By Graham Howe
Saturday Star Travel
September 01, 2007

Roman Amphitheatre, Amman

"This pilot is like a cowboy riding a camel," chuckles Fares al Sukhon, a fellow passenger on the flight from Cairo into Queen Alia Airport in Amman. Flying into the wild air turbulence of the khamsin – the dry and hot seasonal wind which blows across Arabia from the great western desert – it does feel as if we’re riding a bucking bronco.

"Are you Jordanian?" I ask my neighbour. "Yes, my mother is Syrian, my father Bedouin and my wife Lebanese," replies the advocate from Amman. "You know, one hundred years ago, Jordan, Palestine, Israel and Iraq didn’t even exist. They are modern states." We exchange business cards as our plane descends into the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, after promising to meet again over coffee sometime.

We went looking for adventure on the King's Highway, the trans-Jordanian route travelled by spice caravans, merchants, pilgrims, crusaders, armies and explorers for over two thousand years. This ancient thoroughfare has been known as the frankincense road, the royal road, the Via Nova Traiana (under Emperor Trajan), the Sultan's road and the road to Mecca. Winding along a line of freshwater springs on a ridge of mountains through the Jordan Rift Valley, the King's Highway links the Sea of Galilee, the Dead Sea and the Red Sea.

The King's Highway runs through some of the finest classical sites of antiquity, passing through the old Biblical kingdoms of Ammon, Moab and Edom. We would set out from Hadrian's triumphal arch at the Roman city of Jarash, heading south via the sanctuary of Mt Nebo where Moses was shown the promised land, onto the crusader castle of Karak, the pink city of Petra and Wadi Rum, forever linked to Lawrence of Arabia.

We are following in the footsteps of famous travellers like Jean-Louis Burckhardt (who "rediscovered" Petra), Richard Burton, Victorian artists David Roberts and Edward Lear, Mark Twain and Wilfred Thesiger who shared a fascination with the exotic land of Arabian Nights. We came dressed as modern tourists in shorts, baseball caps and t-shirts - unlike a few earlier western explorers who travelled in mufti disguised as beggars, pilgrims and sheiks. We’d forgotten to bring the marmalade - "very refreshing and easily carried" according to WH Bartlett, a traveller to these parts who reckons a clean shirt is "not without its moral effect in the wilderness."

I came across one of the earliest references to the King's Highway is in the Book of Numbers (21: 17) in the Bible when the Israelites are refused passage through Edom. They said, "We will go by the king's highway. We will not turn to the right hand nor to the left, until we have passed thy borders." On the road from the airport terminal to Amman, we pass alluring signs to Damascus, Jerusalem, Riyadh and Baghdad - neighbouring destinations on Jordan's frontiers with Syria, Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. We do not turn to the right or left – and stick to the itinerary.

A spiritual cradle, Jordan lies in the holy land at the crossroads of the Middle East. Tayseer al Jamal, a Jordanian of Palestinian descent, would be our driver and dragoman (an assistant and interpreter) on the King's Highway. He explains, "I was conceived in Palestine and born in Amman when my mother fled to Jordan during the war with Israel in 1967." Before we set out, the speed king of the King's Highway asks, "Would you like to look at the engine? It’s very powerful. We can go fast, fast."

"We're not in any hurry. We take it slow, slow," I order. "You're the boss," he replies, somewhat crestfallen.

Sprawled across twenty hills, Amman is a modern Arabian city with broad boulevards and high-rise apartment blocks painted in white limestone. "Welcome to Philadelphia," quips our informative driver, alluding to the city named by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, one of many conquerors including Pompey, Herod, Alexander the Great, Saladin, the Mamlukes and the Ottomans. In 1200 BC, Amman was renamed Rabbath Ammon, the great city of the Ammonites, the descendants of Abraham's nephew Lot in the Old Testament. That's enough of a history lesson from me.

Roman Amphitheatre, Amman

Jabal al-Qala, the citadel of Amman, is the heart of the ancient city. Rising 850 metres above sea-level, the ruined terraces afford magnificent views of the modern city. It stood at the crossroads of the ancient pilgrim route between Damascus and Mecca. You could spend hours in the citadel museum which houses a great collection of artefacts from Antiquity - including some of the oldest Neolithic stone statues in the world and the Dead Sea Scrolls inscribed in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on goatskins found by a Bedouin shepherd in jars in a cave near Qumran near the Dead Sea in 1948.

We headed down to the amphitheatre, one of Amman's grand classical monuments - facing modern street cafes which now fill the old forum. Completed in the second century AD by Marcus Aurelius, the Roman theatre has excellent acoustics, still keeps the sunlight out of the eyes of an audience of 6000 and is used for dance, theatre and music today. Climbing the grand stone staircases is a great way to work off jet-lag before visiting the museums of folklore with their magnificent Byzantine mosaics, Karagoz ("black-eyes") shadow puppets and Bedouin costumes.

