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Published: August 19th 2009
Petra - Siq again
Another shot of the Siq, this time as I was leaving, when the lighting was better
(Again, this photo is out of order because TravelBlog doesn't give me a way to put a photo other than the first photo as the title one for the blog. It actually belongs between "Petra - Treasury again, again" and "Petra - High Place of Sacrifice again"Since I’m still way behind with my blogs I thought I’d pump out another one. This one will be short, because I didn’t do much of anything interesting, but I thought my habit of sticking to a blog entry for approximately each week was working out pretty well (except for the previous two entries obviously). So this relates to the period July 20-26.
After the archaeology survey I had planned to head up to Jerash, a well-restored massive Roman city, where retired Jordanian soldiers re-enact chariot races in the amphitheatre, or even up to Umm Qais, another Roman site where on a mountain where you can look out over Syria, the Golan Heights, and Israel. In the end I didn’t do any of this. After Turkey and Amman I’d kind of seen enough Roman ruins for the time being. I pretty much wasted three days doing nothing much in Amman, relaxing in my hotel room, and wandering the streets of down-town Amman. I guess I felt like I needed a break, even though I was starting to run out of time. Anyway, I kind of liked downtown Amman. It’s a big city, but it doesn’t have too much of that
Petra - Siq
Bab Al-Siq, Nabataean tombs from the first century A.D., near the main entrance to Petra. big-city feel and it’s got lots of twisty little alleyways to explore without it being too dirty or too much like a rabbit warren. It’s definitely alive, but the traffic (car and pedestrian) doesn’t seem too frenetic. Of course, I’m writing this from Cairo, so perhaps that’s just how it seems in retrospect!
I should take a step back to the Sunday night when I arrived in Amman, after a busy day packing all our stuff at the end of the archaeology survey, driving back to Amman, etc. The hotel I’d stayed at for a few days four-and-a-half weeks earlier had been a bit divey but more or less clean, with WiFi, big rooms, good breakfast, and it had been cheap. Cheap, that is, by Jordanian standards. Nothing much is cheap in general Asian terms in Jordan. It had a nice roof to look out over one of the seven hills upon which Amman (in Roman times known as “Philadelphia”) is supposedly built (now the city is much larger so it covers lots of hills, just like Rome). It also has the marvelously politically-incorrect Bedouin manager, who last time tried telling me all about how “easy” Jordanian girls are
Petra - Siq
The Treasury from inside the Siq. (even, apparently, ones wearing the
burqa), or how he’d never date a Nigerian because they are “black” (Bedouin aren’t like Nigerians but neither could they pass for Scandinavians!)
This Bedouin manager, who’d been there four-and-a-half weeks previously, was Western-educated, spoke perfect English, and apparently French, and I think a few other languages, not to mention Arabic of course. There’d been some nervous-looking guy there, doing some of the cleaning and general odd jobs, whom the Bedouin told us was homeless and destitute so they were letting him work for his board.
Anyway, when I turned up, after the Bedouin guy, or his mate with whom he took turns to always be in the foyer, were nowhere to be seen. Instead the nervous-looking guy was there, but he spoke not a word of English, which was a bit strange since the hotel caters for foreigners. After a bit of frustration (couldn’t he guess I was after a room, if I turn up at a hotel at night with all my luggage?) he signaled “wait”, and ran off upstairs. A minute later he was back with a British guy.
“Ah, what do you need?” he asked me
“Oh, hello, I
was just wondering if you had a room for the night”.
He turned to the nervous-looking Jordanian. “UMM HE WANTS TO CHECK IN”
“uh yes” I said “I can speak English myself” (in case he hadn’t noticed?) “Do you speak Arabic?”
“no”
“Do you work here?”
“No … I don’t know what’s going on, he just ran up to get me”.
It turned out that the manager had some family get-together (his brother receiving his PhD) and had gone off and left the nervous-looking guy in charge. He tried phoning him but couldn’t get through. Another tourist came down; apparently he was staying in the dorm and he was the only one there so he suggested I could crash there, but I’d had enough and decided to find somewhere better, which I did quite easily. Before I left I chatted to them for a few minutes. The Brit had just arrived in from Iraq, which he’d found very friendly and safe and quite easy to get around in. This was because he’d been in Northern, Kurdish, Iraq, which has been safe for some time. It’s also a different visa regime as you can get visa on arrival at the
Petra - Siq
The Siq near the beginning. The channels for some of the sophisticated water systems used to sustain the large populations is still visible on the left. border, whereas a visa for the rest of Iraq, if you were stupid enough to go there, would be a lot harder. So there you go, Iraq could be the next big tourist destination. What’s left of it anyway.
