Wadi Rum and Petra

Salaam,

Alahmdulillah, there's been a few times so far on my trip that i've just stood in awe of a product of nature and my trip to Petra and Wadi Rum gave me another two examples.

Thursday after class, myself and three other students hired a car and drove the 4 hr journey to Wadi Rum, which the guidebook said was the number one site to visit in all of Jordan. Basically its a huge desert terrain at the southmost point of Jordan bordering Saudi Arabia and has some Amazing scenery.

The plan was to take the less scenic and appropriately named Desert Highway and get to Wadi Rum around 5pm and catch the sunset there and get shown around by one of the local beduoins. And then around 9pm take the 1hr drive to Petra and spend all Friday here.

However due to some problems on the way there (ie getting lost) we became 1 hr behind schedule and got to Wadi Rum after sunset...but we took the much more scenic Kings Highway down and alhamdulilla the views on the way there made up for it. When we got to Wadi Musa it was already dark, but anyway we were led out by the Bedouin guide on his 4x4 (the days of the camels have long gone) and went into the middle of the desert, built a camp fire, had tea, looked at the amazing scenery and lied under the stars for a few hours. Then onto Petra.

Petra is absolutely breathtaking - and probably most famous now for being the place where they filmed Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (you've all watched this...). Although the entrance fee is a whopping 20pounds, you walk for around 10 minutes through this little gap with cliff faces on both sides of you. The most amazing this is the colours of the rocks - this place would be a geologists/archeological heaven. All these random coloured stones - purple, green, orange, blue etc. So you've these multi-coloured cliff faces on both sides then at the end it just opens upto a huge space and you have the Treasury in front of you. Amazing.

After we got here, we decided that we wanted to go upto the top of Jabel Harun to visit the gravesite of the Prophet Harun (Aaron - Moses's brother) So we hired donkeys to for this SEVEN hour ride there and back. You might thinking donkeys, no problem, but no, BIG problem. The mountain was very steep so it was incredibly dangerous going up it but alh somehow we made it to the top after around 3 1/2 hours, and the views from the top, the highest point in Jordan i believe, were breath talking.

After this we took the donkeys to the second most famous site in Petra, The monastery which was again very difficult to get to (had to go up 1000 steps - on the donkeys), but very much worth the wait.

I've summarised a Lot in order to keep this entry short but alh the views and scenery on this trip were breath taking. One down side of it was the situation of the Bedouin people. Due to the huge number of tourists visiting these sites, they've pretty much lost all their old way of life and many of them speak English and other foreign languages better than Arabic (bedouins are famed for their level of Arabic and poetry). Even worse they've adopted all the negative aspects of the west (cigarettes, alcohol, music, clothes etc) so this was pretty sad to see but to be honest, expected.

My pictures will go up soon iA, but i've attached some i found from the net.

Salaam