From Athens to Singapore 6 of 12: Jordan

Author: scott, July 19th, 2010

Gay Friendly Jordan Travel Agents/Tour Operators

by Mike Shaughnessy, Traveler

Purple Roofs is happy to welcome back an old friend. Last time, Mike regaled us with tales of his trip through South America. This time, he brings us details from his two month trip from Greece to Singapore. Enjoy!

The country of Jordan is kind of like an inverted pyramid with the town of Aqaba way down in the south at the tip of the upside down pyramid. Aqaba was taken from the Ottomans in 1917 by Arab forces headed by “Lawrence of Arabia” as told in the movie of this name.

In 1965 the Brits secured Aqaba for Jordan. Aqaba is Jordan’s only seaport and the gateway to the awesome ancient site of Petra, home of enormous tombs carved right into the mountains.

In walking down the graveled road toward ancient Petra the first major site you see is called the Obelisk Tomb, called this simply for the four obelisks on the top of its façade. All of these huge tomb sites are one single stone, being carved right out of the sides of the red rust colored mountains.

As you continue to walk you enter into what is called The Siq, a deep and narrow canyon winding passage way leading to the main sites.

Along the sides of the Siq passageway you see carved into the side of the mountain a trough built to deliver water. Most of the tombs were carved from the mountains in the 1st to 3rd century AD.

A series of earthquakes in the 6th century and then a major flood caused everyone to flee. Petra then overtime became buried under sand and totally forgotten about until 1,200 years later when a Swiss explorer found it in 1812.

Some parts of the 2,000 year old stone road are still intact, the parts where the stones had not been washed away in the big flood, so you walk along the same stones laid in place by the Nabatean’s in the 1st century.

The visit to Petra was one of the major highlights of this trip for me. It is hard to explain the emotion you feel when walking thru the deep winding Siq passage way for almost one hour’s time.

The Siq (Siq literally means cleft) itself is one of stunning natural beauty, and after a long winding walk then suddenly around a corner is slowly revealed the magnificent Al-Khazneh or the Pharaoh’s Treasury, the most beautiful of all monuments there, 140 feet high.

As a person you feel like a tiny insect dwarfed by the enormous facade, breathtaking, it cannot be explained in words, you have to discover it in person.

Further along in the Siq you encounter a large number of one room homes/caves/tombs carved into the mountain side. There is also a Roman style theater carved into solid rock.

There are additional large Royal Tombs carved into the mountains as you continue walking, most of these facades have suffered much erosion over the ages but are still impressive.

Most of these tombs are enormous in size but there is one small tomb (that you will see me sitting on top) that was carved for Sextius Florentinus, his name is inscribed over the doorway, carved out of the stone in 126 AD. Sextius was the Roman governor of Arabia and was buried here.

After an ascending flight of 800 stairs carved up the mountainside you come to the Ad-Dier Monastery.

It is huge in size, carved out of the mountain, with the view of Petra down below. One of the Indiana Jones movies (The Last Crusade) used parts of Petra for filming.

Wadi Rum or Moon Valley, is a red sand desert. This is an area where the nomadic Bedouin peoples used to live in their camel hair tents. There are few truly nomadic Bedouins left as the government of Jordon has built homes and given them to these people for free in which to live, complete with electricity and satellite dishes.

The government has also made it compulsory for all their children to attend school.

Our visit to Wadi Rum began in a caravan of open jeeps traveling thru the red sand desert until we came upon a set of black tents. Here we were treated to a huge party complete with music and dancing and enormous feast.

Several lambs were cooked in fire pits covered over with desert sand to hold in the heat and steam so the meat was cooked tender and moist. We watched as they used shovels to remove the sand and uncover our dinner in the pit.

There were more salads than I could count and bread was also cooked on site. There was enough food and drinks for a crowd several times our size of 100 or so. The music and dancing went on until the sunset.

The jeeps took us back in the dark. Happy Thanksgiving, I liked the country of Jordan and would be interested in returning some day to see more of this country.

Tomorrow we begin our long sail through the Red Sea and will pass very near Mecca in Saudi Arabia where two thousand Muslim men are now marching in the rain for their annual Haj.

This sea was called the Arabian Gulf until the 20th century when it took the new name of Red Sea. The water is crystal blue, not red, but the mountains and deserts surrounding it are tinted red.

From the Red Sea we enter the Gulf of Aden, considered the most dangerous waterway on earth, past the pirate laden coast of Somalia to arrive in Oman.