So after a few days hanging around in Amman I took the bus down to Jordan. The thing I’m learning with bus trips in general, is that you can never tell when they will be local busses or when they’ll be full of tourists. You can book a bus from a hotel, to a touristy destination, and find it full of locals, or you can go to a train station and buy a ticket and find it half-full of tourists. Going to Petra, I’d have thought this bus would be full of tourists, but no, it turned out to be a mini-bus crammed full of locals. I had to nurse my backpack on the floor of the aisle, with people stepping over it when they wanted to get off. No-one seemed to speak English either, which I found strange after pretty much only meeting Jordanians who spoke good English. So I arrived back at Wadi Musa town, for
Petra - Siq
A donkey-drawn cart carries tourists down the Siq from ner the etrance to Petra. the third time. Since tickets for Petra are reasonably pricey, and you pay by the day, I decided not to waste money by going the first day, and allowed two full days for it.
Petra is perhaps most famous for two lines out of the 350-line poem by the 19th-century English cleric John Burgon, who had never seen Petra. If he had, he might have described it as “a grayish-brown city about two thousand years old” which might not have made him so famous. As it is, every little touristy shop seems to either have something about “red-rose city” or something about Indiana Jones (who discovered the Holy Grail there in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade).
Petra was the capital of the ancient Nabataean civilization, with much of the city, of course, carved out of the sandstone bedrock. According to a sign at the site, the city was built between the 2nd century BC and the 5th century AD by the Nabataeans and Romans, but survived well into Byzantine times. It was an important centre on the spice route, according to the sign again, “serving as a crossroad between Arabia, Egypt, Palestine, Syria-Phoenicia, India, China and the
Petra - Siq
Tourists walking along the Siq, near the Treasury end. Mediterranean Basin”. In modern times it was rediscovered in 1812 by the intrepid Swiss explorer Jean Louis Burckhardt who explored much of the Middle East and Northern Africa which was off-limits to white men after his conversion to Islam (he was one of the first Europeans to visit Mecca), before dying at the age of 33. After having been an increasingly popular destination for intrepid Europeans for about a century, Petra became a World Heritage site in 1985 as tourist access became easier, and in 2007 was announced as one of the “New 7 Wonders of the World”. This well-publicised but rather dodgy publicity contest saw about twice the number of SMS votes cast from within Jordan as there are mobile phones in Jordan. However it provided a massive boost to tourism (62% according to the Seven Wonders webpage, I think I saw a figure of “over 50%” in a Jordanian newspaper) which just goes to show that people will go to see anything if it has a good enough tagline. A campaign to have the Dead Sea recognized as one of the New 7 Wonders of the Natural World was thwarted because the rules require multi-nation wonders to be
supported by all of the nations involved, and while Jordan and Palestine were supportive, Israel refused to play ball. Which is probably a good thing, unless you consider salinity an exceptionally wonderful quality.
Anyway, so that’s Petra. Today, like all famous tourist sites, it’s full of touts. Here these are all the local Bedouin, who all speak English, at least enough to try to sell you trinkets or horse or camel rides. There were kids running around everywhere, but they all assured me that this is because school was out for the summer, and that during the year they go to school, which is good, and unlike other places I’ve been like Angkor Watt, where poor parents quickly work out that their kids make more money begging than they do going to school. Most are happy to offer you a glass of
chai even if you’re not going to buy anything and to chat for a while. The really persistent ones are the ones selling donkey and camel rides. They all look very different from the Bedouin we knew at Wadi Araba (they’re a different tribe) all trying to look cool, like a western stereotype of what a Bedouin
Petra - Treasury
One of the columns on the Treasury. should look like, with long hair or kaftans and inappropriate T-shirts.
So I took two days to see Petra. I didn’t go as hard as I could have, and didn’t get all the way out to Aaron’s tomb, but saw most of the rest of it. You could see most of the famous parts of it in one day, although everyone seems to say you need two days. The problem with doing it in two days is you have to walk back along the Siq a 1200-metre kind of gorge caused by tectonic forces splitting the rock apart, and widened in some places by the Nabataeans and paved in modern times, presumably for the benefit fo the donkey carts that ferry tourists back and forth along it. I climbed up to the High Place of Sacrifice on the first day and clambered down the long way, which isn’t too strenuous if you don’t twist your knee. It was however a bit tricky to find a way down the last bit and I thought I was going to have to climb all the way back up again. A group of British guys turned up and we were able to find
Petra - Tomb 67
A not terribly great photo of Tomb 67, with, unusually, a small cave at the top where workers' tools were probably stored (the ground dips down just in front of the tourists). a way down together. This took us into the back of the amphitheatre, which was a bit strange since the Amphitheatre itself is kind of fenced off, from the front, but nobody seemed to mind. In fact, there’s very little in the way of fences, “keep out” signs, etc., although on the way up to Aaron’s tomb there is a sign saying that walking along in the remote areas past the point of the sign is dangerous. The Amphitheatre was mostly carved out of the rock, and looks very much like a Roman amphitheatre but apparently pre-dates Roman occupation of the area.
