Mount Nebo, Madaba, and Wadi Rum

I went on my first big outing through Jordan last weekend June 20th-21st. We left Irbid around 9 AM to head to Wadi Rum. I hope to include a map on this blog to give an idea of where things are located in Jordan. Where we are staying, Irbid, is located in northern Jordan about 45 minutes away from the Syrian border. Last weekend we were headed to Wadi Rum which is in the far south of Jordan about a half hour (I think) fromo the Saudi border. So basically we traversed the country north to south that whole day (Friday).
Our driver, Hussam, spoke very little English which proved to be great for us to practice Jordanian 'Amiyah (dialect). Out of the whole group from the UVA program (30 people) only 6 of us ended up going on this trip to Wadi Rum. I was the only guy in the group except our driver Hussam. It took us about 2 hours to drive from Irbid to the suburbs of Amman. The most scenic part I'd have to say was the twisty drive on roads that were by high cliffs in the Jaresh Mountain range. As we drove through the Jaresh mountains I could see small roadside singns that had in Arabic Dhikr phrases which are very important in Muslim practice. Dhikr are phrases that you utter like "al Hamdu lil Lah" (Praise be to God" "La ilah illa Allah" (There's no god but God) "Muhammadan Rasuul li Lah (Muhammad is God's Messenger) "Idhkr Allah" (Remember God). I thought the religious signs on the road on the mountain cliff sides were pretty appropriate. If you happen to fall off the road and get killed in the fall down the cliff, you'd certainly be remembering God as you head down to the ground below.
Jordanian traffic laws I think are slightly more loose than they are in the US. Outside of Amman our minivan driver realized that there was a detour on the highway we were driving on due to construction. Some of the signs were a bit confusing so he decided to go northbound for a bit on a highway that many cars (read ALL) were going southbound on. After getting off the highway a bit we ended up in a town with streets with widths not much bigger than our van. We eventually got back on to I think another highway which continued to take us southbound to Madaba about half an hour south of Amman.
On our way to Madaba our driver asked us if we wanted to go to Mount Nebo which is 15 minutes west of Madaba. We decided to go and so went on our merry way. According to the Bible, Moses, the guy who got the 10 commandments who's played by the late NRA spokesman Charlton Heston in the movie "The Ten Commandments", is said to have seen the Promised Land from Mount Nebo before dying. Whether are not this is the real Mount Nebo in the Hebrew scriptures I dunno. We do know for certain that there's a fourth century church built on the site with bits of beautiful mosaics still preserved.
To me the most amazing thing about Mount Nebo was the view. From Looking West from Mount Nebo you can see the northern end of the Dead Sea on the left and the Jordan Valley beneath you. Beyound the valley we could see clusters of vegetation and dark smudges which we could tell were towns. One of the Americans from a group of Americans visiting the site (I think they were a church group) told me that one of the dark smudges is Jericho. Whether or not that's the same Jericho that Joshua beat the crap out with his annoyingly loud hords I dunno; but I do know that Jericho is the most important archaeological site for the neolithic period. I think that's pretty awsome. As we headed out to return to our minivan I saw this very bright spec in the distance coming from what looked like a very distant town. This spec was this tiny but brilliant thing. Looking on a map in someone's guidebook we realized that was the golden top to the Dome of the Rock mosque reflecting the sunlight. In other words, the dark smudge where that bright dot was coming from was Jerusalem. We could see Jerusalem. I can't wait to actually go to Jerusalem and hopefully go into all the sites.
After about 45 minutes at Mount Nebo we got back inthe van and went to Madaba. Many people haven't really heard of Madaba outside of Jordan. Madaba's only claim to fame is this mosaic from the fifth century in the still functioning Saint Georges Orthodox Church. One of my friends from William and Mary who graduated in 2007 is Jordanian and from Madaba. In the Saint George's Church visitors center I asked one of the guys who worked there if he knew the Kildani family (my friend's family). He said he did and gave my directions on how to get to their house. I find that funny that it seems everyone knows everyone is in their towns. Greeted by Arab men wearing golden crucifixes, we entered the church. As I expected, the feel of an Orthodox Church is not that much different from the feel of a traditional or old Catholic Church. All of the walls were decorated with Orthodox icons of saints and images revolving around the life of Christ. It took me a while to look at the mosaic on the floor which was what we actually came to see. The mosaic is a map of the whole Middle East labled in Greek. In all honesty, I was slightly dissapointed by what a saw. The mosaic was cool becasuse of its historical background but the whole thing was smaller and less spectacular in terms of its site that I had thought it was going to be. We spent about 30 minutes looking at the mosaic than decided to head to lunch at one of Madaba's restaurants.
