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Jordan 1994.
A travel memoir — how travelling shaped my view of life — part of a series
Part two of a one-week trip to Sinai and Jordan, an over-Christmas trip. It was a year when my sons were with their dad, and I always wanted to get away rather than be at home without them. This trip was with an ‘ex’, with whom I no longer have any connection and marks the point when I realised that relationship was probably over, more or less. That, however, did not spoil the amazing experience, which is Jordan, Petra and Wadi Rum.
Sadly, towards the end of the trip, I realised that this is not the Jordan that most Jordanians live in. It is an exclusive historical area for tourists and historians. You leave, realising you know nothing of the actual cities and the people of Jordan, but historically this is an amazing spectacle.
The focus of this visit was mainly on Petra, the rose-red city carved into the rock faces of a valley by a nomadic Arab tribe called the Nabateans, a couple of thousand years ago (300 BC) and made famous by Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when he gallops his horse through the Sik, a narrow crack in the rock which allows you through into this mysterious valley. Great security defence position built by nature. We agreed to a hired horse each on the first day and I envisioned being able to canter it down the narrow route…