On the way up to the Monastery (an hour-long strenuous walk up rocky steps which many people seem to do on donkeys - I didn’t know Donkeys were so sure-footed, and if I were going to try it, with a 100+ metre drop on the side, without any barrier, I’d want to know exactly how sure-footed they are) a Bedouin man stopped me trying to get me to change Shekels into Dinars. I literally had no idea whatsoever what the exchange rate would be and told him so, suggesting that he go into town and change it
Petra - Tomb
Another tomb on the Street of Facades. at a moneychanger. He used this to begin talking about how much he disliked Israelis. He reckoned that this was because he used to hang around Aaron’s tomb, and lots of Israeli tourists would try to camp there which was not allowed, and that they’d make an awful mess. I pointed out that the Bedouin were making a mess themselves, and no-one likes to look into some of the old caves that had probably been houses in Nabataean times and see/smell that it was basically a giant toilet. He tried to blame this on tourists, which I find unlikely, since most tourists would use the toilets a few hundred metres further along at the cafes.
Other than the Treasury, which rises impressively over a clearing at the end of the Siq just like in the Indiana Jones film, most of the impressive buildings are massive tombs. The Treasury has in front of it a small area that’s been excavated down, at a guess, maybe 10 metres, with a metal grill over the top, so it just makes it more impressive when you realize that the area where you’re standing isn’t anywhere near where the ground used to be.
Petra - Tomb 825?
Restoration work being carried out by the German Technical Cooperation Agency and the Jordanian Department of Antiquities (possibly Tomb 825?) On the second day I climbed up to the High Place of Sacrifice again. I was trying to find the place where you can get a nice view over the Treasury, sitting on the ledge near the Siq with the Treasury below and in front of you. But I couldn’t find it. To the East of the High Place of Sacrifice the area sort of opens up into a large plateau, which gives a nice view over the whole Petra area, and leading back to the mountains we’d hiked across a few weeks earlier. A Bedouin lady was riding a donkey slowly off into the distance. I walked around for a while. At one spot, hundreds of metres away, across a large ravine, a small kid (it was so far away it was hard to tell but she looked like a young girl) was walking alone along the edge of a small ledge no wider than she was tall. At one point she stopped and looked right over the edge, then began throwing stones off the edge. It was a bit scary to watch, but I guess that’s how they all get to be so sure-footed, natural selection at
Petra - ?
Somewhere at Petra. Not quite sure where this was. work!
So after two or three days in Petra I took the bus down to Aqaba, which was beginning to feel like home, as it was the third or fourth time I’d been there. Aqaba is very different from Wadi Musa (Petra), not only because (at last in Summer) it’s incredibly hot (the forecasts in the newspapers were always 5-10 C hotter than for Amman, always in the high 30s or into the 40s), but because it’s not really set up for backpackers, and looks a lot more affluent. The only touts you get are the taxi drivers at the bus stop. I walked across to the hotel I’d stayed at in previous times. It wasn’t too great but it was cheap and it had two movie channels in English on its tiny TV, and an aircon that actually worked. (Unlike in SE Asia, none of the TVs here seem to have BBC or CNN or Al Jazera English channel, I don’t know why). Anyway, when I got there I rang the bell and waited for about half an hour but there were no staff around. It was still morning and nothing in Aqaba opens before about noon or
Petra - High Place of Sacrifice
Looking down over the Street of Facades towards from up near the High Place of Sacrifice towards the Great Temple even later, because the day is just too hot to do anything. So I went around the corner and got a room in another hotel, which turned out to have air-con that pretty much worked once you worked out the complicated procedure for turning it on, no movie channels on TV in English but free Hustler channel, in no particular language. I don’t know why.
I then spent a few hours in a queue at the Egyptian embassy to get my visa for the next day. You can get visa on arrival at Egypt but I rightly guessed that things would be a bit chaotic there, so I thought it might work out better to get it in advance. The embassy was small and fairly decrepit but the process was easy enough. They actually put little stamps, like postage stamps, into my passport, which seems to be the done thing in some Middle East countries but is the first time I’d seen it. But it was no real hassle to get a 30-day tourist visa, which was a nice change with all the other countries I’ve had visa problems with.
So the next day is a new country,
and I've just accounted for most of that week, so this is a good place to stop writing, since my laptop battery is about to go flat anyway (now, three weeks later, I’m writing this on a train in Switzerland, on the way to Berne to try to get my Indian tourist visa).
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