Tag Archives: Landscapes

Day 12 – Bordering on Dead

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Thursday 26 May 2022 – I’m playing for the sympathy vote, here.  During the night, my vigorous crop of mouth ulcers ripened into a mouth full of agony which grew worse every time my tongue touched anything. Have you ever tried eating, or drinking, or even talking without your tongue touching anything?  Take it from me: it’s not possible.  Breakfast was simply not an option; even a cup of Twinings finest Earl Grey was a significant challenge. That’s how bad it was.

However, I wasn’t going to let it entirely bring my day to a halt. Jane wanted to visit Bethany, the site of Christ’s baptism by John the Baptist, and, although organised religion and I are barely on nodding terms, it’s clear that it’s a site which has deep symbolism for a vast number of Christians over the globe.  It would have been churlish not to take the opportunity to visit.  So we did, having arranged with Saeed that he could do the driving for us.

The site is quite close to the Hotels Area, and the short drive there enabled us to increase our ever-expanding insight into the pharmacies of Jordan by making a stop off to buy something to address the pain of my ulcers.  We ended up with a gel called Afta Med which promises that it “immediately reduces pain” and seemed somehow just the ticket. I think it helped somewhat.

If you do a simple online search for “Bethany” you might expect that something of the pith and moment of the baptismal site for Jesus Christ, one of the most significant figures in the development of the world as we know it today, might figure high on the list of results.  You’d be wrong.  Among the inordinate number of churches, towns and charitable organisations using the name, there’s Bethany, where Lazarus was raised from the dead (a transition I was hoping might be reversed for me today), but that’s near Jerusalem on the West Bank. It’s described by one website as “a miserably untidy and tumble-down village facing East on the Southeast slope of the Mount of Olives, upon the carriage road to Jericho.” I couldn’t actually find any reference to where we were headed without using more focussed search words, but eventually you discover that it’s a Unesco World Heritage site and has its own website.  Clearly, having major religious significance doesn’t in and of itself convey any SEO skills. So, “Bethany Beyond the Jordan” it is, or “Al-Maghtas” in local currency.

The site is reasonably well-organised from a tourist’s perspective, with a car park by the ticket office and a shuttle bus (air-conditioned, woo hoo!) that takes customers and a guide on a short drive to the site itself. It was a hot, hot day as these dogs could vouchsafe.

Our guide was called Noor

who said that he was part of the team which discovered the site in the ’90s and did a good job of herding us cats from place to place along rather thoughtfully shaded walkways, whilst explaining what we could see.  So, what could we see?

  1. It’s now, unsurprisingly, the site for a concentration of churches of the various Christian faiths – Coptic, Armenian, Russian Orthodox.
  2. In the background are areas described in the Bible such as the wilderness where Christ wandered for 40 days and 40 nights (they didn’t have GPS in those days) and resisted the temptation of the Devil
  3. A Russian Orthodox Monastery
  4. The remains of the Byzantine St. John the Baptist Church/Monastery (destroyed by flooding and earthquakes)
  5.  The church built in 2003 to replace it
  6. A mosaic depicting the visit of Pope John Paul II (which was instrumental in bringing unity among all of the various flavours of Christianity that this really is The Place)
  7. And, of course, the baptismal site itself, described in travellers’ writings in A.D.500 as being marked with steps leading down to what would have been a cruciform baptismal pool with vaulted arches above. Noor explained that although there was no running water visible today, in biblical times the whole area was covered in the waters of the Jordan river.
  8. The River Jordan, the holy river where one could not only dip one’s feet (should one wish) but could also see its significance as a border point.

A religious service of a somewhat happy-clappy nature was under way whilst we visited

and we were able to go into the new (Greek Orthodox) church of St. John the Baptist, which is highly painted and very colourful.

On the floor is a mosaic of The Tree Of Life

directly under the painted ceiling.

On the site, there is also a museum (and, of course, retail opportunity)

which features, among the exhibits, some original mosaic work

and some amazing embroidery

in a nice – cool – space

which suited me well, as it probably did a fur-coated local.

How credible are the claims that this is really the site of Christ’s baptism?  Well, in addition to much archaeological and anecdotal evidence of the religious importance of the site over several centuries, the leaflet that comes with the tickets says, “The authenticity of this site is as pure as the testimonies from the gospels, the pilgrims and travellers that have visited this cherished site.” Whatever, it felt like a worthwhile visit and we were grateful to Noor for giving us the extra context of where things fitted into the biblical story.

After this visit, Saeed took us to the Panorama Complex and Dead Sea Museum that we had been unable to visit yesterday, which is a little south of the Hotels Area, and reached along a steep, twisty road.

