Blogs from West, Jordan, Middle East - page 2

today we left madaba and headed down the kings highway first stop was herods palace the fortress of mukawir where it is supposed herod beheaded John the baptist this palace was built similar to masada on to of a steep hill though not as steep or as high it only took us about 30 mins to walk up and even Esthers mum made it up, from the top we had a 360 degree view impossible to capture on film today was much clearer than yesterday and we could see Jerusalem in the distance. from here we drove parallel to the east coast of the dead sea stopping wherever there was a view through to the dead sea between the mountains, one of these was the wadi al mujib and we stopped overlooking the al mujib dam ... read more

After breakfast there was really nothing more to hang around for so it was time to move on. At the end of the 1km dirt track from the Bedouin camp is a 'B' road. We asked one of our hosts the best way to get back on to the Desert Highway. Do we go back the way we came or continue on this minor road? The answer we were given was to continue on the road for about 20 minutes and we will join a main road that will take us to the Desert Highway. We looked in the direction that the Bedouin was pointing and all we could see was a range of mountains!! We didn't try to ask what the terrain was like. ‘OK' and ‘not bad'seem to have different connotations in Arabic. As ... read more

Madaba lies approximately one hour from Amman and is most famous for its mosaics. You might have heard of the 6th century Madaba Map which is a large mosaic in the Byzantine Church of Saint George displaying the holy land. But this is not the reason why I have convinced my boyfriend to stop in Madaba for a few days. On the contrary I am more into softer fabrics and after discovering that Madaba is also a carpet city I have become dead-set on finding myself a magic carpet. I have grown up in a house with oriental rugs and I love the earthy tones of such carpets. In my stepfathers summerhouse there used to be a particular massive kelim carpet which was all eroded from decades of use. I love it. To me it is ... read more

Geo: 31.7195, 35.7941In addition to being windproof, our tent was also exceedingly dark. Before the sun rose, I heard what sounded like a persistent hum. While it sounded like rain, I was convinced it couldn't be, given where we were. I went out to the necessary a little after 7:00am, and while the sun was now up, I could clearly see in the sand the distinct impressions of rain drops. I later confirmed that there had indeed been rain showers earlier that morning. While there were rudimentary toilets (and showers...no one partook), there was no way to really get clean after the previous day's activities, but we resigned ourselves to this fate and simply got up and washed as best we could. Whatever electricity there had been the day before was exhausted from the solar generator, ... read more

I had a good sleep after the day at Petra, so we went down early for breakfast at the El-Rashid Hotel. Again, this is budget, so the breakfast was very limited, but was not bad. I think they may make you an omelette upon request, but we just had bread and labneh, with tea/coffee. Then we took off. We decided to head down the road less travelled and made our way towards Little Petra. Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn somewhere because the signs were not very forthcoming. We followed signs to Wadi Araba, but this is on the flatlands west of the mountains, which meant we took a windy mountain road that wound up ending in a gravel road with potholes. We were unsure how much further it was, so we turned back and found ... read more