Pt1 - 12: PETRA

 

The high road took us up through the starkly beautiful ash-Sharah Range to Wadi Musa, The Valley of Moses, the township adjacent to the Nabataean ruins. We found a cheap, passable hotel and spent what remained of the afternoon exploring Al Beidha (Little Petra), which lies about 12kms out of town along a narrow winding road that offers tantalising glimpses of Petra proper on the way.

It’s worth taking a short paragraph to explain the idiosyncracies of Arab hotels. Government regulation requires the traveller to have their passport photocopied and surrender it at reception for the duration of their stay; I was always a bit nervous about this because some of the characters I handed my passport over to didn’t exactly inspire confidence in getting it back, and who knew what they got up to with it while it was in their possession. Hot water is only available for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon, if at all, so learn to love showering cold. Room service is a decadent western excess unless you’re staying 5 star and bar fridges are a rarity. The best amenity you can expect is a kettle, a couple of stained cups and a selection of questionable tea/coffee bags. All that said, the tariff is very cheap by western standards and the average hotel room is serviceable and comfortable and the linen clean, and our passports were always returned in good order.

Now, back to the enigma that is Al Beidha. As the name suggests, it’s a smaller, less dramatic version of the real thing, with large chambers carved out of the soft rock, the remnants of a sophisticated water storage system and stairways hewn into the steep valley walls. Perhaps it was an earlier version of Petra itself which became too small for a rapidly expanding population, or a practice pitch for the Nabataean architects, or a satellite settlement for outcasts. It may even have functioned as an elaborate toll booth on the main trade route through the area, for the Nabataeans survived almost exclusively on taxes rorted from passing traders. The business model failed when the Romans simply developed alternative trade routes through the region and Nabataean culture disappeared virtually overnight. In any case, Al Beidha is little more than a fancy Bedouin camp these days, but it was enough to whet our appetites for the morrow.

Much has been written about fabled Petra (from the Greek for “rock”) since its re-discovery in 1812 by the Swiss explorer Burkhardt, but no matter how much you read or how many postcards you see nothing really prepares you for the admission price. No point in quoting it here because it’s probably quadrupled again by now, but like everything else about Petra it’s monumental. In fairness to the Jordanian tourist authorities though, most other sites in the country are either free or charge only a nominal entrance fee, and we bought a two-day ticket – essential if you’re at all serious about this vast site.

No matter how much you read about Petra or how many postcards you see nothing can prepare you for that first glimpse of the iconic Treasury building either. We arrived early and beat the crowds so comprehensively that we had the siq all to ourselves, and it is an attraction in its own right. A deep, narrow chasm in the sandstone it winds for more than a kilometre from the entrance gate to the Treasury, and the further we penetrated into the passage the more dramatic the colours became, morphing from greys and dull yellows to pastel pinks and vibrant reds, and the more startling the natural sculptures.

When the imposing pink façade of the Treasury finally did peek at us though the cutting I had the curious sensation of standing underwater and gazing upon something from the lost city of Atlantis. The other curious sensation I had, along with absolutely everyone else who beholds the scene, is the irresistible urge to snap the cliché photograph to remember the moment by and I gave in to it. It’s your fair dinkum uniquely haunting sight.

The Nabataeans were an unusually tall race and they thought big. The ceiling of the Treasury, a misnomer since the prevailing archaeological consensus is it was actually a tomb, must be ten metres overhead and the doorways are high enough to admit Dolly Parton’s hairdo without ducking. All the massive chambers in Petra are now completely bare, not only of furnishings which you’d expect, but of any flat surface that might have been used for a bed or a table or a ledge for storage.

The other thing conspicuously lacking, unless you count the soot of Bedouin fires, is interior decoration. If the Nabataeans ever took time out from extorting taxes to consider it they would have realised they didn’t need to call in the painters. The natural colours of the sandstone are so vivid and the patterns so mesmerising that any artifice would have been a desecration. Each chamber has its own character: the windworn interior of the Tomb of the Roman Soldier for instance is like peering into a living organ, the shades of raw flesh so visceral it’s eerie. The once splendid 3000 seat amphitheatre is so weathered by time it now looks like it is surreally fashioned from marbled plasticine.

The High Place of Sacrifice was, well, high and it was difficult to stay upright in the roaring wind which has over the centuries blasted the monuments up here into honeycombs and cavities. The views are extensive out over the bare surrounding mountains, but our own cavities were being blasted out so we left Micha and Lea and descended to the protection of Wadi al Faraza to spend a couple of hours working our way round the back of the hill to the amphitheatre again.

When we reached the Colonnaded Street, which is colonnaded in name only now, it was choked with European and American tourists of the variety who wear gold lame jiffies for a day at the ruins. One poor girl in particular caught my eye. All decked out in haute couture clogs she stumbled and lurched over the uneven stones like two drunken sailors.

