Not all of us managed to avoid showing the soles of our feet as we sat on the floor.Īfter lunch we did a short walk in hot weather, starting with a gentle climb up steps to Lawrence’s (of Arabia fame) Well. A further short drive brought us to the Bedouin village where we had lunch in a luxuriously decorated hall and met the crew which would support us for the next few days. The road dropped down to the desert floor with rock outcrops and we soon entered the Wadi Rum reserve for which entry tickets were required. The journey was broken for a comfort stop where some of us sampled our first Turkish coffee of the trip. This would involve shared funding with Israel and the project’s future was uncertain. She also told us of a possible scheme to run a pipeline from the Red Sea downhill to the Dead Sea, generating hydroelectricity to power desalination plants and depositing the salty residue in the Dead Sea (the engineering interest emerging already!). Saudi had started to exploit it so Jordan was running to catch up. Tala explained that Jordan shared a large underground aquifer with Saudi Arabia and had been holding it in reserve for the future. This took us a long distance through largely barren terrain although there was clearly a major project under way to lay new water pipelines. We were up at 0700 and left at 0830 by bus for a 3.5hr drive to Wadi Rum along the Desert Highway. Nick took charge of ordering a Meze but could do little to lower the volume of the music. More of her later, but see this if you can’t wait.Īfter a half-hour bus ride to Madaba we checked into the Madaba Inn Hotel, basic but adequate, and went to dinner in a nearby restaurant. I assumed she was just there to ensure we got on the correct bus – what an ageist, sexist thought! This was Tala, our guide for the whole trip a co-founder of Terhaal Travel and also a Product Development & Destination Marketing Specialist at USAID. I knew the party was in safe hands.Įasyjet did what it said on the tin and we were met at Amman by a very attractive young Jordanian woman holding a KE sign. My first introduction to Nick was at the foreign exchange counter where the clerk was counting out huge wads of cash at a pre-booked, preferential exchange rate. 15 AprilĪpart from booking the car into the Gatwick South by Peter Terminal car park when we were leaving from the North Terminal, the first stage of the journey was uneventful. KE handled the varying numbers, flights, start and end points etc without (apparently) turning a hair.įinally, it should be said that the itinerary is well described in the KE brochure and there is little point in repeating it here I will confine myself to my own experience. Those who have read the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy may remember the invention of a new branch of mathematics called ‘Bistro Maths’, based on the total inconsistency of the numbers booked, the numbers arriving, the time of the booking, the division of the bill for payment and so on. Perhaps a word of praise for Lucy Woods and the team at KE is appropriate. However, Richard C said that if I did not go he would have to share a tent with a 25 year old blond and in his hour of need how could I refuse? I did pause when I realised that Jordan is bordered by Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Palestine and the Golan Heights, but summoned up my courage. I was not overly keen as I had not been attracted to deserts, preferring mountainous regions. The plan was to spend the first half of the trip trekking through the desert and mountains of Wadi Rum in the south east of Jordan, and the second half among the historic sites of Petra, Mt Nebo and Madaba. Mike and Sally Shrimpton brought Richard Copson and me on board Julian was a walking companion of Caroline and Richard Halahan was a schoolfriend of Nick’s. Most of those taking part were connected to Nick through the media world, particularly a shared history with Yorkshire Television. The expedition was put together by Nick and Ann Gray through the good offices of KE Adventure Travel and their in-country operators, Terhaal.
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