Pt1 - 13: NEARLY CACTUS IN KERAK We swerved off the road to Kerak for a squiz at Shobek Castle, famous as the first of a chain of fortresses stretching from here to Turkey built by the Crusader king Baldwin 1 in the early twelfth century. The castle is largely rubble but its position on the trig point in the landscape offered 360 degree views of the desert hills which looked through the heat haze like currant buns in an oven. In a narrow valley below the castle entrance lay the modern settlement of Shobek, its cubist houses surrounded by cedar plantations and citrus orchards planted on wide terraces sculpted into the gently sloping sides of the valley. We took tea with the Bedouin who had a trinket stall at the gate and he explained that New Shobek is a model community established by the government to test the feasibility of reclaiming these lunar hills for the people of Jordan. Good luck to them, I say. At the crowded, grubby town of Taffila we took another, un...
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