PETRA NEW YEAR 1994 - preamble
text by Pink Oboe, pictures from Angus McIntyre's Petra Site. Includes dozens of beautiful images and a clickable map of the city.
preamble - day 1 - day 2 - day 3
I seem to be specialising at the moment in journals, which are difficult for one reason or another. The last trip to Tehran was difficult because of the classification of what I was doing. This trip to Petra is difficult because it was not just travel in distance but also in time. How do I manage to describe the wonder of the trip: the images from the Bible, from Lawrence of Arabia, from Dean Burgon and his "rose red city half as old as time", and from every idea that I had of the Bedouin and their itinerant lifestyle? I will try.
It came about very quickly although its origins were, in fact, almost a year old. I was involved in an accident in November 1992 when a gentleman in a van tried to wipe me out at a junction near Sundridge one morning on the way to work. I felt that I was not to blame but that is not always the way that it works out once the insurers and the legal eagles get in on the act. I needed a protracted course of Chiropractic treatment to sort out a pain in my neck, which ran up bills in excess of two hundred pounds. With other expenses, and a variety of damages the end effect was that a cheque for more than £800 arrived just before Christmas. I had already decided that the money should be invested in a holiday but could not decide where we should go. Venice called as she always does, but somehow the feeling was that we should do something slightly different. There was also the fact that I felt fairly confident that the promotion board that I had sat in early December was likely to be fruitful and it would be nice to have something special to celebrate or commiserate if the worst came to the worst.
In the summer, the National Trust had sent us a travel brochure about a series of adventures with a firm called Voyages Jules Verne. I had read of the delights of the Silk route, trips to the Taj Mahal, and to Petra but had not really considered them a possibility. The brochure was still cluttering up the house as is typical. Rosemary resurrected it and said that there was a trip to Petra over the New Year, which looked rather pleasant and was approximately £500 a person. I thought the chances of there being any places left at this late stage, i.e. a week before Christmas, were a little remote. However, I agreed to speak to Security to see what they thought of the idea. I had recently read an article which said that the Palestinian Liberation Organization were to celebrate their new found respectability by establishing their Headquarters in Petra. Jordan had also been an ally of the Iraqis in the Gulf war. I had found many ammunition boxes alongside Iraqi gun positions in Kuwait with "Department of Planning, Amman, Jordan" on them. No chance, I thought.
To my surprise I received the all clear from the man himself. No problem. So Rosemary made the call and, yes, there were places. Off went the cheque, which had scarcely cleared at the Building Society. Our tickets arrived during the Christmas break but so had the most virulent case of 'flu that I have had in fifteen years. I was still feeling sorry for myself and had a fever the day before we were due to depart. What the hell, I was determined that I would make the trip even if it killed me.
The flight out was by Royal Jordanian Airlines from Heathrow. We mustered in the evening of the 29th December and got away approximately on time. The flight was to Aqaba at the head of the Red Sea. It was known to us from the film of Lawrence of Arabia as Lawrence had led his motley crew of Bedouin irregulars across the desert of Wadi Rum to attack the Turkish positions from the rear. We arrived after a flight of five and a half hours and landed. The airport was small. The lights of Eilat in Israel were visible on the approach as there is only spitting distance between them. It was interesting to see the high technology visual display on the Jordanian Airbus. This showed our track. This was very useful except for the fact that it showed the state of Jordan extending to the Mediterranean sea. There was no sign of Israel at all! Not only did it not acknowledge the annexation of the west bank it did not even acknowledge the existence of the Jewish state. We were to read later that there have been wars approximately every forty years between the inhabitants of what we now call Jordan and the inhabitants of Israel for the last 9,000 years. It is not surprising that finding a settlement for the Middle East crisis is not easy.
We had completed our usual cards, which detailed where we were born, what we did and all the usual paraphernalia associated with a Police state. The first surprise was to be told that we did not need them! We were separated from the punters who were to spend the New Year in Aqaba and we were off. It was approximately two hours to Petra from Aqaba. The night was clear and moonlit and we could see the countryside quite clearly as we passed. It was mountainous and the road climbed up and down with several places showing where sand had drifted over the road surface. Occasionally we would pass massive lorries, which seemed to be either heading up from Jordan's only port or heading down towards it. Once or twice we passed Army check points but we scarcely slowed and were waved through.
The coach finally slowed and our guide, who had introduced himself as Bassem Sabatini, announced that we were there. The hotel was the Petra Palace. The brochure made apologetic noises about the hotel, saying that it was not up to the normal standards of the Voyages Jules Verne: it was run by a Jordanian family one or two of whom looked remarkably like Saddam Hussein. Maybe he was moonlighting. It was now five o'clock in the morning and we had been travelling for ever so we retired to our room on the third floor, humping the heavy suit case up the stairs rather than waiting for it to be delivered on the basis that the last thing we wanted when we had collapsed for the night was some idiot blundering in wanting to know where to put the case and could he have a tip.