Saeed stopped occasionally as we ascended and encouraged us to admire the view, but, frankly, it wasn’t that interesting.

We reached the museum complex and again stopped to look at the view.  It had hardly changed, but at there was something there to tell us what we could see and the compass direction of other places of interest in Jordan (all boxes we had ticked by this stage, fnah fnah).

We could see the works associated with the Ma’in geothermal springs (whose water nowadays gets pumped to Amman, rather than being allowed into the Dead Sea)

and amusingly the road that the complex is on is called Ma’in Street. I hope this naming was done with an appropriate amount of twinkle in an official eye somewhere.

The complex is a handsome building

and is well set up as a home for the museum as well as a restaurant.

The architecture is nicely done and offers the chance of some, well, architectural photography.

It was this architectural content that kept me interested for a while, but I really was beginning to flag in the heat and the oral agony, which is a shame, because the museum has some interesting exhibits that I simply couldn’t be arsed to read – I just wanted to get back to the hotel by this stage.  There was one arresting installation on the floor by the museum’s door, though.

This shows the projected shrinkage of the Dead Sea if nothing is done about anything.  Saeed told us that an initiative to replenish the Dead Sea with waters from the Red Sea had been gradually building for about 50 years, but the pandemic had got in the way and it has effectively been abandoned.

Saeed took us back to the blissful cool of the hotel, where we spent much of the rest of the day relaxing, in my case updating the blog, and building up energy for the evening, for life had sprung a pleasant surprise on us.  Magda and Guy, friends whom I first met when I lived in Sweden 40 years ago, happened to be breezing through on their way to a wedding in Amman on Saturday, and we overlapped at the Kempinski For Just One Night.  Over the years since, they have been responsible for some of my most famous hangovers, so a session with them, given my fragile state, was something to be seriously prepared for.  It turns out that a combination of Afta Med, paracetamol and gin acts as a good anaesthetic and it enabled us to have a great evening catching up, as it had been four years since we saw Magda, and five years since we saw Guy. We all treated ourselves (I think that’s the right word) to a meal in Rehan, the Lebanese restaurant at the hotel, and I even managed a little soup as effectively the first thing I’d eaten all day.  Isn’t it marvellous how good company can overcome mere bodily pain?

That said, my system wasn’t robust enough to allow the meal to degenerate into A Session (ah! memories!  vague and blurry memories!) so despite the fact that there was a bar outside as we left the restaurant, Jane and I decided to head for bed. Anyway, we had to get up especially early and preferably compos mentis the next day, so it seemed the best idea.

As to what it was that we had to get up for?  You’ll have to come back and find out, won’t you?

Day 10 – We go our separate ways

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Tuesday 24 May 2022.

Steve’s Story – Off the blog and on the bog

For once, the tendency to be prolix that I acquired from my father will not detain you long, reader, as I took very small part in the day’s planned adventure. Use of fancy words or sophisticated grammatical and stylistic construction does not hide the bald fact that I got the shits.

Fortunately, we had brought some Imodium, which was brought to bear within seconds of my condition becoming obvious and so the night was downscaled from being disastrous to merely horrid. It was clear that a 15km hike would be beyond me. Fortunately, the arrangements for the day involved our bags being transferred to the day’s destination, the Feynan Ecolodge, by car; so it seemed best that I accompany them. Getting from the Guest House room to the car was about the limit of my mobility, and so I climbed into a Mitsubishi 4×4, expertly piloted by a young lad called Ehab and off we went, with me hoping that the Imodium would protect his seat coverings and good nature from abuse. Ali kindly pointed out the toothbrush I hadn’t packed and the reception also kindly handed me a packed lunch – a nice thought but not really the best idea.

The hike is about 15 km and Saeed had told us that Feynan had a reception that was half an hour’s 4×4 drive from the lodge itself, so I was expecting the whole journey to take about an hour, maybe a little longer, and that seemed a reasonable time for my abused digestive system to maintain a semblance of good order. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the Nature of Dana (see what I did there?), and so the journey Ehab and I undertook looked like this:

(Jane’s route was a straightish although at times arduous path between Dana and Feynan; we had to get to Qraiqreh round the outside of the nature reserve and then wind our way to Feynan.)

Jane left at just after 8am and Ehab and I at around 1130. I got to our room about 5 minutes before Jane did; in other words, the whole car journey took about three hours, with the last 40 minutes picking our way delicately around rocks in the faintest of tracks to get from Qraiqreh to Feynan.