Madaba gets much more tourism than Irbid so we could tell this restaurant was probably around for tourists since many of the waiters spoke English and the menu was in English.... I'm now smoking a sheesha as a write so if I start to make less sense, ma sha Allah, sheesha makes you slightly light headed.... anyways... the prices were also nicely catered for tourists since they were around 3-4 times more expensive than food in Irbid. Ya Allah, Ward! Rose, such a nice sheesha flavor. Running tonight will be fun... anyways... our waiter kinda pissed me off at this restaurant since I spoke in Arabic to him and he told me "just speak in English". Asshole. The food was good, I got meat kabobs with bread and yogurt. After lunch we got back on the highway for the next three hours to head to Wadi Rum.
The area around Madaba definitely had some vegetation around it. But once we headed south for about 2O minutes we entered almost a completely different planet, the desert. I don't know what the name for the desert north of Wadi Rum is but I can honestly say it appeared to be the most harsh environment I'd ever seen. The air changed as we drove through the desert. It felt like a hot blow dryer was blasting in our face as we zoomed down the highway. My hair began to stiffen with dryness as I put my fingers through it. Looking out the window we could see desert floor pulsating with heat it was so hot out there. Every 10 miles we would pass a couple of shacks that would have gas or cold bottled water. If we were lucky we would pass a really run down shack labled "Suber Markat" in Arabic. Looking back I thin the song "Horse with no Name" pretty accurately describes the desert. It really is a flat sea of sand; very sterile and biduun Hayaat. We'll be going back this way in two weeks to get to Aqabah. I'll have to take pictures to show you all how desolate this desert is.
The trip in the desert was slihtly boring after a while. The girl I was sitting next, Jessica, fell asleep and her head bobbed up and down for about 15 minutes. That was entertaining for us who were still awake. After spending 3 hours or so on the desert highway, the road became less straight and began to become more twisty since the terrain was becoming more hilly. After making a few turns we fell into Wadi Rum. The land immediatly became red and rocky. In the distance we could see massive rock mountains. This was Wadi Rum. If any of you have seen the movie Lawrence of Arabia, this was where some of the film's more memorable scenes were taken.
Soaking in the crimson sand, rocks, and boulders, we drove to the "Makhaim Jabal Rum", Camp Mount Rum. We got out at our campsite and went into the camp to get assigned our tents. The camp had about 100 permamnent large tents set up for tourists. The main section of the campsite was like a pavillion with a fire pit in the center and shaded area with coushins. We sat down and cold water and looked at the nearby mountain and pondered on climbing the mountain to watch the sunset. As we waited the camp director or head dude came out to greet us. One of the girls asked him where the bathroom was. "We are bedouin", he said, "our bathroom is everywhere". She nodded then went to find somewhere secluded. He went after her and said "No! I was only kidding! We have bathrooms, sinks, and showers!". They definitely did. This camping experience was certainly not a rough one since in addition to bathrooms the tents in this campsites had very comfortable beds with clean sheets and towels.
About 6:30-7 PM a bunch of decided to climb the nearby mountain. So far on the trip, I'd have to say our climb up this mountain was the most photographed. It was cool. I wore my read shmagh/kufiyeh on the way up. At first I put it on like an Iraqi insurgent. Our driver thought it was funny. Millie, one of the girls in the group at Wadi Rum showed us all up since she had some rock climbing experience, she climbed up some of the cliff faces. We reached the very top of the mountain and sat there taking pics of each other watching the sun set. I have a lot of footage of us waiting on the top. Our chain smoking driver, Hussam, also joined us and chatted with us at the top. After sunset, we climbed back down the mountain I got washed up.
Around dark dinner time came. All of the workers put on bedouini costumes. They helped me tie my kufiyeh in a more appropriate way. I chatted with most of them in broken 'amiya. Most of them weren't Jordanian, most of them were Syrian or Egyptian. I thought that was odd. The dinner we had there was great. We had sand cooked lamb, spiced rice and bulgar wheat, yogurt, vegetables, bread, hummus, baba ghnoush, and so much more. As we ate two of the guys who worked there played the oud (Arab guitar like instrument) and drums and sang Arabic (mostly Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi songs). After the guys there taught some of us how to dance to the dabkeh the choby. One of the girls on the program took video shots of me, Millie, and Martine dancing. I really had no idea what the hell I was doing. I got really excited when they played the Iraqi songs since I knew some of the words to them; Eid o Hob and Foug an Nakhal. I ended up going to bed after listing to eerie but soothing Arabic love songs.
We got up around 5:30 the next morning since we had an appointment with some local bedouins to ride camels for an hour around Wadi Rum. This hour was also thoroghly photographed. Except for one, all of the seven camels were female and very conversational with grunting and chewing. At one point I dropped my sun glasses and muttered shit. This too was caught on videotape.
After our camel ride, we had a quick breakfast of bread, foul, and apricot jam then headed back home. Our ride back home was slighlty disasterous since the car over heated about 5 times... that's for another blog post however.