Jordan photos

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Smelly Delhi

Delhi, India

Overwealming and chaotic, yet fun and enjoyable - that's about the best way to describe my experience of Delhi.

My first day in India was to be a gentle introduction I decided, as there was a LOT to take in. Once my Couchsurfing host Nishu had gone to his exam I rested in the safe confines of his flat for a while, just to get over the first hour of chaos - it had been a lot to take in. I'd not eaten or drunk since the night before so after a couple of hours I took my first tender steps outside to attempt to find somewhere, but had no idea where to go, what was safe to eat, and where was safe to walk. After strolling through the hospital grounds where Nishu's doctors accommodation is located, I found the hospital snack shop and bought a sandwich with a vegetable patty inside, and a litre of water... all for £0.40. Wow, this country really is cheap.

Dr Nishu, my host

 Make do bed for a few days

Nishu got back mid afternoon and we went to the mess - the staff canteen which ironically is a very unclean, ahem, mess. Cobwebs everywhere, dirty floors, and about four pigeons nesting on the sills near the ceiling and occasionally flying around. It's a good job therefore that the food was superb - Roti's (bread) with subzi (curried potato), Dahl (spicy soup) and an omelette, guess what, also spicy! No hotter than I've had before though. Around four pm we walked to the main road and I then had my first encounter with a cycle rickshaws ridden by a guy, I guess, in his seventies, towing two of us with gears that were so high that he occasionally had to get off and push just to get us going! Nishu was doing the leading, and he then took me to an area called Chandny Chowk, where Nishu hailed another cycle rickshaw to give us a tour of the area. Now this place was like nothing I've ever seen before. Even busier and wilder than the scene that greeted me when I first arrived. First of all there were people everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Motorbikes, cars, lorries, rickshaws, bullocks towing carts, cycle rickshaws, stray dogs. Then the people carrying things on their shoulder, beggars kneeling on the street, homeless people lying on the central reservation. And on top of this, people selling everything you could imagine. I heard, perhaps unreliably that this is the busiest street in the world. Must be one of them at least.

The next morning Nishu disappeared off at nineish to the hospital, and I decided to stay in the room and open my Rough Guide for the first time, to read a bit about India in general and plan a bit of a route for the next few weeks. I also had a few days of the blog to catch up on writing - it's pretty easy to get behind and start forgetting things! I went to lunch at the mess with Nishu, and noticed the food was bought out by a boy of around twelve. I quizzed Nishu on it, and as we hear in the media at home sometimes, it is reasonably common - typically for a few rural boys who's parents can't afford to look after them apparently. Now I, probably like most of you can't get my head around this, and I'm surprised that a group of educated Doctors accept it as well, but guess it's just normal and not thought about. After lunch on my own, I braved going a bit further for a stroll around the local area. This time I saw goats grazing the verge, a horse and cart moving stuff, people cutting hair and shaving beards on the roadside and bikes overloaded with long lengths of steel amongst other things.

Nishu finished work around half four, and along with a female neighbor who's name I forget, took me out for a real experience at the local night market as he wanted to buy some fish for a party the next day. The level of hygiene was poor beyond belief, though I had seen similar in Cambodia a few years ago so it wasn't too shocking - the photos do the talking on this one. It was interesting to watch the way they descale and cut the fish, using a huge fixed knife sticking up in front of them. WARNING! BLOOD AND GUTS TALK FOLLOWS! More eye opening though was the barbaric way in which they killed the chickens. These chickens, which are in an awful condition are kept live in tiny cages for the customer to select, then are slaughtered there and then. The first 'normal' way is to just chop the head off, no wringing. The second 'halal' way for Muslim customers though, is to half cut the throat, throw them in a barrel, then let them bleed to death slowly - you could hear them flapping round for a good twenty to thirty seconds before they finally stopped. It was quite a sight, but totally barbaric, torturous and cruel in my opinion.

