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Desert Tales Hmmm, highlights include being offered a Bedouin wife, meeting a Syrian actress who said she loved me, and having the strange experience of being in a cafe eating dinner and having one of the local chaps bound up to me and kiss me on the cheek. A traditional Arab greeting but nonetheless a surprise. Was the most stubbly kiss I have ever had to endure I can assure you. Another funny incident included beating a local chap at chess, they do not like being beaten these Arabs you know, I thought he was going to go for me. I also managed to break one of the local's cars. I have never driven a left-hand drive before (changing gears with the right hand, v.tricky) and also never driven off road before and therefore I was quite surprised when the driver of the car I was in asked me to have a go. Well needless to say I broke the car. It took all his mates to come out and fix it and we were sort of stuck out in the desert but luckily the chap's friends got it sorted. Of course as soon as we got going he insisted that I continue to drive it! Do these people never learn? Luckily we did get home OK. Saw a lot in the time I had. Went to Amman, the capital which was the ancient capital of the Ammonites in the old testament and is where King David bedded Bathsheeba and killed her husband and was then was visited by the Angel of God who said God took a dim view of that sort of thing. Amman was also prominent in the Hellenic era as when Alexander the Great died he parcelled up the empire and gave the Jordan region to his general Philadelphius with the capital Amman being re-christened Philadelphia (from where the US city takes its name). 100 years ago Amman was a tiny settlement but now it is a large sprawling city swelled significantly by Palestinian immigration in 48 and 67. From Amman I took a trip out to see the old ruins of Jerash a Roman city, also known as the cityof a thousand columns because it has quite a few Roman columns, in case one could not guess. Went to Petra, which is amazing. Petra is an ancient city carved out of the desert rocks. It was the Capital of the Nabateans from about the 6th century BC till the 1st century AD when it was eclipsed by the Roman Empire. The city survived through to the 7th century and the Islamic invasions but slid into myth by the end of the first millennia, inhabited by Bedouins. It was rediscovered in the early 19th century by a Swiss explorer. In many ways the story and the place is similar to Angkor Wat in Cambodia. I loved Petra. I got there at 6.30am and left the site at 8.00pm. I just spent all day running round the site despite the 115F/45C temperatures. It was there that I met the Bedouins who invited me in for a cup of tea and asked if I needed a wife. Match me a marvel, save in Eastern clime A rose red city, half as old as time. Then after Petra I went on a tour/trek through the desert of Wadi Rum. This was where Lawrence of Arabia did his thang and his autobiography called 7 pillars of wisdom, takes its name form a rock formation in the desert. I joined a group for the tour and we all slept out under the desert stars. One thing I found was it gets bloody cold in the desert at night. I had two blankets on and was still freezing. Another thing was that on the trek were two French, two Spanish and two Poles. The big joke on the trip was that every time we had tea, which was often, the chap would have to brew two pots of tea. One huge one with about 2 pounds/1 kilo of sugar in it and one manky little one without sugar, henceforth known as the Englishman's tea. Well tea is just too important for compromises, even in the desert. I know colonel Lawrence would have approved. Finished off the trip with a trip via the scenic kings highway to Amman, visited a couple of crusader castles and had a dip in the dead sea. The dead sea is extra-ordinary, the floating sensation is incredible. I could hold on to a large rock in each hand and just lie on the surface of the sea. One problem though was that after clambering over the rocks at Petra and the desert I had all these cuts and grazes (actually I sustained my worst injury in a taxi but that is another story) and they just screamed in the salt water. Just take an open wound and stick it in a bowl of salt and see how it feels! Anyway there was just time on my last night in Amman for me and three French people to get virtually abducted by an unbelievably friendly local. He took us on a mystery tour of Amman up to cafes he knew where we smoked Shisha(the hubbly bubbly pipe) and drank tea. Spent my last night in Amman in a place where one French guidebook said was only for those on very low budgets and in possession of high moral stamina. It certainly was a lovely gaff but luckily it was only for the last night. It was the sort of hotel where one required only a cursary glance at the pillows and sheets to know one did not want to examine them any further for fear of finding unknown lifeforms. So that was most of it, hopefully the photos will come out OK. Of course I recommend to everyone that on the first day of a holiday all alone in a foreign country it is pre-requisite to lose your only guide-book. Really a holiday is so much more fun when you only have a hazy idea of what to do from one day to the next. All that and I was only ill for one day, and yes I was rather ill! |
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Lawrence pose In the Wadi Rum |
| In the Deep Desert Just chilling on da rocks man |
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Ooh crikey Bet you are wondering how I got up there |
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Desert in the gloaming Sunset in the desert, pretty la |
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Petra the rose red city old as time Lots of these buildings all over the site |
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View of the Treasury from the Sikh This is the first view of Petra one gets coming through the famous Sikh. Most tourists do not get far beyond this point. It was immortalised in the Indiana Jones Last Crusade film. |
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Jerash city of a thousand columns The oval forum at Jerash |