Down in the wadi the heat began to take its toll by mid-afternoon and we decided that by the time we got back to the car with a few small detours we’d have had enough for one day anyway, so we turned around and began the trek back to the carpark. Just then two small Bedouin boys ran up behind us and one of them called out, “Give your teddy for my sister baby!” The little furry bloke was proving too popular with Bedouin kids – yesterday at Al Beidha a girl tried to grab his arm – so Tess zipped him up before he got bearnapped.

Back at the hotel we had just enough energy to shower – a two-person operation due to a kink in the shower hose that required one of us to stand on the edge of the toilet and hold the handpiece for the other; just enough motivation to throw down a delicious meal of lamb, veges, salad and ships (sic), and no problem at all falling into a dreamless sleep.

 

*

 

The duelling muezzins went off at 4am. After I peeled myself off the ceiling I lay there on my single bed cursing their very vocal cords – strange how they’re exotic by day, sadistic by night – and earnestly wishing their bloody minarets would collapse. They had a question and answer thing happening; the nearest one – and he could’ve been right there in the room with us – intoned his piece at a hundred tinny decibels in an ululating voice that reminded me of my dad singing in his sleep, then his mate replied even more tinnily in the distance, and so it went on for what seemed like hours though it was probably more like fifteen or twenty minutes. A sheet of tin flapping in the breeze on the building site next door kept the whole thing in some kind of crazy rhythm. And then the muezzins stopped, the tin flapped, and I tossed and turned till sun-up. Tess, who has the irritating knack of being able to sleep through an air raid, snored blithely on.

After breakfast we tried a different tack on Petra. It was already hot as we drove to a Bedouin village some kilometres from Wadi Musa where there was a second entrance under military guard. I didn’t realise it was under military guard until I sailed through the checkpoint and heard shouts and saw soldiers brandishing weapons in the rear view mirror. I skilfully impersonated a witless infidel and they waved us to a parking area.

A steady procession of locals accompanied us on the long steep walk down a narrow winding road to the bottom. My hip was still stiff from Sinai and I made an executive decision as we emerged onto the valley floor that we would be taking a donkey back up at the end of the day. There was no argument from Tess.

We’d come out near a building called the Qasr al-Bint. It was little more than a shell, but with one unusual feature. Although the top of the structure caved in long ago the high arch spanning the doorway survives. Given that Petra is rocked by earthquakes every 250 years or so, it’s a testament to the builder’s ingenuity that it’s lasted a couple of thousand years. The trick was to insert wooden shims between the blocks to absorb the shocks. I love that sort of detail; you’re going to hate it when we get to Roman plumbing.

Our objective today was the remote Monastery. It lies on the extremity of Petra’s boundary at the top of a spectacular hike up narrow, often precarious, frequently wind-lashed steps hewn into the rock face. How the Nabataeans felt after ascending the tortuous path in solemn procession is anyone’s guess, but I can assure you that when we finally lurched over the last obstacle and onto the forecourt of the Monastery my feelings were far from spiritual. The Monastery may be impressive in isolation but in the context of Petra it’s just another austere façade on a mountainside and after all the effort didn’t detain us for long. Next time I’ll buy a postcard.

Camels and donkeys can’t negotiate the climb to the Monastery so the descent had to be by foot and was seriously challenging. I believe I fell most of the way to the bottom.

On the way down we encountered a cranky old Bedou hiding in a crevasse in the rock. He leapt out at us and demanded a ridiculous sum of money for an imitation clay lamp of the kind that goes for peanuts in this part of the world. Tess couldn’t stand it. “You’re a thief!” she cried, “I’ll give you half a JD (Jordanian Dinah, at the time equal to the Pound Sterling)” She didn’t want the lamp, she wanted a fight.

“You insult me!” he yelled, and spat contemptuously over the precipice. “You the thief! What if I offer you one JD for your fine bag, eh!”

“What if I asked you one hundred JD for it, eh?” Thus did the old bloke learn the folly of engaging herself in an argument over money. Defeated and muttering darkly he retreated under his rock.

Back down below we took refuge in the small, but fascinatingly air-conditioned museum until we’d marshalled the resources to tackle the ascent back to the car. Tess bargained for the donkeys with a lad of 14 or so and in a trice we were astride our sturdy steeds and headed for the village. They were placid creatures and the ride was quite relaxing for the most part, although mine had the propensity to pull to the right – perhaps he needed a hoof alignment – and the disconcerting habit of stopping to sniff every little deposit of donkey do-dos along the way. In the steeper sections both beasts farted loudly under the strain, producing a flatulent chorus in stereo but failing to generate any extra propulsion. Nevertheless, in half the time it would’ve taken us to struggle up on foot we were beside the car and handsomely tipping our young guides.

Having woken at four I was glad to be back at the Moon Valley Hotel early enough for a long siesta. Of course, immediately I stretched myself out on the bed there erupted a frenzy of sawing, hammering, drilling, vacuuming, slamming doors…it sounded like the place was being torn down and rebuilt around me. I gave up and lay there pretending.

Mercifully though, I slept through the duelling muezzins next morning so that by the time we wheeled out of Wadi Musa for a testing day’s drive north I was feeling half-way sane.

Coming up: Things get ugly in Kerak...