 |
| View along Wadi Rum |
But in all seriousness, today we slept in deliciously, rolling out of bed around 7:30 to set sail (drive?) by 8:30 after feasting on a proper English breakfast at our very Europeanized hotel (bread pudding, stewed tomatoes, chewy little donuts…oh, and some cucumber-parsley-mint salad [typical to Jordan] got in there).
A short drive took us to the sweepingly majestic Wadi Rum. Remember, folks, a “wadi” is a dried river valley, a bit like the Grand Canyon if we took the Colorado out. Despite all the wadis we have seen, this is the most magnificent. A geological jewel of the world, Wadi Rum has recently (2007) been declared one of the Natural Wonders of the World and remains a huge nature preserve here by Order Of The King.
To view the Wadi, we took a “Jeep” ride—that is, we hopped in the bed of a Toyota half-bed fitted with wooden benches, a couple cushions, and shaded by a tight-stretched goat hair blanket—out into the desert. This Wadi was formed over 150,000 years ago by a now long-deceased ocean, the only remnants a flat country of very soft red sand and peculiarly sculpted igneous and sandstone mountains rising suddenly from the earth. The closest equivalent from the Western Hemisphere I can think of is the Oklahoma desert.
Our first stop brought us close to a low-slung Bedouin tent and a high-towering mountain. Our Jordanian guide (Hasam) ushered us over to a flat-faced rock to show us the oldest inscription found in Jordan—older than Nabateans and Thumadites, older than Armaic and Hebrew—an untranslatable series of hieroglyphs with a scattered few symbols *I* could recognize: #, ^, ~
Then we turned around to face a rock at our back where the ancient Thumadites had quite clearly carved 3 camels and 2 horses, “this is they are painting their lifestyle,” Hasam explained.
We saw all this while an unhappy camel lowed in the background. Have you ever heard a camel lo? It’s an interesting sound, a bit like singing, throaty like a cow’s moo but varied like a bird’s tweet. This particular camel, it seemed, was not a big fan of getting brushed by the Bedouin boy intent on unmatting its fur.
Skirting around the camel, we ducked our heads to enter the Bedouin tent for tea.
A word about tea. I love tea. I drink about a pot a day when at home, though here in the Middle East it seems Westerners are not offered tea. Tea is sold on the streets, it is part of business negotiations and hospitality, it is a way to cool off on a hot day (thank you, God, for inventing vasodialation so human beings could invent tea), but it is not something you give to foreigners at breakfast. But the Bedouin have the hospitality thing down, and we were guests.
Glass cups, less breakable than porcelain and ceramic, important in the desert wilds, a large brass pot heated directly on the coals. Black tea steeped in sage and a wee bit of cinnamon, served steaming on long, low cushions arranged about semi-open camel saddles so the guests could both recline and sit up, in two comfortable rows with the sweet, aromatic tea hot on the lips and cool in the belly. The tent, a breathable goat-hair fabric, shaded us from the piping sun and stood open to a cool breeze. An American woman, one of the Bedouin told us (possibly eyeing the blonde-haired blue-eyed Ashley or the petite, clever-eyed and broad-smiling Jane [I’ve gone dark, and probably look like the locals, so no one was looking at me]) decided to stay with them about 20 years ago. She fell so in love with the Bedouin life style that she simply didn’t leave. Now she owns herds of camels and goats.
At any rate, after tea we hopped back in the Jeep, a few of us climbed to the top of a beautiful red sand dune hot with the sun and looked out at the stunning landscape. I hope Alex is able to upload a picture for you, because words do not explain, and pictures will only provide a glimpse of what it was to be there.
We spent the afternoon in Petra, swimming in our hotel pool and laughing together. Now it is almost 10:30 at night (still early in the day for you at home) and it is time for me to go to bed.
Sweet dreams from the Holy Land,
Siobhan
No comments:
Post a Comment