(Something slightly odd took place on this final stretch to the lodge. Ehab stopped by a Toyota pickup and greeted its owner, an older, avuncular- looking Arab, telling him, I infer, that I had a stomach upset. To my surprise, this chap spoke to me in pretty good English and insisted that I take a small handful of some dried, pale green herbs. I had to grind it up between the palms of my hands, swallow it and chase it down with water as, he said, it was “very strong”. He promised I’d be better in ten minutes. He was wrong. Twice. In the first instance, I noticed no digestive improvement. For the second, read tomorrow’s entry on these pages.)

Ehab is a cheerful and friendly chap with a smattering of English, but not enough to sustain a conversation with someone who feels like shit. And I know he meant well when he insisted that I drank a can of Mirinda Apple and wanted me to eat some snacky-type junk food or other, which I managed to avoid doing. I can further report that he has a taste in up-tempo modern Arabic pop music, played slightly too loudly. And when we’d been going nearly an hour and I saw the sign “Petra 20km”, I began to fear that he’d been told to drop me off there; but if you look at the map, you can see the route goes towards Wadi Musa, the Petra town. But the length of the journey, combined with my expectations of that and my general poorly feeling meant that I spent most it of either worrying that we were going to the wrong place or hoping that the next major building I saw would be the Feynan reception.

However, we got there, and I collapsed in our room

and took, frankly, very little part in anything noteworthy for the rest of the day. So I’ll let Jane tell her version of events.

Jane’s Story

The best laid plans and all that – as you’ve just read, Steve was hit by the dreaded Travellers’ Tummy overnight – odd, since we have been eating the same foods and it is usually me who suffers from this sort of thing. Delicate female digestion…!
Anyway, we decided that several hours hiking in likely 30+ degrees heat with a squitty tummy was really not a good idea, so we arranged that Steve should rest until they were ready to transfer the bags from Dana to Feynan, and would then travel with them; while I would do the hike anyway.

So it came to pass that shortly after 8am, after a quick breakfast, I set out with Salim my guide.

There is a fairly sharp descent from the Guesthouse for 2 km or so, the track is well defined but small skittery stones on a harder surface – just about my least favourite surface to go downhill on. Still, I made it intact; after the first steeper section the trail the path winds more gently down into the bottom of the valley.

The Guesthouse is just visible high above

And the end of the valley dispiritingly far ahead!

Once at the bottom of the valley the trail is less clear; obviously you have to follow the valley along, but while there are some newer direct paths Salim preferred to follow what he called the old route, zigzagging between patches of shade and points of interest – such as this beautiful mini-Siq full of oleander and caper blossom.

The path wound on, sometimes rougher, sometimes clearer, through towering scenery.

Fantastic beasts appeared

Rock shapes like tortured faces

And some less fantastic apparitions but much more cute (mother and daughter).

We took the occasional rest stop in some shade as the mercury was rising!

About 3 hours in, I thought I must be suffering heatstroke when Salim enquired “would you like to drink tea?” Being British of course the answer “yes please” came without conscious thought – and I settled in the shade of an acacia tree and watched as he retrieved a battered kettle and tea from his backpack, and lit a fire on a “hearth” that was obviously well used by those in the know.

Fortified by tea and some of the packed lunch supplied by the Guesthouse, we trudged on through extraordinary rock formations

until after about 4 ½ hours the valley began to open out

and show evidence of Bedouin habitation

and we reached Feynan Ecolodge after about 5 hours hike. I have to say, I was very glad to reach the end; 15km in 30+ degrees was enough for me! Stalwart Salim, however, was going to take a short rest and then hike back up to Dana, since (as you have heard) getting from Feynan to anywhere is a bit of a poser…

I found Steve putting a brave face on feeling really shitty (see what I did there?) so we made him as comfy as possible, with a damp towel to cool him down (sleeping under a damp towel is magic if you are feeling the heat). The Ecolodge of course, being an Eco Lodge, prides itself on eschewing such ecologically dubious but occasionally useful concepts as aircon. There was a fan. There was a nifty porous clay bottle to simultaneously hold, seep and cool (by evaporation) water.

There was an electric light in the bathroom, and candles in niches elsewhere.

I went to explore the premises, called in at reception to set up our transport for the morning and get some matches, then as darkness fell the staff set candle lanterns on the dining tables

we lit our candles

and found lanterns at our doors.

Steve couldn’t face the thought of food, I wasn’t hungry, so we skipped dinner and eventually slept off and on (the loo in Steve’s case). If you want to know how we fared on the morrow, join us in the next thrilling instalment to find out?

