraway fresh water spring to shower the salty residue off.
After the Dead Sea, up up up into the mountains (well, hills) past Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve which looked lovely from the book, and quite a professionally-presented operation easily the equal of anything the National Trust would do. It is good to see the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) taking its role seriously, but the PRICES! Am afraid we didn’t go in.
Between Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve and Karak was Jordan’s answer to the Grand Canyon – also called Wadi Mujib. It is 1KM deep and 4KM across – and we traversed it!
Karak Castle the next morning was impressive, with sweeping views all the way to the Dead Sea. While exploring the basement of the castle, in one of the chambers, we noticed some dead and dying fledglings on the ground. In the roof above there was a bird’s nest and we were treated to the sad sight of mother-bird, who had just come back with a worm for her fledglings, tilting her head from one side to the other and wondering what the hell had happened while a nearby cat looked on smugly, causing us to put 2 and 2 together. We also met an Italian aid worker who was based in northern Iraq and who almost convinced us it was OK to go there.
Between Karak and Petra is another highly-renowned castle, named Shobak. It was closed when we passed by, but think we were pretty castled-out after Karak in any case.
Photos of Dead Sea to Petra via Wadi Mujib and Karak Castle
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| Jordan – Dead Sea, Karak Castle and around |
Petra is about as off the beaten track in Jordan as the Empire State is in New York, but we followed the herd regardless. It lived up to expectations, with its temples and tombs carved from the marble effect sandstone.
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| Petra |
Hear the echoes
It was bloody hot that day at Petra, and we’d followed the Siq into it, but had taken one of the unmapped dry wadis off to the right of the Siq for a bit of exploration. Got nicely lost, then came out again somewhere else well inside the area. Spent the whole day exploring, but didn’t drink any water after finishing the small bottle I’d brought in as I wasn’t prepared to pay the ripoff tourist prices. So I got thirstier and thirstier and well remember practically running towards the shop in the carpark at the entrance at the end of the day to get a 2 litre bottle of chilled water, which I gulped down in 1 go without even stopping for breath. But the delicious sensation of this almost made the wait worthwhile!
After Petra, back to Wadi Rum National Park, which had mutely beckoned to us via the signs at the side of the Desert Highway on our way north to check out the Syria visa issue. It would have been more impressive if we had not already seen the Acacus in Libya, but nevertheless I still thought it was awesome, with soaring cliffs and sandstone rock formations. The park is largely staffed, if not run, by local ie Bedouin people and in RumVillage I was stuck by how cheap the fruit and veg were…..normally places in tourist areas like that take advantage.
There was also something very romantic about the idea of being able to get there by train – which you can. To be honest, bearing in mind the hassle and cost of getting to Libya as well as the travelling time down to the south I would argue that Wadi Rum, with scenery perhaps 75% as impressive as Libya, if one wants to put an arbitrary figure on it, but about a third of the logistical issues, represents a bigger bang for the buck. Although Wadi Rum doesn’t have quite the colours as Libya – the colours of the scenery in the Libyan desert really are just as vivid as they look on the photos – it’s not an illusion!
Bait Ali, the campsite we stayed at was also lovely – we turned off the main Aqaba-Amman highway and followed the road to Wadi Rum (it ran parallel, and to the south of, the railway track). Just beyond the first station, and near the (south-facing) turnoff to Wadi Rum, is the campsite to the north of the road. It’s run by an English woman and her Jordanian husband. Because I’m so nice (and as they were too), I’ll even insert their contact details and a little map from their business card:-
They told me about the area to the north of the campsite and the road – it looks, they said, just like Wadi Rum but isn’t encircled by the National Park boundary. Having driven around both this area and the Wadi Rum National Park itself, I can vouch for this – well worth a visit. The Wadi Rum South pictures are of this area, although judging by what the woman at Bait Ali said was planned, it may now be within the National Park boundary.
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| Jordan – Wadi Rum and Dana Nature Reserve |
By the end of going around Wadi Rum, we were glad we’d paid to ride in someone else’s vehicle rather than our own!
The day we left Wadi Rum (quite late), we got someway north of there and then decided to stop for the night in a fairly large, but untouristed, city named Ma’an. We’d stopped for directions from an old man who recommended a few hotels/guesthouses, one of which was run by Egyptians and said ‘don’t stay there’ – to humour him I dutifully went “eergh!” god, the Egyptians are so disliked across the middle East! Ironically, this was the one we did stay at and it was cheap, but we were still in 1 piece the next day. What we saw in the street near this place looks like a Taliban street battle, but it was just a wedding celebration!
The next morning, having decided to try for a quick trip to Israel, we headed back north via Dana Nature Reserve. Again, didn’t go in thanks to the RSCN’s pricing, but spent a pretty pleasant day mooching around there. I remember we’d parked the car to go for a walk to the top of the valley (as can be seen from the pictures) and then when we tried to get out of the narrow, dead-end road, found our path blocked by an avalanche of vehicles, all parking up en masse and completely blocking the road. This turned out to be a funeral, of a man of just 38 who’d had a heart attack sitting in his car outside the local hospital.
Later that afternoon, drove to a different spot on the top of the valley and again parked up. I wasn’t 100% sure if we were actually inside the Nature Reserve boundary or not, and a man came over to us in the car park. Thought he was going to tell us off for being in the reserve without a permit, but he just wanted to invite us for tea with his family, who turned out to be sitting around a lovely picnic at the other side of his car!
Drove off the road and found a secluded spot in the bush to camp out there that night, and were struck by how naked we felt, listening for footsteps and engine noises. How Martin Pittwood managed it so often I do not know, although he was travelling in a group. At least the sound of an approaching tractor the following morning acted as a good alarm clock, getting us up bright and early to get to Allenby Bridge.