Roman ruins at Jarash

Travelling through olive groves, lemon orchards and vineyards, we reached the ruins of Jarash, one of the best-preserved provincial Roman cities in the Middle East. Two thousand years ago, Gerasa (its original name) was one of the ten cities of the Decapolis in the Roman Province of Syria. You could spend an entire day strolling around the huge complex of temples, theatres, baths, chapels, a synagogue, markets and the Cardo - a long colonnaded street. We were amazed to come across a highlander regiment of the Jordanian army in full dress blowing the bagpipes and banging drums, demonstrating the magnificent acoustics in the old Roman theatre.

Jordanian Highlander Regiment, Jarash

A silly-looking tout wearing the attire of a Roman foot-soldier handed out pamphlets at the old hippodrome in Jarash. Posing for snapshots with the tourists, he shouted out, "See the spectacle of authentic seven lap Roman chariot races, witness exciting gladiator fights. Watch Roman legionaries do battle! Sit where the Romans sat, see what the Romans saw!" We'd missed the morning show so we went on our way. The organisers claim it is the only place in the world where the glory of Rome is re-enacted.

Classical tourism is a real crowd-puller. Have you ever eavesdropped on a jaded guide babbling on about dates and dynasties? They field inane questions, like, "Is it a temple or a tomb? Is it Greek or Roman? How old did you say? Did slaves pile all those stones up? Where did the ordinary folk sleep?" I'm not the kind of package tourist who traipses after a guide with a flag or umbrella, fidgeting in the sun and feigning interest while waiting for the next tea or toilet break. Sometimes the entire tourist group wear identical t-shirts so they don’t get lost.

Hadrian's Triumphal Arch, Jarash

Leaving via Hadrian's Arch, a massive monument, we set out south. Inspired by the Roman chariot race at Jarash, our speeding driver is soon stopped and fined by the traffic police. A furious dispute follows. Chatting on his mobile, consulting our itinerary and the map, twiddling radio stations while driving over a mountain pass, is all in a day's work for this driver. He proclaims proudly, "I drive tourists for years. I never make accident - inshallah. I have ten eyes in my head. I see everything."

The King's Highway swings south to Madaba in the hotly contested Biblical land of Moab which changed hands between the Israelites, King Mesha and Romans. The town of Madaba is famous for its giant mosaic map of the Holy Land set in the Greek Orthodox Church of St George. Pilgrims come from all over the world to see the 6th century map which depicts "the territories of the tribes of Israel" and all the major Christian shrines and churches, from Bethlehem and Jaffa to Jerusalem to Jericho.

Your religious identity is more important than your country of origin in this town of churches and mosques. "Are you Christian or Jewish?" asks a polite Mohamed Saqar, a Palestinian confectioner who sells us a kilo of wonderful sticky honey, almond, cheese and pistachio pastries from his alluring corner sweet-shop in Madaba.

Moses Memorial Church, Mt Nebo

The green west and east banks of the Jordan River are contested terrain. We ascend the steep road to Moses Memorial Church on Mt Nebo, a place of pilgrimage perched high above the Dead Sea and the Jordan Rift Valley. The Old Testament records Moses was shown the Promised Land from these heights. "And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo that is Pisgah, over against Jericho. And the Lord showed him all the land of Gilead, unto Dan." (Deuteronomy 34:1). How I wish I'd paid more attention in religious studies at school all those years ago.

Broken Roman milestones from the Via Nova Traiana lie scattered on the hillside. We looked down at a fertile landscape dotted with tall cedars, lemon and olive groves and villages. We gazed at bucolic scenes of goats, sheep and shepherds depicted in the magnificent mosaics inside the church. The west bank lies at our feet – in the distance, the towns of Jericho, Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah.

Egera, a pilgrim who visited in 4AD wrote, "From here you can see most of Palestine. We were also shown the place where Lot's wife had her memorial. The pillar (of salt) itself has been submerged in the Dead Sea." And when Peter the Iberian visited Mt Nebo in 5AD, he wrote, "It is a place of cure for both the soul and for the body, a place of refuge for all those who come here from all places." Centuries later, Pope John Paul II made a pilgrimage to Mt Nebo.

Wadi Rum

Leaving Madaba, the King's Highway passes a field of megalithic dolmen tombs, Ma'in (Ba'al Ma'on in the Bible), Herod's Palace, Moabite towers, Umayyad palaces, Nabatean temples and frontier fortresses. Driving along the high-lying trans-Jordanian plateau, our driver commands, "Shut your eyes for a few seconds." We blink nervously as we appear to drive off the edge of a precipice on a hairpin bend which plunges into the spectacular gorge of Wadi Mujib. "Welcome to Jordan's Grand Canyon!" shouts Tayseer with delight on our rollercoaster ride into the abyss.

Driving along the wall of a new dam on the valley floor, we pass Muhattet al-Haj (station of the pilgrimage), an old Roman fort which once guarded the old bridge. Eusebias the scribe writes in 300AD, "To this day is known a very treacherous place with ravines in which garrisons of soldiers keep guard everywhere due to the terrifying nature of the region." Today it is a place of peace. On the south side, we stop to admire the black iris, the national flower of Jordan. A Bedouin shepherd crouches in the shade of a tree, boiling tea over a fire, keeping an eye on his flock.