Night market

Most doctors work six days a week in India, so on Saturday I headed into town to do a bit of touristy stuff, going to one of Delhi's main sights - the Red Fort - a huge read sandstone complex with many buildings, temples and parks inside, and had a guard blow his whistle (old school) and get quite angry at me when I had almost reached the centre of the complex as I'd neglected to buy a ticket; whoops! An accident of course. There was a small but good museum in there as well on India's struggle for independence from British rule. In case you didn't realise; we shamefully claimed India as our own territory from about 1600 to 1949 and caused much long lasting damage in all sorts of ways, which is partly why our Government has allowed so many to emigrated to Britain since then. Ninety thousand Indians died fighting as part of the British WWII campaign as well. Something to think about next time you hear someone being racist or criticising our immigration policy. 

Anyways, so much happened in five days in Delhi, there'll be a part II soon. This could be a regular thing in India...
 

Petra to Delhi

Petra, Jordan to Delhi, India via Sharajah, United Arab Emirates

I'm in India, and am sat here writing this in the doctors accommodation of a mental hospital in Delhi! I'll explain later. From from what I've seen so far though, the whole population should be in the hospital - it is truly the craziest place I've ever been.

The journey here began in Petra, Jordan on Wednesday. I had to get to the airport for midday, which in theory meant a very early bus, a taxi, then another bus, until to my relief the hostel owner told me one of their staff was taking some people directly to the airport, and offered me a good price. I shared the jorney with a Canadian-German couple who lived in Dubai and were cabin crew for Emirates, and they shared their stories - big salaries, an opulent lifestyle, but a hot, wasteful and very fake city they basically said. We got to Amman airport - freshly built this year by a British architect - in plenty of time thanks to a pretty nippy driver, and I sat outside in the cold morning sun and relaxed for a bit.

Amman airport

It was time to say goodbye to Jordan, after two weeks there. It's a small country, and in many ways there isn't that much there, but what is there is superb. I know it's a cliche, but the people are so welcoming and friendly - people would often come up to you and chat, and I've never heard such use of the word 'welcome'. You're welcome here, you're welcome to that, welcome to Jordan, welcome welcome welcome... And people were kind - in Amman, a guy walking past us with his family was eating a bag of biscuits, and offered us some as we passed. And it felt so safe. Unlike the surrounding countries of Syria, Iraq and Egypt; Jordan has been at peace for a long time, and despite effectively being a dictatorship; survived the Arab Spring a couple of years back because on the whole it's pretty well run. And a bit of a hidden gem in the region really.

A few random notes on Jordan I made and haven't mentioned before:

-The Muslim call to prayer is broadcast five times a day from all mosques on loudspeakers and can be heard across the area. People often down tools at the moment and pray.

-The Arabic language is written from right to left, is completely incomprehensible to non-speakers, and is spoken in all Arabian and Most North African countries.

-Women are nearly always covered up; generally just with a headscarf but sometimes almost everything.

-Speed bumps are everywhere in random places like on dual carriageways.

-There's a massive contrast between rich and poor, but the poor rarely appear to be in absolute poverty.

-The only natural resource Jordan extracts is phosphorous, so most of their money is made from general services and tourism.

-Hotel bookings at the last place I stayed were down by nearly fourty percent I was told, because foreigners are scared by the troubles in Syria. Yet in reality those troubles have in no way affected Jordan except some refugees spilling over the border.

To get to India, I had to go via Sharjah and wait there for six hours - a city in the Emirates, around twenty miles from Dubai. The flight interestingly started with a Muslim prayer for a safe journey being shown on the in-flight video screen! Once landed in Sharjah, the flight attendant told me I couldn't leave the airport but it sounded like an opinion more than a fact, so I checked with one immigration official, then another, and found it was fine as long as I got my ticket re-issued, which I later did with no hassle. Me being me, I wasn't going to just sit in an almost windowless air-conditioned airport lounge, when there was a rich and mysterious country outside so I got my passport stamped and went for a wander. The first thing that hit me was the heat - despite being autumn, the mid-afternoon sun was still nearly 35 degrees. I didn't really have enough time to go into the city so made do with a stroll outside, and with the airport isolated by main roads, the best I could do was walk around the grounds, so the experience was a bit limited but worth doing anyway. A young guy who worked there, in full traditional Arab dress spoke to me for a minute, then I sat down on an area of grass to read, watching the stream of posh cars coming and going.

