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Published: March 1st 2007
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Entrance to Petra
Having walked along the narrow gap in the rocks, this is the first glimpse you get of the wonders of Petra Day 29 (Thursday 22 Feb):
In Damascus I could have taken a train at 8am on the Hedjaz Railway, famously attacked by Lawrence of Arabia, but instead I decided to see some of Damascus. The streets were busy with people, mostly dressed in suits, who often regarded me with curiosity as I passed by, and frequently greeted me with 'Salam'. On advice from a helpful english-speaking girl at the bus station, which I had found by fortunate chance, I sought out the Souk Al Hamidir street market, the main part of which is a long pedestrian road covered by a high arched glass roof; and the adjacent Umauuad Mosque, which is essentially a large square building surrounding a courtyard, one side of which was a rectangular room adorned inside with gilded designs and with a patchwork of traditional carpets completely covering the floor. Running most of the way along the centre of this room, parallel to the long sides, was a row of upright poles supporting a rope. On entering the room , men crossed to the other side of the rope to pray, while women and children remained behind it.
At 3pm I got on a bus headed
Tea with the Bedouin
After our (first) donkey ride we sat and drank tea with the Bedouin for Amman in Jordan (350 Syrian Pounds = 5 Euros) and immediately met another Mohammed, this time an iraqi one, in his early 20s and with perfect american english. What reception sounding like an American gets him back home I don't know, but he doesn't live there anyway as it's too dangerous; he studies medicine in Jordan. At the border with Jordan I got talking to two Swiss girls from our bus, Judith and Sarah who, like me, were headed for Petra. We were delayed by perhaps an hour at the border while Mohammed was interrogated and had his passport taken from him. He was allowed back onto the bus having been told that he would have to collect his passport from the Intelligence Agency in Jordan. He was good humoured about it, but reckoned he was being victimized for no good reason by power-happy border officials.
Soon after entering Jordan we were delayed by a road block while a convoy of some fifteen trucks, each carrying a military tank, made its way onto the road ahead of us from a turning. Mohammed, with his experience of life in Iraq where the movement of military hardware was a frequent site, said that some major military operation was likely to be imminent in the south, i.e. where we were going. We heard of no such thing in the following days though.
At about 8.30, the bus terminated in Amman, the capital of Jordan, and I decided to join Judith and Sarah and press on to Petra that night as they seemed like a good laugh. Mohammed lived in Amman, but before splitting he helped us find a taxi at a good price (a benefit of speaking arabic) as it was too late in the day for any buses to be running to Petra.
40 Dinars later (about 43 Euros) we were in the hands of yet another Mohammed, this one forever to be known as The Incredible Talking Man. In a journey which should have taken no longer than 3 hours, but actually took 4, he talked continually. In his endless spiel was much useful and interesting information, and he was the most kind and helpful person you could have met, but it was so exhausting. I was sitting in the front and, a couple of times when I thought Mohammed had stopped talking, I turned to talk to the girls but, before I could open my mouth, he began to talk again. And the more he talked, the more he seemed to slow the car down so that, while we had been averaging about 80km/h at the start, towards the end we were crawling along at 50km/h. It was as if he didn't want the journey, or his audience, to come to an end, and he was intent on making it last as long as possible. When we finally arrived at Petra at 1 o'clock in the morning he was very helpful in finding us a hotel, but when he departed we felt that we fully knew the meaning of eternity!
Day 30 (Friday 23 Feb):
Despite not getting to bed until around 2pm, we were all up at 6.30 in order to make the most of our day at Petra. One hotel breakfast and a taxi ride later and we were at the entrance to what I imagine must be the country's biggest draw for tourists, and at 21 Dinars to enter (about 23 Euros) our expectations were high.
The ancient site of Petra is approached via a 10-15 minute walk along a tall, steep-sided and winding natural passage through rock. This 3 or 4 metre wide approach ends abruptly and opens out into a canyon running crossways and with the facade of a huge building cut into the rock wall opposite. This initial creation is sculpted into the rock in the form of a building with various columns either side of a large doorway which leads into a large cube-shaped room. As if this was not remarkable enough, this was only the first of several such creations.
You can walk along the canyon for perhaps 3 or 4 kilometres and see similar monumental carved entrances in the rock as you go, some more weathered than others, and you can see evidence of rock dwellings in the rocks around and above you everywhere. There is also an amphitheatre in the canyon which may have been built by the Romans who occupied the site after the time of the Naboteans, who established it probably at least 2000 years ago (though no-one is certain).
At the end of the flat part of the canyon we accepted the offer of three Bedouin men to ride their donkeys up a path leading to a viewpoint, significant for being the site where the Naboteans ritually sacrificed their goats. The Bedouin were very friendly and interesting, although we were glad that we had initially resisted their offer as we rode for 5 Dinars each, rather than the 25 they had originally demanded! At the top we had a 360 degree view of the surrounding mountains and we drank tea with the Bedouin who had made a small fire for the purpose. Tea in the Middle East, by the way, is typically drank very sweet and with no milk.
After this break we returned down to the canyon floor, passing several stalls selling souvenirs such as jewellery and pieces of quartz, and were about to make our way out when a camel handler insisted we take a free ride! These people make their living from offering rides, yet, at the end of the day they still delight in giving tourists rides just for the fun of it!
We met the three Bedouin again in the evening as they had invited us to their house to drink tea. We joined them in a simple concrete building which was little more than a square room with some cushions around the edge of the floor and a television on a stand. Very simple. The water for the tea was boiled outside on coals in something resembling a barbeque. Following this they took us to another part of the Bedouin village to collect the donkeys and generously they took us through Petra again, this time by moonlight and in the night's silence. We thanked them for an experience we never could have planned.
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