hey there all...trying to get one more update out before school starts up again and i run out of time....this "stay-cation" here in shanghai has been great...relaxing and filled with different tourist attractions in the cool town i live in...some of them have been hell-ascious and some of them have been fantabulous....i will be sending you shots sometime in the near future...but for now i need to finish up my xmas trip...and still will not do so with this update...but this one will focus on jordan...
cat and i only made it to jordan for two days...but in those two days we were blown-away with the beauty of this country...we went to petra and wadi rum....plus spent the night is a great/comfortable hotel in petra...it rocked...and if you do not have petra on your bucket list, you MUST add it now!!!! the pictures i took and the ones i will post here, do not do this amazing site justice...but i will add them, because some of them give you a glimpse....now i have seen quite a bit of the world on my trips, but this has to be in the top five of stunning places i have been to...go there....you will not be bothered by arab spring stuff here and they know how to treat tourists....at least in these two places....we loved it...
so on with the pictures...i am not going to have a ton of descriptors...but will tell you some things about jordan, it's king, petra and wadi rum...but i really think in many of these pictures...they speak for themselves and i can only say stunning and amazing, so many times ;) so on we go to jordan....
our day started quite early....and we were walking into jordan as the sun was coming up...this was a relatively smooth process and really was not as "scary" as some have said in blogs and other things i have read....you gave people some money and they let you leave their country....you gave some other people some money and they let you come into their country...smooth and easy....here's the entry sign as we were walking from israel to jordan....
there definitely is a difference between israel and jordan that you experience as soon as you cross out of "no man's land" and into one of these two places...if you have never walked across a border, the "no man's land" section is usually quite weird...big fences on the sides and empty space, usually just some dirt....and here was no different....but as you probably know, jordan is an islamic state...so as soon as you get there, the traditional dress for women is this...i loved this woman's face...BUT this is one country where they are working on women having the same rights as men....one of jordan's many "different" rules from much of the islamic world....
petra + blue sky....this is the start of the walk into petra...an UNESCO world heritage site...and recently described as one of the 7 new wonders of the world....petra is described as a caravan-Nabataean city....that has been inhabited since pre-historic times....the cave with the stairs above it in the rock above is a tomb....as are many of the structures i knew about before i got to petra...the steps are supposed to help the dead ascend into heaven....
in order to get to many of the tombs and the old city, you need to walk down this natural, windy path in the rock, called the siq....as you can see from the pictures, this place is formed out of sandstone...so there are sooooooooo many different colored pieces of rock here, it is mind-blowing - red, orange, brown, yellow, black, etc. and sometimes there are random trees and plants embedded in the walls.....
the closer you get to the main part of the city, the higher the walls of the siq climb....which made this a perfect place to build a city...as there was no way to approach it without someone knowing you were coming....they also had this amazing way of capturing and shuttling water here....as you can see on the left side and right side of the picture...they had set up a series of gutters that ran along the length of the siq and into the city proper....incredible engineering....
of course one of my favorite things was to look upwards from the bottom of the canyon and see incredible blue skies....i just couldn't get enough of them....jordan seems to be a country that is well organized and well-run....they have a king....king abdullah 2....it has a constitutional monarchy in place....so the king has much power...but he seems to be a good guy....and his wife...queen raina is impressive as well...she is actually a person who was not born into royalty...but instead met the king, before he was the king....at a dinner party...where it was love at first sight....but both of them do terrific things for this country....
this is probably one of the most famous types of pictures from the siq as you get closer to the main city....this does not do it justice in any way....and i wish you could see all of the colors of the rock and just how incredible this first look is....this is called the treasury of the pharaoh and is not really a treasury, but instead is a tomb.....this is one of the grandest of them all...and as beautiful as it is on the outside...it is quite plain on the inside...although you are not allowed inside...we could peek in, and there is nothing to see there....maybe because they have been lived by nomadic peoples since the demise of the original people who started and lived in this city.....
this is the full shot of the treasury....and in this picture you can see just how big it is in comparison to all of the people in front of it....the carving is magnificent and the color of the stone is stunning...and it changes with the light of the day...as you will see later in the post from when we were leaving....this really is an amazing site and probably my favorite spot in petra....
this is a closer view of the top of the treasury....we had a terrific guide who described what all of the different parts were of the treasury, but i don't remember it anymore...plus he was a geologist and chemist and found out i liked science, so then we also got all of the information about the rocks, engineering, construction and stableness of these buildings....he really was great!
one of the things i kept doing was taking pictures of the rocks themselves...as they were just amazing....the sandstone was shaped and formed by millions of years of water....and left behind some incredible patterns and what almost look like paintings in the rock....i loved them....