Sharjah airport

I boarded the next flight, and crowd was different this time - very few Arabs, but a whole lot of Indians. judging by the size of their luggage, most of whom had been working in Dubai - Indians do a lot of the jobs the Arabs won't apparently. Waiting to take off, I started getting nervous, and I don't get nervous often. It wasn't the thought of flight itself, but India. It's a huge diverse country and I'd heard so many horror stories from friends who have visited, from the media and from books. Would I love it or hate it? Is it all poverty or a mixture? Would it be safe? Would I get ill straight away?! I'd soon find all these things out.

We touched down in Delhi at 2am - not the greatest time to arrive in such a place but I didn't have much choice. But I was finally here, in the country that had intreagued me for many years. After getting my bag, I went to the cash machine and took out 500 rupees, thinking it was £50. In fact it was just £5! One Indian rupee works out as one British penny. It wasn't a problem though - it's so unbelievably cheap here, it lasted me the rest of the day. I then found a few seats in the arrivals lounge, laid across them and had a sleep for two or three hours.

The smog of Dehli that never disappears 

At 6.30am it was time to leave the security of the airport, into the real world of Delhi. I took the very smart and modern airport train into the centre of town, then walked down the steps into the Metro station where I experienced India properly for the first time. People jumping the ticket queue, people pushing my rucksack to get to the turnstiles, airport-style security checks just to get on the subway, and Police armed with machine guns running the show. I boarded the packed train which soon left the tunnel into the open air, and for the first time I saw what I thought was the slums and my jaw dropped. It was so densely packed and poorly built, but in fact I later learnt that this wasn't the slums but just Old Delhi - the original and quite overcrowded original part of the city. What would the slums be like in that case?!

Rather than stay in a grotty hostel, which most cheaper places are in Delhi, thought I'd get an insiders view on India and stay with a local, and so a few days before managed to arrange another stay through the Coushsurfing website. My host was a guy called Nisith Kumar, generally known as Nishu - and on the train journey he sent me a text saying 'I have to leave for my exam, I'll see you in five hours'. This was not good. I'd be stranded In a poor area until then with nowhere to go and nothing to do, but it was my own fault for underestimating how long it would take to get across the city and being late. I got to the Metro stop near his place and then received another text saying as I was near, he'd actually have just enough time to pick me up. Phew.

I left the confines of public transport, and for the first time walked into the total chaos of Old Delhi. In the next half hour, I saw rickshaws being ridden the wrong way up dual carriageway, everyone beeping and dodging round each other, a man with a stick beating the hell out of passing pedal rickshaws and letting down their tyres, two monkeys casually riding on the back of a guys moped and old ladies begging. Nishu then arrived on his motorbike, which I wasn't expecting, and ushered me onto the back, which given his lack of time nor any other options I did. With no helmets (standard here) we set off weaving and dodging around all the other vehicles, and suddenly I felt my cap blow off in the wind. I was too terrified at that point to do anything but hold on tight but told him about it at the end of the street. He turned and went back but someone had obviously I nabbed it straight away. Hope it's gone to a good home! I told him afterwards there was no way I was riding pillion without a helmet again though, so don't worry!

The chaos that awaited me. Note the guy with the stick in bottom right!

We continued on for another mile and got to his flat - my home for a few days in as mentioned earlier; the doctors accommodation of a mental hospital! I knew beforehand that he was a medical professional, but not that he was a psychiatrist and living in such a location, so it was a bit of a surprise but in reality not a problem in any way. Nishu had to get to his exam so shot off, and so I tried, unsuccessfully to get a couple more hours sleep - I'd decided it was to be a day of acclimatisation. Which was certainly to be needed for the next stage of the trip.

Wonder in Petra

Petra, Jordan

Think back, back to the eighties, to the Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade movie. When you see the photos below you might recognise the ancient city carved into the hillside. That city is not a fictional facade, made just for film, but a place in the mountains of Jordan known as Petra. But that is but a small claim to fame, when you consider Petra is considered one of the Seven Wonders Of The World.

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For once in Jordan, the journey to get there was pretty straightforward, using a minibus pretty much door to door. On the journey I sat in front of an Australian/Danish couple in their sixties who turned out to be very experienced travellers. The guy ran a tour bus company in the seventies that did a famous route from London to Kathmandu; the hippie trail passing through the now off-limits Syria, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan amongst others. He'd also lived in Australia, India and Indonesia so it was fascinating to hear some of his stories. 

