To Jordan with Manya

Part 1 of the Jordan for Dummies Travel Book

Where can I start from? I suppose I could sing here an ode to the joy / magic of travel; about it being a way / meaning of life and how wise / insightful I have been to choose THIS for my favorite thing in life. Or I could tell an insightful story of how I realized, at a very early age, that this would be my calling, by dreaming, say, of Caribbean sand lagoons or Chinese pagodas. Or maybe I had dreamt that I was the most beautiful Nabataean or, at least, a Roman in the Holy Lands, once upon a time…

The truth is there WAS a story that, I might say, triggered what will be our topic of conversation today, but it was extremely trivial. I say that because I know for sure that it happened to at least another hundred thousands of people around the world. And it was Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and the amazing discovery that the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, together with the temple in it, was not a Hollywood decor, but existed quite live in a Petra in Jordan. Not to mention the Appointment with Death by the beloved Agatha Christie, where a whole criminal mystery unfolds among the red sands of this same Petra.

The Treasury in Petra

Only at that time – I am referring to my first meeting with the Canyon of the Crescent Moon – we, the Bulgarians, did not travel too far outside Bulgaria. 1989 had come and socialism had gone; there was that joyful and trembling feeling in the air that only good times lay ahead. But the idea that the common Bulgarian could just emerge anywhere in the world if s/he wanted to was still far from the minds. For a long time it stayed far from the possibilities too, for visa and mostly financial reasons. Although it is just one corner of the Mediterranean and an Israel that separate us from Jordan, getting there was not easy. At least until the temporarily generous people from Ryanair launched 10 Euro flights to Aqaba.

What I’m saying is, I’d been convinced for a long time that I wouldn’t actually be able to see Petra. Ever. The fact that I succeeded, even before the good people from Ryanair, is due to completely unplanned and unexpected circumstances. My beloved partner in life and travel, Lubo, started working as a ‘shepherd’ of groups of Bulgarian workers helping other countries to build their bright future, or at least that part of the future that includes electricity supply from alternative sources, such as solar parks. His official position was Health and Safety Manager; in practice, it was a matter of chasing the workers around the clock to see if they had put on their helmets and goggles, if they were wearing socks in their special work shoes, and if they had not fallen asleep in the prayer tent.

In the Canyon of the Crescent Moon

I will open a bracket here and tell you a routine story from Lubo’s daily life. The company building the solar park was renting cars from a local supplier. Under a clause in the construction and installation contract, a certain percentage of local Jordanian workers were to be hired. This happened after the local clans decided which of them will provide the workers in question using the persuasion of fists, but that’s another story. One day, a local worker took one of the rented cars and secretly headed to the neighboring town, where his intention was to buy himself a private car from a dealer shop. He parked the company car, jumped into the candidate vehicle for a test drive and smashed directly the nearby fence. Due to the lack of personal cash supplies to compensate the seller on the spot, the latter decided to keep the company car as an insurance until the unfortunate buyer could provide the compensation.

As a final touch, our hero was arrested by the Traffic Police and temporarily disappeared from the radar of his Bulgarian employer. Now, if you think that the Site Manager or at least the person in charge of Human Resources went to take care of this mess, you are very much mistaken. They sent the one who had managed to gain trust with the locals and whom, due to the obvious inability to pronounce correctly the name “Lyubo” or even “Lubo”, they called Mr. Lobo.

One of the ‘modern’ Petra dwellers

So, Mr. Lobo started a march up the floors of the Jordanian police, which included a long wait in front of various doors, retelling the story from the beginning in front of each new official and sipping cardamom tea with French toasts. About a month later, a lawsuit was filed in which Mr. Lobo had to testify as a witness, swearing to tell the truth and nothing but the truth to a thick book in Arabic, which was produced after a hasty fuss among the court officers with the declaration it was a translation of the Bible. I will shorten the rest of the story to a successful finale in which the company car was restored, albeit a little battered. I close the brackets.

Lubo’s initial task was to periodically visit the site in Jordan, settle things up and return to the office in Bulgaria. This plan hit a snag at the moment when the site safety officer fell into insurmountable cultural and financial differences with the company’s management. The only other expert whose autobiography was presented to and approved by the Jordanian partners turned out to be the security manager himself, and so Mr. Lobo was anchored in the Middle East for nearly nine months. As an important manager’s wife, I received a plane ticket to visit him. And voila! There’s your Manya in Jordan.

No words necessary

Our first job, of course, was to calculate how much time we had – after all, the manager had to take time off for the manager’s wife visit, and decide where to spend it. By accident, we hit the perfect season to visit Jordan – the second half of October. It’s not so hot anymore, but the rainy season hasn’t started yet, and the sky over the Wadi Rum desert is clearest at the time. And we managed to pull out nine whole days, which again proved to be insufficient. Jordan is a small country, but full of wonders for any lover of travel and history.