in this picture you are seeing what some of the apartments looked like that were carved into the rock...not everyone lived this way...but many people did....today there is nothing inside of these "caves", but you can climb in them and on them....these were really close to the theater that was carved into the rock here....
at one point petra was taken over by the romans....so not only do you have the older Nabataean versions of parts of the city....but you also have one main roman road that goes along another part of the city with columns and cobblestone roads and a church and a monastery....it's pretty crazy to think about how many different people lived here and how it was kept a secret from the world for so very long....by the nomadic people of jordan....burckhardt, a swiss explorer convinced the jordanians that he was muslim and just wanted to pass through here to get to a more important city....they had no idea he was swiss...and when he came to petra he was amazed...so when he returned to switzerland, he told the world about what he saw and this ended up becoming a tourist destination....based on this man's lie to the people from here...interesting beginning.....
up on one of the other hills is another set of tombs, called the royal tombs, found in a stretch called the king's rock....these were huge...you can see people at the base of them if you look closely....such incredible architecture....
the colors of the tombs was stunning...here you can see where i had reached them and was trying to get a vertical shot of the red sandstone...the inside of the royal tombs held nothing, but fire pit stains from the nomadic tribes who had inhabited this city and its tombs for years after everyone else had abandoned them....but the outside of the tombs....simply beautiful...
more of the stone pattern pictures....i just couldn't get enough.....so why are the king and his wife such good people....well, mostly because they do many things for the jordanian people...whether extending trade agreements, or fighting for the rights of women, children, journalists, the lower economic groups of the people of their country, or expanding the roads in the country, or pushing tourism in jordan and inviting the world to come and visit this place....it is said that once a year the king dresses up as a poor peasant and goes to a local hospital to see if he can get fair and equal treatment....if this has happened only once...i think that is pretty impressive for a king to do....
here's cat in front of one of the main tombs on the king's wall...you can see from this picture just how big the front doorway truly is...even the steps up to the front are carved out of the rocks...just incredible....
you leave petra the same way you walk in...through the siq....so the last building you see again is the treasury....and in the afternoon light, it looks different from the morning light when you get there...but is equally as amazing and incredible....i loved this building....it surprised me, even though i had seen it pictures before...they did not do it justice...this place is simply magical.....
we spent an entire day in petra....and even that was not enough...but the next morning we had to head back to israel with a quick stop in wadi rum along the way....the landscape of jordan is completely different from israel....the colors of the rocks and the shape of the mountains are so very different...in this shot again, i was mesmerized by the blue sky...i just don't see that every day in shanghai....
from petra we headed to wadi rum....also known as "valley of the moon" in arabic....wadi stands for valley and rum stands for the word elevated or high....as the highest mountain of jordan is located in this valley....again, more red sandstone....which is just such a contrast to the sky...its truly beautiful...
this part of the desert was actually "soft" sand....you don't get that from the big cliffs, canyons and mountains here...but in this section....it was hard to walk up the big hill...as the sand was like any other desert, soft and you sunk in it when you walked....
we only got to see about 2 hours worth of things here...but everything was amazing and we wished we had the time to see more....there was much evidence throughout the places we went of the people who had been there in history....plus, every now and again you came across green trees and plants...but this tree was completely white....loved it....
above you can see some of the past Nabataean graffiti found on the rocks in the valley...this particular grouping was where bedouins would write their name on the wall when they were passing through in case other bedouins needed to find them...this was a form of communication and a way to see who had come before you during the warmer season when the tribes were more nomadic....
my last shot of the desert is one that is based on placement...it looks like this rock is ready to roll, but i am sure it has been in the same place, in the same position, for thousands of years and i just loved it....i thought it was a fitting end to the time we spent in jordan.....
but of course the last shot has to be one of me with my favorite building...i loved this tomb...actually, i loved everything about petra...the walk in, the first view of this building, the wandering down the old streets and through the old tombs, the meal we had there, the terrific and knowledgeable guide we had....it was just an incredible place to visit and if you do not have it on your must-do list, you really, really, really should add it....this is a fantastic place and i do not think i even half captured what it looked like and felt like to be there...it was simply outstanding....
so even though i was only in jordan for two days....i do think i would go back there...it is a country that seems to have its act together...they promote tourism, they have rulers that care about and for their people, they have amazing natural landscapes to share and they have friendly folks who were helpful and accommodating....what more could you ask for...
i hope you enjoyed this update as much as i enjoyed my time in jordan....i hope all of you have had a great chinese new year....happy year of the horse....i am hoping to have the last update from my xmas trip out sometime in the next few weeks...laos....the laid back jewel of south east asia....drop a line and say hi if you wish....hope you are well
have a fab day :)
dani
1 comment:
Thanks for posting such beautiful pics and sharing your story! Looking forward to my own journey there one day soon!
x
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