Once in Wadi Musa - the town by Petra that hosts the hoards of hotels, cafés and tacky souvenir shops, I dropped my bags at the hostel, and charged my electrics. Three days in the desert had flattened first my camera, then sports camera, phone and finally tablet. And there's little point being at one of the seven wonders without a camera. 

Around midday I walked down the hill to the park entrance, bought a two day pass, then down the long dirt track into the ancient city. The valley started wide, then slowly evolved into a very narrow and deep canyon which was stunning in itself, and walked for another mile or so until I turned the corner and caught my first glimpse of Petra's most iconic building - The Treasury (pictured).

I'm not really much of an ancient history buff to be honest, but the sight of the well preserved and beautiful two-thousand year old building, carved into the sandstone walls is enough to stir anyone, and I was pretty blown away. I continued a couple of miles right to the other side of the city, up hundreds of steps to the Monastery (below). In many ways, this building was even more stunning, and because of the long and steep hike it was without the masses of tourists I'd seen earlier. 

I headed to a small local restaurant near the hostel that evening and grabbed a seat. After hearing me talking to the owner, a lady on the next table asked me a question about the area. We got talking and they invited me to join them - two English ladies in their forties (I guess, they're probably reading this so hope I'm right!) and a very camp Russian guy called Sergei whom they'd picked up on their way to Petra. I've not spent much time with English people for a while (except my brother of course) so it was good to chat and hear their stories, with Sergei provided some odd but amusing anecdotes as well.

Day two of Petra started slower than I wanted, as I desperately had to book my flight to India... desperately as it was for the next day! I'd been watching the prices for a few weeks, and knew they would stay stable to the last day, so left it late for flexibility. In fact, the price dropped £20 the day I bought so it was well worth waiting. After this, it was the long walk back down to the remains of Petra city centre, for another hike up one side of the valley to look down on the treasury, then the other side looking at the various remains of caves, carvings temples, shops, burial chambers, and water channels along the way. 

Ancient buildings carved into the cliffs

Throughout the park there were hundreds of the local Bedouin people selling rides on donkeys, horses and camels, as well as tea and souvenirs from makeshift stalls - no matter whether you were on the Main Street, or two miles up a mountain. This was a bit of a rousing issue - on the selfish side, people pay a huge amount (over £50 for a day ticket) to see Petra, and want to enjoy it without being constantly pestered. But on the other hand, they were clearly very poor and desperate for the money, and had every right to be there trying to earn a basic living however they could. As I approach India, I'm sure there'll be many more such situations, and likely much more extreme.

Petra was stunning, but strangely I wasn't quite as moved by it as I expected. I'm not sure whether it was the hype, the nature of what it is, or maybe I've become a bit desensitised to amazing things, having seen so much recently. You can only have so much of a good thing as they say. But having walked over ten miles both days, Petra was worth both the money, and the tired legs.

Lots of Rum

Wadi Rum, Jordan

They often say the hardest things in life are the most rewarding, and in a strange and very simplistic sort of way that sort of applies to Wadi Rum, or the challenge of getting here in the first place. I'm referring to something quite intoxicating, but not a drink. It's an area in the Southern Jordanian desert with very unique scenery; a mixture of towering mountains, scrub, white sand and red sand, many different types of rock and various weird formations - at times it looks a bit like being on Mars. Laurence of Arabia spent a lot of time here, and the sixties movie was also shot here so it's got some history.

And it's one of the most amazing places I've ever been.

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Getting here in the first place wasn't the most straightforward, with too much choice in terms of accomodation and tours, too little information, and too many rip-off merchants doing business. After sending loads of emails, I finally booked up a suitable desert camp, said goodbye to my Couchsuring host Mohammed, and yet again braved the Jordanian transport system. This time I had to take a taxi to the bus station in Aqaba, then a bus twenty miles north, getting out at a junction in the desert. A couple of friendly Jordanian tour guides were there waiting there for their group to arrive - we chatted for a minute and they kindly offered me some water and chocolate. From this junction, I was told earlier to wait for a lift of some sort, and ended up flagging down a passing taxi. He dropped me a few miles on at the Wadi Rum Park Centre, I paid the entry fee, and looked around for another lift to Rum village four miles up the road, which ended up being with a couple of French girls who were leaving the park, but kindly dropped me there anyway. I was then picked up by the tour company, taken to their office for a while, and finally transferred into a knackered old pickup for the final ten miles out across the desert to the tented camp where I was staying; all that to cover about forty miles! Nothing in Jordan is simple.

