Into Jordan

Wadi, Rock, Sand and Sea

          Mount Nebo: Jerusalem night lights and tree, Day 32           Petra: Weathered facade of unnamed tomb, Day 31           Wadi Rum: The view from Lawrence's Spring, Day 30           Petra: A Berber matriarch descends from the Place of High Sacrifice, Day 31           Mount Nebo: Dead Sea dawn, Day 33 Mount Nebo: Jerusalem night lights and tree, Day 32

By the time the ferry got us to Aqaba the lights of Israel's city of Elat were spangling the hills across the water in the west. By the time George drove the truck off the slow boat it was almost midnight.

One night in Aqaba, then onward to TE Lawrence's desert hideout of Wadi Rum. We dunno what started it, but a knife fight was in progress when we pulled into the dusty carpark at the canyon of Nabatean petroglyphs - do not piss off a Bedouin!

From Wadi Rum we pushed northward to the town of Wadi Musa which lies above the canyonlands that hide the ancient Nabatean city of Petra. Wow. What a delight. We only had one full day there. A week wouldn't be enough.

Northward again past the commanding ruins of crusader castles, then the long fall down a road that switchbacked through a wadi that carved its way ever deeper into the earth before depositing us in the baking heat of a piedmont whose toe dipped to the lowest dry land on the planet. 420 metres below sea level. The Dead Sea shore. After an obligatory swim - well, float really - it was time to ascend two kilometres skyward to our bush camp site.

The story is told that Moses gazed from Mt Nebo over the promised land he was never to attain. Mt Nebo is sacred ground that draws pilgrims still. We stopped briefly at the site of the monastery there before heading for what has proved to be our best campsite so far.

It's hard to describe the feeling engendered by a blood-red sunset over the Dead Sea while the wind shrieks in your ears. Suddenly the wind begins to die and in the silence that follows a million lights emerge in the distance. The hills far to the west appear as if draped in a bejewelled shawl: Jerusalem!

That blood red sunset suddenly feels a little ominous. Below and to the north of the twinkling lights of Al Quds is the blazing yellow glow of the city of Ramallah. Closer to us still, a harsh orange highway of twinned lights carves a line in the sand. The border.

The view is stunning and I'm grateful for the silence. From up here, out of range of the sound of helicopter, siren and loudhailer, it's possible to believe in the dream of peace in the holy land.

Esther is much taken and swathes herself in her sleeping bag and spends most of the night in reclusive contemplation on the hillside.

Tomorrow we leave for Syria.