lifeofpri # 5 - Jaunting in Jordan

When you have an Indian passport, and don’t enjoy elaborate travel planning, your options for international travel are quite limited. You can travel to less than a third of the world on a whim. While you may be able to get a visa on arrival in 60 countries, the experience varies greatly.

One such country that we travelled to this summer was Jordan. We got ourselves a Jordan Pass before travel, ran through the airport to get ahead in the immigration line at Amman, feeling reasonably assured that we were well placed to exit immigration sooner rather than later.

But no - we didn’t get through immigration quickly. It was most definitely my most painful immigration experience, much worse than the US. So you can imagine…

After one look at our passports, the immigration officer asked us to step aside and wait. Everyone who was waiting with us looked like us - south asians. This is when you question your life choices - did I really have to feel all that overrated desh prem, abandon the chance of getting a British passport so easily, only to be waiting here to get into a country that is more under-developed than mine!

We had no clue why we were waiting, the officer wouldn’t say. Also it didn’t help that he barely spoke any English. On some prodding and insistence, he asked us to go visit the police counter.

It was a tiny room with three cops, all of them smoking, which took me by surprise. I’ve never been in an office, where people smoke inside? Through the rest of the trip, I realised that smoking and sheesha is really really rampant in Jordan, it’s insane.

Anyway, the cops didn’t seem to have a process grant Indians a visa on arrival, unless you held an active visa/ residence permit for the UK or US. So, there was a lot of random questioning, phone calls seeking permission, endless waiting and pleading.

Finally, they let us get ahead in the line only when one senior officer saw that we were going to stay at the Intercontinental in Amman, and that my husband held some senior position in some company in India.

If this were a bunch of aunties in a bride seeing ceremony, it would be perfectly understandable, but it was bizarre to watch these men smile and nod in approval. Anyway, that wasn’t the end of the “process”. After some more counter-hopping and endless waiting, we finally exited the airport three hours after landing.

Clearly, Jordan didn’t make the best first impression on us but the rest of the trip thankfully more than made up for this not-so-warm welcome.

Amman and Jerash

If I had to paint a scene of Amman, all I’d need is yellow ochre - the region is so predominantly monochromatic, with barely any vegetation. It’s a hilly city with homes built along the hills, as if they’ve been carved out of them.

When we visited Jordan, the country was preparing for the Royal wedding of the Crown Prince, Hussein, so we saw traces of the preparation throughout the city.

We visited the Amman Citadel, and the view of the city of Amman from there was spectacular. There was a tiny museum that housed excavations dating back to the Neolithic period (7500 BC).

It was quite surreal to be in one of the most ancient and continuously lived cities in the world. On that note, I’d love to visit Damascus someday. Despite having been part of great empires in the past, it’s sad to see that Amman is not super developed today.

We also visited Jerash, the city of ruins, close to Amman. It’s called Pompeii of the East. Unlike Pompeii, which we visited one late afternoon during the Italian spring, Jerash was mercilessly hot, and it didn’t help that we were there at mid-day.

So, unfortunately, the daughter and I gave up after the first couple of kilometres, and sat resting at the Oval Forum, a massive plaza full of gigantic stone columns.

I convinced myself thinking how these greco-roman sites aren’t wildly different from those in our own country - there are usually a bunch of temples for Zeus, Artemis, Hercules or Apollo, and one amphitheatre, much like the temples for Shiva or Vishnu, and a hall of pillars with a mandayam for some dance performance.

Apart from ancient city hopping, we enjoyed the meals during our trip. Our very first meal in Jordan was at Hashem, a restaurant in downtown Amman.

We ordered a bunch of things - a couple of types of hummus, mutabal, falafels and salad. The waiter laid out piles of bread instead of plates for us to mop up our dips. We love middle-eastern food, and so we devoured it.

It was a simple quick service no-nonsense affair, all about the food and little else.

I love mono-cuisine (opposite of multi-cuisine?) traditional restaurants that focus on serving you good food with pleasant service, and don’t waste their energy on unnecessary frills or incessantly asking you whether you are enjoying your meal.

I honestly prefer to be left alone with my food.

Even the breakfast at our hotel every morning was fantastic - a massive multi-cuisine spread. This gave us a chance to try out all the local foods that we’d not been able to eat outside. I really enjoyed this fava beans dish called ful medames, it was so soulful.

We ate Knafeh at Habibah, an old sweet shop in Amman. Again, spectacular, nothing like we’ve ever eaten before. The other memorable meal in Amman was at Al-Siran, this tiny joint, which was walking distance from our hotel. It was more like fast-food but perpetually flooded with take out customers the entire time that we dined there.

Petra

I think most people go to Jordan for Petra, one of the many wonders of the world. When I was younger, there were 7 wonders, but now I am not so sure. This was the capital of the Nabatean Empire in 2nd to 4th century BC. The areas around this historic city is known to be inhabited since 7000 BC.

Even now, Bedouins live in the caves of Petra during winters, since it’s warmer.