However once out in the desert I was awestruck, and the hassle just drifted away. It was absolutely beautiful, and didn't take long to escape the camp into the desert to complete peace and solitude, and sit down and watch the sunset. It was unbelievably quiet, so much so that for the first time, I realised that I have mild tinnitus! Possibly from going diving a few days before, possibly from years of loud music...

The next morning I woke up at half six and climbed the hill behind the camp to watch the sunrise. Because of the mountains in the way it was a bit of an anticlimax in that it got light, but the sun didn't apper until an hour later! After breakfast, consisting of the local flatbread accompanied by cheese spread, olive oil with herbs, and honey (no not together, that would just be odd) it was time for one of the daily jeep tours of the park. Six of us set off bouncing around in the back of another knackered old pickup - a couple of Japanese girls, a German guy and two Brazillian lads. The local driver took us to some of the typical sights - first a spring, second, a towering canyon where the rock walls looked like a melting chocolate cake. We then continued on to see some big sand dunes, some ancient rock carvings, the ruins of an old house and finally an arch formed by many years of erosion, where we precariously scrambled up the side then walked along the narrow ridge over the top of it. Back at the camp, another nice sunset whilst sat on top of a rock was of course obligatory.

With a clear sky and no light pollution, a group of four of us later grabbed some of the thick blankets from one of the tents, and clambered up the rocky hill behind the camp for some stargazing. The full moon clearly lit up all the surrounding mountains and desert, and with the help of the excellent Google sky map app on the phone, we managed to pick out some constellations and found we could clearly see Venus and Saturn. With no sign whatsoever of human existence in sight, the area felt a million miles from anywhere. Wet as it sounds, it was a pretty magical experience.

I'd only planned to stay two nights, but as I was so taken by the scenery, awoke on Sunday a little torn whether to stay or go. I reluctantly decided to go and went to get a lift from the desert camp to Rum village, to find out that the only bus of the day away from there was cancelled and the only way out was a taxi. Decision made, I was having another day here. I spoke to a couple of the others staying at the camp, we decided to do some hiking, so with Eloise; a photographer from France and a German journalist called Florian; set off to the mountain of Jabbal Qatar. It looked quite close, but the wide open space was deceptive so it was probably a good couple of miles away, and we clambered up the steep rocky slopes to find a spring, spotting some ancient rock carvings on the way and had lunch and a good chat. Continuing through a steep pass between the mountains, we realised what we were walking on was a very well preserved ancient riverbed, which through millions of years of tectonic changes had been forced from the desert below, up into the mountains. My secondary school geography lessons all came flooding back! The walk ended up being way longer than we expected - a good ten miles - and about two thirds of the way through we were nearly out of water. In a desert, on a warm sunny day; rookie error. I didn't quite experience the dehydration and hallucinations you see in desert movies, but can relate to them a little better now!

Wadi Rum has without doubt, been one none the highlights of this trip. Hard to get to, but well worth the effort.

Surfing couches, diving seas

Aqaba, Jordan

Couchsurfing is exactly as it sounds - people let you stay with them for free, and you let others stay with you at a later date. It's a great way to see a place in a whole different way, meet some interesting people and learn a lot about the real country. I've tried to use it a number of times on this trip, directly contacting a number of people in different places but to no avail. However, other people also have the option of inviting you to stay, and one evening sat in 'the cafe' in Amman I recieved a simple invitation message from 'Mohammed AlShafey', which simply said 'you are welcome'. I was intrigued. He had  information about himself on his profile page, but no-one had indicated they've stayed with him before so still the mystery - it's a bit like eBay in that you build a reputation over time. I replied and learnt a bit more, and got enough of a good enough feeling to go for it.