We came to Karak, the walled fortress city of Moab, a strategic crossroads on the King's Highway for millennia. The crusader castle with its forbidding parapets and glacis built on a high rocky ridge controlled the lucrative trade and pilgrim route. The infamous crusader Reynald de Chatillon (aka as The Elephant of Christ) used to fling prisoners from the castle walls with their heads encased in wooden boxes to prevent them from losing consciousness until they met a bloody end on the rocks below. He, in turn, was executed by Saladin who besieged the castle of Karak for eight months.

Bedouin Guide, Wadi Rum.

Horse and carriage for tourists, Petra canyon

Bedouin horsemen, Petra classical site

Back on the King's Highway, we cross wadi after wadi, magnificent dry river valleys running from the Jordanian plateau down into the desert. South of a town called Tafila, we pass thoroughly modern Bedouin encampments in green pastures with their huge canvas tents, pick-up trucks, satellite dishes and huge flocks of goat and sheep. In the old days, the women weaved the "bayt shar" (houses of hair) from goat fleeces. Tayseer asks, "You know how much stuff they keep in their tents? Wide-screen televisions, dvd players, micro-waves. But the men and women still stay in separate tents."

The Treasury, Petra - the pink city

After a long drive, we reach Wadi Musa, gateway to the ancient pink city of Petra - voted one of the new seven wonders of the world in mid-2007. Walking along the long and narrow magical Siq (gorge) is like passing through Alice's looking-glass into wonderland. We wander spellbound in the vast mountain stronghold of the Nabatean kings who grew fabulously wealthy on the frankincense and myrrh trade.

From dawn to dusk, a myriad canyons and caverns change colour with the light of day. The layers of weathered stone are a palette of rosy salmon, mustard and ochre.

The King's Highway had led us to a lost city of magnificent treasuries, royal tombs and temples hewn out of the multi-coloured rock two thousand years ago. We ascend 850 stone steps up a rough stairway through a narrow gorge to the Deir, a hermitage carved out of the rock-face with a magnificent façade twice the width of Westminster Abbey. Coming to the high place of Petra, we gaze out over the green trans-Jordanian plateau that lies at our feet far below. Travelling deeper and deeper into the past, we are swept along on Jordan's great tide of history towards the red sea at Aqaba.

The Monastery, Petra

Graham Howe was a guest of American Express Travel Services (Egypt), Egypt Air and Egypt & Beyond. Contact Cecelia Amory at Egypt & Beyond, a specialist in Johannesburg who arranges tours of Jordan. Tel: 011 678 6165, email: cecelia@championtours.co.za.

Fact File: If You Go

Visas

EU and South African passport holders need a visa to visit Jordan. Apply through your travel agent, a visa service or directly to the Embassy of the Kingdom of Jordan in Pretoria.

Getting There

Air Egypt flies between Johannesburg and Cairo with frequent onward connections to Amman, Jordan. Flying time: Jhb/Cairo: Eight hours. Cairo/Amman: ninety minutes. Most major European airlines operate direct flights to Amman.

Time difference

Jordan is one or two hours ahead of South Africa, depending on daylight savings.

Currency

One Jordanian dinar = R10. One Jordanian dinar = 1000 fils. ATMs in all towns.

Getting around

Taxis and buses operate between Queen Alia Airport, Amman and the downtown area. All major car rental companies operate in Jordan, an ideal self-drive destination with modern freeways, roads and two main north-south highways. Take international driver's license. Road signage in Arabic and English - drive on the right side.

Language

Arabic is the national language. English is widely spoken at hotels and tourist sites.

Best time to go

Ideal: Sept-Oct in Autumn or March-May in Spring. Also during cool winter months, Nov-Feb. Summer season from June-Aug can be very hot. Winter rains, Nov-Feb.

Accommodation

Most major hotel groups operate hotels in Amman and major tourist sites at Petra and the Dead Sea. Hotels range from five-star hotels and spa resorts to one to four star hotels, resthouses, inns and campsites. Excellent Arabic and international cuisine.

Drinks

Best stick to bottled water. Jordanian beer and wines are excellent; imported wine and spirits are expensive. Duty-free allowance of one litre of spirits or two litres of wine.

Tipping

A tip (10-15% of the bill) is expected for any service in Jordan.

Animal Welfare Tips

On visiting Petra, tourists should avoid hiring transport by horse, donkey or carriage through the stony, uneven Siq (gorge) and on the ascent to the Deir (Hermitage). (In any event, the Siq and Deir are best walked on foot to see the sights). These beasts of burden are cruelly abused with crude whips made of electric cable, overloaded, underfed and not given enough water or rest. Report any animal abuse to The Brooke Clinic for Horses in Petra – info@thebrookejordan.org or 962 321 56 379.

Getting Info

See www.visitjordan.com, email: info@visitjordan.com. Contact the Jordanian Tourism Board, Century Park Hotel Complex, Amman, Jordan. Tel: 962 6 567 8444. Also see www.wadirum.jo.

Contact Cecelia Amory at Egypt & Beyond, a specialist tour operator in Johannesburg who arranges tours of Egypt and Jordan. Tel: 011 678 6165, email: cecelia@championtours.co.za.

[ Back to Top ]