My 66th Country - Jordan

---

My 66th Country - Jordan

For those lazy readers I also made a video - 'Corn Flakes in Jordan'

I went to Jordan at this time as I didn't really have much money and I was limited due to travelling in the winter months. I flew into Amman and spent a week acclimatizing to the country, exploring the city and I also went on a couple of day long road trips to visit a dolmen field and the north east close to the Golan Heights area.

I stayed in a hostel downtown and enjoyed mixing with salt of the earth people and trying all the foods on offer such as lambs brain and falafel. The city was interestingly built on 7 hills which allows you to get great views of the heavily built up area covered in mosques and there were layers and layers of history demonstrated in the Roman ruins and Ottoman palaces. On the Friday in the city there was a huge call to prayer and the streets were cleared, flattened cardboard boxes were given out as prayer matts and there was a massive communal pledge to Allah. Right

after the prayer there was a demonstration about Israel’s presence in Palestine so I followed and watched as people shouted angrily.

The 2 day trips were very different; one was with a professor from a university in the city who I met online and who agreed to help me in a film making project for the Modern Explorers and the other road trip was with 3 other backpackers who were also bored in Amman. The dolmen had really cool little doorways to them and were really photogenic and the trip around the north east was great as we saw Roman ruins, the community spirit of the people (2 men stopped and fixed our back wheel), some hotly contested land on the border and we also touched the Jordan river where Jesus was supposed to have been baptized.

From Amman I travelled south to Wadi Musa to volunteer in a hotel that I had arranged though workaway; 5 hours work a day in exchange for bed and board, which really helped due to the surprisingly high prices in Jordan. While in Wadi Musa I visited Little Petra (12km from the main site there is a baby version)

and of course the main ruins of Petra, which needed 4 days to explore and video for another Modern Explorers film. Petra was amazing, spread over a huge area there are temples and caverns carved into the rock and also some strange standing stones and markers on the ground – Watch the video above to see

I have a lot of footage from Petra and will be making a Modern Explorers film coming soon - you can subscribe to our channel, Twitter feed etc - Links are available on our website

From Petra I went to the Wadi Rum desert to volunteer with a couple of brothers who I also met through workaway. They asked me to make a promotional video for their camp which worked out great as I got to experience all that their customers could do like riding camels, sand dune boarding, eating food cooked in the ground, sleeping under the stars and riding trucks around the beautiful desert scenery.

The Promotional video - Travelling in Wadi Rum

I left the desert with a couple of travel buddies who had also been volunteering in Wadi Rum and we hitch-hiked from one side of the country to the other to meet Atheena Romney, an artist who was helping some Syrian refugees and also trying to save some dolmen that were close to where she lived. It was fascinating and chilling meeting and hearing Syrian refugees and the stories of how they fled their country and were then rounded up into refugee camps in Jordan that seemed more like prison. They told how they had to pay bribes to get out of the camp and struggled to get-by, Atheena had raised money on a crowd-funding website to be able to make clothes for some of the families that hadn't managed to gather much as they fled.

When we visited the dolmen we field we found that most of them had been destroyed which prompted me to make the film Save the Dolmen.

Spending time in Taybeh was fascinating as we really felt like we were in a place that most tourists don’t go to see and you could tell by the reaction of the people how little interaction

with outsiders they had. After a few days I crossed the border into Israel where I met my good friend Jay in Tel Aviv and we embarked on a week long road trip around the tiny country.

I left Jordan liking the country more than I thought I would and this was mainly due to the people I met during the month I was travelling around; I always felt welcome and I really appreciated the community spirit which I experienced nearly everyday I was there. Hitch-hiking was a great experience seeing how people would phone other people to stop and pick us up and they always insisted on buying us food and drink. One thing I didn’t like about Jordan was the feeling of being ripped off, the prices were high and a lot higher for tourists for example Petra was a minimum of 50 Euros to get in but you soon get used to haggling so make sure to add Jordan to your list of places to see.

For more about my Corn Flake mission you can read my other blogs or browse My Website

---

Photos

Exploring Amman
There was funny looking writing allover the place

Exploring Amman
The King Abdullah mosque

Exploring Amman
This became a familiar site

Exploring Amman
All the hills...

Exploring Amman
...gave great views of the city

Exploring Amman
The Roman theatre

An Old Photos
This was downtown roughly 70 years ago showing how new the modern metropolis is

Exploring Amman
Traditional clothing of the area

Exploring Amman
Big Brother is over here too, eye scanners for cashpoints (ATMs)

Fridays Prayers
Right outside the mosque

Fridays Prayers
I had a front row seat

Fridays Prayers
All the streets closed...

1. Jordan Highlights (16)
...and they put cardboard prayer matts on the ground

Fridays Protest
Against the occupation of Palestine

Photos of the King
He was everywhere

Comments

[El Eterno Caminante]

Nice man!
Petra is definitely on my list of places to go, although not for a while down the road but great blog I enjoyed reading it and watching the vids!

[The Corn Flake Traveller]

Many Thanks mate, yes Petra and also Wadi Rum are musts for any traveller

[A Small Swede in the Big World]

Such a lovely country!
I was there in December and it is really spectacular there. Keep up the great work and good luck on your goal of eating cornflakes in every country. I myself only have the goal of visiting every country but no special niche while doing it. =)