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I really enjoyed the bus journey from Amman to his place in Aqaba; a city in the south of Jordan on the Red Sea; it was often pretty plain, but a real contrast to other countries I've visited on this trip. Two hundred odd miles of desert, indispersed with small villages, people selling petrol by the road, Police checkpoints and finally a descent down to the Dead Sea through towering mountains with stripy lines running through them. I got to Aqaba around five, expecting to walk to my host's house when a guy smiled and said 'Hi Steve' - Mohammed had guessed which bus I'd arrived on and come to collect me - a great start. He's a thirty-five year old Head of Strategic Planning for the regional water board; quite a responsibility in a country where it doesn't really rain. He has a fiancé who lives in America but he lives in a suburban semi, with his Mum occupying the other side, and I was given a sofa bed for a few days. We sat down and started chatting, and it soon became apparent he's a very intelligent and deep thinking guy. He's studied both Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience in the States, and has loads of equally challenging interests.

We talked water, personality profiling, travel, religion, Jordan, hiking in India and a thousand other subjects, and I can't say I was able to grasp everything he explained, but had a good go. We suddenly realised it was nearly eleven pm and we hadn't actually eaten, so went into town for a chicken wrap, Jordanian style, and he encouraged me to grab a beer. I was thinking we were going home to eat and drink, but instead there was a change of plan, and we sat by the beach. So I'm in a Muslim country where alcohol is strictly against the religion, and there I am in public drinking a can of strong local beer wrapped in a plastic bag to try and hide it; not the done thing and very trampish of me, but no one seemed to notice thankfully.

The next day I hired a snorkel, got dropped a few miles down the road to an excellent local spot known as 'The Japanese Garden', and waded into the Red Sea for the first time. I've not snorkelled for a few years, and forgot what a great experience it is; just quietly floating around looking at brightly colored and funky shaped coral reef, with tropical fish darting between. Hours passed without me really noticing and the light started dying. Watching the sunset, I looked around and realaised what a unique location this was - I could clearly see the coastline of Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia, all of which was within ten miles; not every day you can say that. 

The Japanese Garden

I'd planned to catch up on a few jobs that evening, but once again Mohammed and I ended up talking til late, with the only interruption being his Mum dropping in a meal she'd prepared for me; a dish called Dolma (actually Turkish) - stuffed grape leaves, stuffed corgette and stuffed aubegine with slow cooked lamb. A very sweet lady and a delicious meal. 

Wednesday morning, I woke up feeling pretty excited, for I was off to do my first ever scuba dive. The Red Sea is known to be a good spot for it, and the instructor decided we were going to a spot called 'the tank'. It was a quiet day for them obviously, as it ended up being just me and him - a guy from Peru. On the shore he set up the equipment and I put on the wetsuit and flippers. We waded in to shallow waters, and he started explaining the basic principles of diving, which all seemed quite straightforward. He then had me doing exercises by just putting my face under, and it was then time 
for the main event...

That moment you first start descending and realise that your life depends on the air regulator - the mouthpiece - is a strange and unnatural one. It's very hard to trust this abnormal way of breathing, and I naturally felt quite tense, seeing lots of bubbles pass in front of my mask as I breathed in and out heavily. Once I settled a bit we started going down, and I saw the tank for the first time - not a container as I expected, but an actual old army tank. After going back to surface to check all was OK, we descended for the second time, much deeper than the five meter depth of the tank this time, floating around the large chunks of reef on the sea bed. The sensation felt like a cross between skydiving and swimming combined. At our lowest depth, I craned my neck and looked back to the surface - surreal yet very beautiful. 

The instructor checked my tank levels a couple of times, and indicated the second time that we should slowly start ascending, using the last bit of air to go back to shore just under the surface. On shore we chatted, and he told me people normally go to about 9 meters below, and their air lasts about 20 minutes because of nerves; I'd gone down 17 meters for 42 minutes; sorry to boast but I was pretty pleased with that! I loved the experience, and very much hope to have the opportunity to go again sometime. 

Video of the dive - click to watch

That evening back at Mohammed's we were chatting away when he had a phone call from a friend. 'Do you fancy going to an engagement party?'. Not every day you get such an opportunity, so why not. It was at a local function room, and it seems the way it worked was for males sit outside, and the females inside. Sat on the pavement, I met three Scandinavian couples who also happened to be there by sheer chance through friends of friends, so had a good to them for a while. The father of the engaged couple then came around and gave us all a piece of cake and a can of fizz, which was kind considering we were essentially gate crashing. We weren't there all that long but it was good to see anyway. I also learnt afterwards from Mohammed, that in Jordan it's common for parents to repeatedly set up dates for their children, until they find a suitable partner and also once you get engaged you sign a contract, but should one of you decide to break it off the male has to pay a settlement, like during a divorce.