It is also a bit expensive. Starting from the payment of the mandatory tourist visa when entering the country in the amount of 40 Jordanian dinars, or about 50 EUR today. Which is a serious reason why I don’t understand the companies that offer trips to Israel with a one-day ‘jump’ to Petra. A complete waste of the 40 dinars, when there is still so much to see in Jordan. We ourselves decided to save Israel for a separate trip, so that we can pay due attention to both countries. And I recommend to every traveler to get online and in advance, I emphasize in advance, the so-called Jordan Pass for over 40 sites, including Petra and the tourist visa.

The desert of Wadi Rum

Then came the time for the Program. For me, the Travel Program is not accidentally in capitals; the old folks rightly say “Whomever you get together with, that’s who you become”, and here I am obviously infected with the one eighth of the German blood of my Mr. Lobo. In heat or cold, storm and fire, the Program can not be sacrificed. Well, it has happened in our family history that those mean people, my own husband and kids, would boycott me at 5.30 in the morning in Berlin, when I was trying to get them out of bed to chase the train to Potsdam and the gardens of Sanssouci Palace. Which was after the four days of dragging them around the two zoos, Alexander Platz, boulevards with linden trees and so on. But these are rather exceptions.

So, the Program. It is always about cutting flesh live, because time is never ever enough. Years ago, I was on a two-week training course in Granada, which has far less than a million inhabitants, and guess what, that was the only time when I was able to see everything I wanted. And the problem is, as everyone with my symptoms will tell you, that for the true traveler, the world is too big and life too short. We just don’t have time to go back to the same places twice. That is why it is necessary to cut live flesh, which usually happens twice. The first time it happens by your decision, when the Program is made and you realize that you just can’t include the Istanbul Zoo which is on the other side of the Bosphorus, because the crossing of the same Bosphorus in both directions will take half a day. And the second time is forced on you, on the spot, when either some mean people boycott you, or you find that, in the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, there is an unannounced museum, which requires much more than the one hour which you have planned for it.

Umm ar-Rasas, the ancient city which I COULD NOT see

I will skip the painful part of the flesh-cutting for Jordan and move on to the preparation of the Baggage. It’s capitalized too, though not for the same reason Terry Pratchett described it in connection with the first ever Discworld tourist, Twoflower. I mean, my Baggage is not a chest of wise pear tree with legs and something like a brain of its own that follows its owner everywhere. But the preparation of the Baggage is extremely important and should be seriously thought over. For example, as a person who believes that round people should wear slim clothes because they look even rounder in sacks, I faced a certain problem while preparing for Jordan. There, as my companion warned me, women were not expected – round or not – to be in slim clothes. Not to mention the moment I discovered that by Jordanian standards, this same companion of mine had obscene knees! He went out for jogging in knee-long trainers, and was advised immediately to go back home and put on his long trousers. To live with someone for over 20 years and not realize that he had dangerous knees!

Mister Lobo on the road to Petra

I decided in favor of the long trousers myself as a compromise option, although the temperatures in Jordan at the end of October reached 27 degrees Celsius. I had to invest in a few baggy blouses with long sleeves, but I accepted this as a necessity so as not to check the degree of danger my forearms presented by local standards. Later on, I found that lightweight loose-fitting and long-sleeved blouses were actually a practical advantage for a full day of touring around Petra, but too late. Your Jordan Baggage must contain a mandatory head cover of some sort, preferably covering both the face and the neck. Plus at least two pairs of comfortable shoes without mesh or openings. The latter help the feet to breathe, but unfortunately they also breathe in the ubiquitous Jordanian dusty sand. It has the habit of layering between your feet and the shoe soles, and the rest is done by the laws of friction.

In my case, the Baggage also contained some unusual items, such as about 5 pounds of smoked bacon. This was in order to supply the Bulgarian workers’ community in a Muslim country like Jordan, where pork is a rare commodity. Mind that I was in the better position; another misfortunate passenger had to carry 25 kilograms of Bulgarian homemade brandy we call Rakia. Good thing he was traveling with the Turkish Airlines then, and they had a rather liberal luggage policy so there was some space left for a couple of pants in his suitcase.

I don’t always listen to my own advice

The flights used by the whole Bulgarian workforce happened in the evening. They took off at 9.30 PM from Sofia, and then hung for long hours at the Istanbul Airport before the flight to Amman. When I landed in Istanbul and decided to dose off at the departure gate rather than just anywhere, I initially laughed at the luminous info board which claimed that I had to walk for 20 minutes. To the gate, not to the info board. In fact, I walked for 30 minutes and it wasn’t funny. Good thing the suitcase with the bacon and the baggy clothes was checked-in directly to Jordan. I will not describe the approximately four midnight hours I spent at the airport, I will only say that there was a moment when I was considering doing the 30-minute walk to the arrivals hall and back, just to kill time. This should show you how desperate I was.

At the end, the long wait was over and about a ton of coffee later, we took off and then landed. At the Queen Alia International Airport in the capital of Jordan, Amman. And then it started!