From Cairo to the Connemara: A Sojournal

 Pt1 - 18:  TIBERIAS   We were the only travellers and two of only five civilians aboard a full bus bound for Tiberias on the western shore of the Galilee. This might sound like insurance against any nasty surprises along the way but the bottom line is buses are prime bomb targets in Israel, especially if they happen to be carrying a platoon’s worth of Israeli military. The trip was slated for three hours but it quickly became apparent that our Death-or-Glory driver would have us in Tiberias early or never. The route took us back through the crossroads at Jericho then straight up the Jordan Valley on Highway 90. In light drizzle we raced north through vineyards and date and banana plantations for an hour then, after a fifteen minute pit-stop at a place called Yalit, the country abruptly changed. Green stony hills pocked with caves appeared on our left while on the right, behind the fence marking Israel’s eastern defence perimeter, the even greener Jordan Valley spre...

  Pt1 - 17: MASADA & EIN GEDI Business sometimes took us a fifteen minute walk up the Jaffa Road to the high-rise limestone heart of the new city. It could be any modern metropolis but for the side-locked, black-clad ultra-orthodox Hasidim in perpetual, self-absorbed motion – they always look like they’re forging into a stiff breeze – the yarmulkas , or skull caps, worn by almost every male, and the high-profile military presence so much a part of everyday Israeli life. Chic young things stroll the plazas arm in arm and drape themselves at tables along the cappuccino and pizza bar strip around Ben Yehuda Mall. Less chic young things hang out at the McDonalds on Shamai. The orderly traffic is heavy, except of course on a Saturday when absolutely nothing moves and the city feels as though it’s been abandoned. There are no hustlers, drunks or beggars here, no drifts of litter or derelict buildings. New Jerusalem is a city of high achievers with a sense of purpose and it is easy fo...

 Pt1 - 16:  JERUSALEM, JERUSALEM The Old City hasn’t changed much in the last twenty years, but then nothing much has changed within these walls in the last two thousand years. Its covered streets, which don’t conform to any western notion of a street, were as vibrant and intoxicating as I remembered them, and passable digs still at a premium. The air was frigid and it was teeming with rain and bodies as we entered the city through the Damascus Gate and veered right along the Suq Khan El-Zeit, straddling the stream rushing down its central gutter. Thoroughly soaked and shivering violently we were grateful for the small mercy of landing a room at the first place we tried, the Hashimi Hostel, about halfway up the Khan. As we stood in our personal portable puddles waiting for the receptionist’s attention I scanned an elaborate business card from the pile on the counter. The pitch was enticing: Newly Renovated Hostel Clean and bright with marble floors Enjoy A FRIE...

  ISRAEL 16 th – 30 th March   ACROSS THE ALLENBY BRIDGE   It was 5 degrees and raining heavily as the JETT bus for the King Hussein-Allenby Bridge rolled out of Abdali at 9am. With political tensions already high over the Al Baqura incident and escalating daily as the East Jerusalem housing development impasse reached critical mass – the first sod was due to be turned tomorrow – we expected the West Bank crossing to be on full alert and bristling with even more intense security than usual. Even Ted could count on an internal search. Formalities, which included not having our passports endorsed to show we’d exited Jordan for Israel, were completed smoothly at Jordanian customs control and we boarded the shuttle bus for the short drive along a fenced military road to the bridge itself. The driver stopped at the Jordanian checkpoint and awaited orders to proceed. Two soldiers conducted final passport checks. The rain eased. We waited. With a larger-than-life...

 Pt 1 - 14:  GOODBYE MOSES About 20kms north of Kerak the King’s Highway took a vertiginous dive into the broad and spectacular Zarqa Ma’in valley. Poised on the lip of the descent the valley looks more like a deep canyon with the road winding through it like a giant black serpent. The thrilling hairpins demanded my complete concentration, not easy with the others still venting the tension of the gas station riot by doing dumb shit like introducing themselves to the long-haired sheep wandering along the narrow verges with much mirth and giggling in the back seat. It might also have been a means of diverting attention from the fact that I still occasionally felt for the door handle to change gears. Nevertheless, we reached the bottom the long way and in one piece. The laborious climb up the far side was made even more so by the lumbering truck in front of us, and by the time we crawled to the top of the pass the little Feroza was running pretty hot. I veered off at a lookou...

 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...

 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...