There are two prominent monuments in this city - the treasury and the monastery. We’d learnt that these monuments are quite a distance away from the entrance of the site and so, mentally prepared for a treacherous hike, especially with a 6yo.

The landscape was stunning. As you walk through the Siq, a narrow entrance into Petra made of these tall naturally carved rocky structures, you can’t help but wonder what life may have been like a couple of thousand years ago.

Since we’d started early carrying our brunch packets, we got to the Treasury in 30-40 minutes, while it was still cool and pleasant in the morning. The sheer size of the structure was overwhelming. I kept wondering how could they possibly build something this large so many years ago, and why?!

Right opposite the treasury, there was a “view point” that you could climb to with the help of a guide, where you’d be allowed to take an “instagrammable” shot for 10 dinar.

Keeping in mind that we needed to get to the monastery at the far end of the site and back before we are completely roasted in the sun and are beyond exhaustion, we gave that detour a pass and carried on. And it’s not like I am on Instagram anyway.

We saw an amphitheatre (duh!), some beautifully carved Royal Tombs atop some of the hills and the Great Temple of Petra. Some of the recent excavations by Brown University has also found some Roman references, although it is not entirely clear whether the Great Temple was used as a place of worship or administration.

I guess you’d have similar questions if you were to excavate the Vidhan Soudha or the new Indian Parliament a few thousand years from now. Who knows?!

After an hour long trek up a rocky hill with any real steps, we finally reached the Monastery, yet another spectacular monument in Petra. We were exhausted, but also really happy that we’d made it in one piece. We had our brunch, disturbed by a lot of cats, and quickly decided to head back while we still had some energy reserve.

On the way down that rocky hill, I was almost ambushed by a bunch of donkeys running towards me, rolled over my ankle and injured it badly enough for it to blow up like a balloon almost immediately.

Thanks to the courtesy of some fellow travellers, I popped two ibuprofens and tried to carry on, but I couldn't move my foot. So, I had to be ferried down by a donkey. If you’ve never trekked on a donkey, you must know that it requires an immense amount of faith in the donkey and its mental health.

These donkeys go so dangerously close to the edge of cliffs, I was praying the whole time that the donkey isn’t suicidal. It was insane, but to distract myself, I kept whispering words of encouragement.

Thankfully, I came down in one piece.

By then, the ibuprofen had started working, so I walked the next 4 Kms till the entrance of the site. On our way out, the treasury and the Siq looked like completely different places with 10x the crowd, the dust, the blazing sun and the echo of travellers hooting to test the acoustics of the place.

We stayed at the Marriot in Petra, which had a great view of the archeological city. We ate at the Bedouin camp at our hotel one night, which was a nice experience by the sunset.

We had a falafel meal one afternoon which was again, fantastic. We had a great time explaining what we wanted to eat in sign language, my favourite bit of travelling to new places.

Yusuf, our driver, insisted that we try Mansaf, the Jordanian national dish. He took us to a restaurant, where the drivers’ meals and drinks are on the house, which is quite common. Mansaf is basically rice, lamb and a dried yogurt sauce in a Jordanian bread.

It surely tasted better than it sounds, but I only had one bite because I wanted to try it.

Instead, we ate Maqluba, which is the Palestinian national dish. It was like a biryani made of chicken and aubergine, and it sounded better than it tasted. From here, we headed to Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum

If you’ve watched Lawrence of Arabia, Star Wars - The Rise of Skywalker or The Martian, you’re probably familiar with Wadi Rum. Roughly translating to moon valley, this is a popular filming destination. It’s a desert, and my first time visiting one.

This is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

As we got picked up from the entrance into the protected area of the desert, we enjoyed the stunning landscape and the bumpy ride in a 4X4 pick up. The dunes were intermittently sprinkled with huge granite/ sandstone rocks with camps at their base.

We stayed in such camp, the Wadi Rum Bedouin Camp. We enjoyed a jeep tour around the desert visiting all the sites where various movies had been shot (the bit I couldn’t care less about). There was also a bit of rock climbing that I blissfully avoided thanks to my injured foot.

The bit that I found most thrilling was an almost 80-90 degree drop down a sand dune in our jeep. It was unreal that we didn’t topple over.

We only stayed a night in the desert and I can assure you that the temperatures in a desert touch both extremes within a day. The sky was stunning, you could basically see the whole Milky Way, which also made it harder to distinctly spot the various constellations.

We had a lovely dinner cooked Bedouin style - Zarb, which is basically meats, veggies and rice barbecued on coal under-ground with sand covered on top. The only downside of this dinner was it was served at 8:30pm, which is way beyond our dinner time, and we were too sleepy to do full justice to the meal.

The bit that I was absolutely amazed by was these bright white abayas worn by these Arabs in the desert. I have no idea how they manage to keep them so white and sparkling in such heat and dust.