Not long before leaving Jordan we took a side trip for 2 days from Jordan to Jerusalem (naughty). This we did by parking the car at Allenby Bridge and then taking a minibus to Jerusalem, making sure to get the Jordanians to put our exit stamp on a separate piece of paper and the Israelis to do the same with our entry stamps, then repeating the process in reverse on the way back. Which the Israelis did, but not without much umming and ahhing. Hypocrites – they asked me enough questions when they found out we’d been to Libya (and me to Iran)! And I’m sure I’ve read somewhere they won’t let you in at all if you’ve got a Syrian passport stamp.
And here’s Jerusalem – all we had time to see in the 2 days
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| Israel – Jerusalem |
These are general scenes of worship at the Wailing Wall.
Amanda felt awkward about going to Israel for the sake of the Palestinians and, although this bothered me more than her because I take the ‘where do you draw the line?’ and the ‘in that case you should also feel bad about holding a British passport’ points of view, can see her point.
To be honest I wish we hadn’t bothered – partly because it was just 2 days and because it felt a little like apartheid South Africa – the whites living it up in safe areas while the natives languished far away and out of sight. We’d got chatting to a British Palestinian aid worker while waiting at Israeli immigration and this brought it home a little. It was good to see the Vad Yashem, to climb over a fence to put a stone on the grave of Oskar Schindler, to climb up the Mount of Olives, to see the Wailing Wall and the Dome Of The Rock but in truth the main reason I, for I was the main instigator, did it was for the satisfaction of bucking the system. If there wasn’t that rule about not being let into Arab countries with an Israeli passport stamp, a lot of my interest would have vanished. After returning to Jordan, but before entering Syria, we made sure to get rid of all Israeli coins, ATM slips, museum tickets, sweet wrappers etc etc. There’d been a story on the internet about a westerner who’d been to Israel but avoided the dreaded passport stamp getting deported from Syria when the police had stopped him for something unrelated and discovered an Israeli cinema ticket or something in his wallet.
Can’t think why the hell Arab countries get so upset about this anyway. They don’t bar diplomats or government officials from entry if they’ve already been to Israel, and governments bear a lot more responsibility for the Middle East’s problems than tourists do. Moreover, Arab countries ought to look at how THEY treat the Palestinians living within their own borders. It might have been understandable to put them in refugee camps straight after 1967, but still keeping them in those same camps 40 years later, with 2nd and 3rd generation offspring being born and yet still treated as refugees, who are not supposed to stay and aren’t entitled to citizenship of the host countries, is little better than being in Gaza or the West Bank.
After coming back from the Holy Land via Allenby Bridge, spent the evening in Madaba which is just outside Amman. Can’t remember that much about it except that it felt quite pleasant to stroll around, with good, cheap hotels and restaurants. A sort of Dulwich Village-y kind of place, in its bijou, upmarket feel – although still relatively cheap by Western standards.
And then Amman for one last day to collect the shocks and hook up one more time with Ali Labadi. All the time we were in Jordan, we had been driving around in a car with no shock absorbers – hence my emails to people at the time headed ‘Bouncing Around Jordan’. Getting hold of the replacement shocks under warranty proved to be interesting……the manufacturers in Australia were good about chasing around to get their nearest distributor to Jordan to send them to me. They found someone in Dubai but the shipping cost via DHL from Dubai to Jordan was more than the cost to send them from Australia to me (!) Apparently this is a Middle East thing. Anyway, they lined up a cheaper courier but still I was looking at the thick end of US$ 200, plus the duty slapped on them by Jordanian Customs. When the old shocks were taken off the vehicle and laid on their sides, the remaining oil leaked out. I was mystified as to what I did to them as I’d done about 15000 kms on them, of which less than 1000 kms was on bumpy/corrugated roads in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, and they had been fine through all of this. Yet they suddenly all failed at once after 5 kms of going just a little bit faster than normal on a bumpy road (we were in a hurry to reach a place before sunset) they all leak. Weird, but a salutary lesson was learned ie keep the speed down on a bumpy road. The shocks cost a princely 144 Jordanian for shipping plus another 15 for customs duty – I was able to use a friend of a friend for the clearing formalities, which I have to say were horrendous – 2 hours and 17 booths. Come back Egyptian customs – all is forgiven!
Ali proved to be good company when we met him again for a coffee. He works in IT by day, and drives his car as a taxi at night to make ££. Touching story about how he met his wife – it was online! She lived in the Occupied Territories, and through her work had to approach Ali’s company for some sort of technical support. They corresponded first about the computer issue, but then once that was sorted out obviously they found they had other things in common and the rest, as they say, was history. They have periodical differences of opinion – not arguments – but it was also sweet listening to how he communicates with her. They each have their say, then retreat to their respective dens to reflect, then later on it’s OK again.
Also funny to hear about his honeymoon, which came up when we happened to mention how Egyptian people seem to get a bad press all other the Middle East. They’d gone to Cairo and had rented a flat in a block. The security guard at the entrance wouldn’t let them in because he didn’t recognise them, and even when they showed him the rental agreement/receipt he wouldn’t budge. They suggested he call the owner of the flat to check, but he wouldn’t do this either. So they called the police – after all, they were looking down the barrel of being on the street without a place to stay for the night in a foreign country – who turned up and sorted it out, also giving the guard a good kicking to teach him the error of his ways in disrespecting the foreign guest!!
Was glad to have seen Jordan. Straightforward and a lot you can do in a short time thanks to its compact size. A good place for a 1 or 2-week holiday.