I was supposed to leave on the Thursday, but had too much to sort out and was feeling stressed - finding a tour for later that day, finding a flight for next week, sorting out some more Couchsurfing and help exchange placements, and getting up to date with photos and the blog. I shouldn't be getting stressed, it seems ridiculous given my circumstance, but things don't happen by themselves. I'm not afraid to say I made a phone call back to base at that point, to get some perspective on things - traveling on your own isn't always plain sailing, and you sometimes don't see things in proportion. It helped, and I decided to stay one more day to get things up to date.

The next morning after sorting a few more jobs, I said goodbye to Mohammed and headed off, ready for an exciting three nights of camping in the desert.

Cheeeeeese

En route to diving

Blobobooobloobblobb

Dead

Dead Sea, Jordan

I think it's fair to say everyone's heard of the Dead Sea, be it for the fact it's the lowest place on earth, or that it's the saltiest sea. Or just cause it's got a memorable name.

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Its somewhere I've always quietly fancied going, but to get there from Amman was less than straightforward. You would think there'd be a bus to it since it's a big tourist destination and only thirty miles from the capital city, but oh no. It entailed a taxi to a bus station nearby, a local bus thirty miles to a small village in the middle of nowhere, then thanks to helpful lad on the bus, an unlicensed taxi (not something I'd normally do) a few more miles to the Dead Sea in a car full of locals, with a driver somehow managing to nip on, smoke and use the phone at the same time.

Once there, I got my togs on and went for a dip. Initially up to knee height the water feels no different to normal, but the moment your feet leave the ground, whoosh, your body is pulled up towards the surface from under you, kind of like what happens normally when you try and push a ball underwater. It was a very peculiar experience, but really enjoyable. However, if you've got any sorts of cuts or grazes it stings like mad; I discovered grazes that I had no idea I actually had!

Because I could, I spent over an hour just floating motionless on my back reading my book just like in the photo, and probably spent nearly three hours in the water altogether cause it was so novel. Being extremely salty, you need to have a shower as soon as you come out through. It was interesting watching others in the water, especially some of the local Muslim women, who due to the religion and traditions go in fully clothed which is definitely not a sight I've seen before.

Did someone say juxtaposition?

To get back to Amman was as chaotic as getting there. First I had to find a taxi and do a lot of negotiating, he then beeped at potential customers as we drove and stopped to pick them up on the dual carriageway, as you do. As he pulled out he started going into the path of a bus which beeped at him, then that drivers hat blew out his window. My driver then stopped, reversed up the side of the road and got out to retrieve the hat, then chased the bus, beeped at him, and threw the cap back into the road so the bus driver could stop. It was as you might expect a bizarre and hilarious ordeal.

He dropped me a few miles away at a rural village bus stop ready for what I understood to be the last bus of the day, told me to wait with the others from the taxi who were also going back to Amman, and sped off. The destination on the buses was written in Arabic so I'd had no chance without a local. One of them spoke a bit of English so we chatted a bit, until he told me that whilst chatting, he hadn't noticed our bus pass us and we'd missed it! I was thinking that's it, I've missed the last bus of the day and am stranded in rural Jordan. He reckoned though that there would be another one in probably be an hour. Fortunately he was right, and after about forty minutes one did turn up and I eventually found myself back in Amman. Phew. All that just to go for a swim!

Sheep on the road

That night I met up with my pal Malte again, and along with a girl called Betsy who we met in the hostel who's from New York, went out to 'the cafe' for more tea. The three of us had a fascinating chat, on politics, healthcare, travels and jobs amongst other things. It turns out she works for the Clinton foundation in New York, and has met Bill Clinton on a number of occasions, so it was great to learnt a bit about him and his work as well. The people you meet eh!

Dead Sea

Lumps of salt along the shoreline

Amman beach. Confusingly nothing to do with the city of Amman