Next, we headed towards Dead Sea. We took the route via Aqaba, the only coastal city of Jordan, by the Red Sea. Supposedly 6000 years old, but apparently only recently “developed” given its contribution to the Jordanian economy as a port city.

The highway from Aqaba to the Dead Sea is along the Jordan-Israel border. It was surreal to be able to see Isreal while in Jordan for a very long stretch. The Jordan River separates Jordan and Israel; we’d already seen Jerusalem from atop Mount Nebo, but it was a different experience gazing at the fence separating the two countries.

Artificially drawn land-borders are an outcome of colonisation, it is so bizarre to think that a decision made by third parties (Europeans) still hold prominence, and the modern world cannot peacefully negotiate changes. It makes no sense that a manmade fence can separate people in the same region. Does it?

Yusuf also told us stories of how his family escaped Palestine in the 60s and came over to Jordan. Apparently, it’s a pain to now visit family on the other side. These were only stories I’d heard second hand from people in partitioned India, but it hit a different note hearing it first hand from someone who’s been separated by manmade border.

If you are curious about such borders, I recommend that you read Tim Marshall’s Prisioners of Geography. It’s a good book for beginners on understanding how countries across the world built their borders.

Dead Sea

The landscape along the drive to Dead Sea for the most part was dead boring. We bypassed Wadi Musa and Al-Karak. On our way to Petra, we’d stopped over at the Kerak Palace, a beautiful medieval castle with a rather interesting architecture.

Given that it didn’t have a lot of tourists at that time also made the visit more pleasant. I really do detest visiting crowded places, the crowds and chaos somehow robs the beauty of anything, don’t you think?

Our lunch at Al-Karak was most definitely our best meal in Jordan. It was a small no-nonsense eatery where they spoke absolutely no English, but the service was super nice. It had a typical small town warm vibe.

I don’t know even know what the place was called, but here’s a google maps link to the restaurant if you are ever in the area. For 4 dinar, we had a delicious and filling meal of falafel and dips. We loved the falafel so much, we even bought a few to go.

We stayed at the Movenpick in Dead Sea. It was a typical massive beach resort catering to an international audience, with all sorts of unnecessary frills - gift shops, markets, multiple restaurants, swimming pools and what have you.

But I suppose this expected in places where there’s little else to step outside and do, like Maldives. We had to take a buggy everywhere we went, mostly because of the hilly terrain on which the resort had been built.

The rooms were on top of a cliff, at the bottom of which was the Dead Sea. It is actually at the lowest point on Earth. So, the Dead Sea isn’t actually a sea, it’s just a salt lake with waters from the Jordan river, Mujib river and a few small springs.

We couldn’t wait to jump in and start floating, except the experience isn’t as relaxing as you think it would be. You obviously float because the water is insanely saline, but that also means you’ve to avoid letting the water get into your eyes or mouth. It’s impossible to not splash at all, and even if you could avoid splashing, chances are someone else around you, will.

And oh boy, that burns like hell.

Thankfully, you have lifeguards, whose full time job is obviously not to rescue you from drowning (because you don’t). Instead, they are around to pour fresh water in your eyes and drag you out when you can’t open your eyes from all the burning.

If the sea is rough during high tide (which was the case one evening), it is not fun at all. However, my husband might beg to differ because he had a ball being bounced and bobbed around even during high tide.

The mud at the bottom of the sea is considered to cure a lot of skin ailments, and generally good for your skin. The resort had stone urns filled with this mud and salt, all along the private beach, so people usually slathered their whole bodies with these mud packs and then cleansed themselves off in the sea.

The lifeguard assured me that all my acne would vanish after a couple of doses, but no such thing happened. Sure, my skin felt softer immediately after one dose. So, I got excited and overdid it (it was on the house anyway).

By the end of the holiday, my face looked like a baboon’s bum.

Surprisingly though, I could see some benefits, weeks into this therapy, which I didn’t expect. It’s only later that I discovered that Dead Sea mud packs are quite the rage, even in India.

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Overall, it was an interesting holiday - especially because of the diversity of landscape and lovely gut-friendly food. There are other countries, including India where the landscape varies significantly but the proximity of this diversity in Jordan makes it a good destination for a short holiday.

I met a lot of people who were travelling from Europe just for a long weekend, because the flights are not very long, and you can easily go from one end of Jordan to the other in less than 5 hours. It also helps that most of the country’s population just lives along the east, bordering Israel, along the Jordan river.

It was my first time in the Middle East, so I couldn’t tell if the culture I experienced was specific to Jordan, or the overall region. I don’t know if this was influenced by religion or by native customs, but surely, it was culturally different from the only other predominantly muslim country that I’ve been to - Indonesia.

Although, it was a largely “sheltered” holiday with the hotel hopping and a private chauffeur, there were tiny moments when I experienced the local culture - the immigration officer blowing smoke on my face, being asked my religion, the unspoken warmth of waiters in small eateries or Yusuf saying I was like his daughter and so asking me to cover my arms with a veil while walked in downtown Amman.