Day 9 – Oh, Dana! *

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Monday 23 May 2022 – The only item on our agenda today was simply to get to our next accommodation, the Dana Guest House, described as “simple” accommodation in the literature we got from Audley, our travel organisers. Since it is billed as being in the Dana Nature Reserve (or even the Dana Biosphere Reserve), and egged on by other information I had looked up online, I was expecting something that served no alcohol (correct) and was short on anything more than basic facilities (not so correct, as it turns out; TripAdvisor, for example, mentions that there is an internet there.)  I wasn’t expecting there to be enough information to fill a day’s-worth of blog entry, and I was wrong there, too.

Saeed was due to pick us up at 10am for the three-hour drive to Dana, which meant we had a relatively relaxed start.  Since we had not thus far wandered extensively around the Mövenpick, we elected to take a stroll around the resort before heading to the restaurant where they serve breakfast.

Yes, we were Only Making Plans For Najel ** .  Thank you.  Thank you for reading my joke.

The resort is impressive, but very resortish

and the breakfast is only moderately to our taste – not a good selection of fresh fruit, for example.  At least they had Earl Grey tea so we could conserve our own stocks.  Amazingly, there was no Marmite on the breakfast buffet.

We were able to get away promptly and were soon buzzing along the Desert Highway.  It’s a motorway, but that doesn’t mean that there are no speed bumps.  It also doesn’t dissuade the entrepreneurial spirit that marks out Jordanians, as there were several roadside sellers touting mainly watermelons out of the back of pickups.

Saeed bought a 10kg example. There practically wasn’t room for it in the boot.

We were just beside Wadi Rum and I caught sight of this lonely figure trudging along in the developing heat of the day

which made me thoughtful about a culture which, in torrid heat, makes women dress from head to toe in black and simultaneously approves of men dressing in white dishdashas.

The journey proceeded swiftly with only the usual sort of diversions one gets in this part of the world

and after turning off the Highway, Saeed shortly pulled up and suggested we take a look at the view.

In the middle, on the left, is Dana Village.

So we were soon there and checked into the Dana Guest House.

We were in luck in that we were accommodated in a room in a recently-built wing that featured (a) such modern amenities as air conditioning and

internet access; (b) a simply staggering view;

and (c) en suite facilities.  Even the shower has The View.

Our expectations had been set correctly in that there was no food available until dinner at 1930.  There was a kettle in the room and so I asked reception if there was a chance of milk and got some powdered stuff which, to be frank, took us a while to develop the courage to try (it turned out to be powdered milk and not too unpleasant).  However, there was instead some rather nice-smelling herbal tea in the room, so we made a cup of that and, it being about 1330, settled ourselves down in front of That View for some world-class relaxing to build us up for our hike tomorrow.

The only thing that detracted from the peace and quiet was the wind, which was ferociously noisy.

We had resigned ourselves to being hungry until dinner time, so to distract ourselves, and because the wind seemed to have died down somewhat, we decided to take a walk around Dana Village. The Guest House employs a chap called Ali who is very helpful, but cannot, for some reason, speak.  He furnished us with a little booklet with some details and off we went.

It’s a strange place.  It was originally a ghost of a village that Arabs lived in until the 1800s, but corners of it are flickering back into life as eco-tourism becomes more and more popular.  The information we’d been given was specific that there were no restaurants in the village, and it was wrong.  As we started walking around, Jane spotted a couple of people sitting on a roof terrace, and it turned out that they had been served at a very much functioning (albeit basic) restaurant.

They offered us coffee, hummus and moutabel (also known as baba ghanoush, a sort of aubergine-based version of hummus) and so we went and joined the people on the roof

who were taking advantage of The View.  We elected to sit in the shade. Pardon the photo of food, but it was such an unexpected pleasure, I feel compelled to share.

Afterwards, we strolled around, past some typical scenes

and discovered that there were other places at which we could also have got food.  There are other hotels,

a shop

and several picturesque scenes which show at once its crumbling nature and the signs of restoration/development.

There’s even an EV charging point.

We speculated about the route for tomorrow’s hike, which takes us down the mountain and along to Feynan Ecolodge.  We think you can see the trail going up from the bottom right here;

yes, there.

We’ll find out, possibly the hard way, tomorrow morning.

At 1930, as often happens around that time, the sun set

and we went for dinner in the restaurant, which gave a good sunset view.

The dinner was a buffet, of course, and included a good variety of local dishes – good nourishing stuff.  Afterwards, we went back to our room and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow is The Hike – 15km from here to Feynan Ecolodge, mainly downhill but sometimes steeply so. We’ll have a guide and we’ll see how our progress compares with the guidance time of six hours. But we should be there in time for me to update these pages with whatever adventures we encounter en route, so please come back tomorrow and find out, won’t you?

 

* Thought I’d better explain this.  “Oh, Donna” was a 1973 song by 10CC
** “Making Plans for Nigel”, XTC, 1979