Dispatches from Occupied Quds

Whoops! I didn't actually go to Jerusalem. But I came up with the title for this post back when I thought that I would be going there, and it seemed like a shame to change it to fit reality. Really this post is about Petra (in Jordan) and my epic travels there and back.

We took a night bus across Sinai to the Israeli border. Crossing into Israel was a 4-hour ordeal that involved a whole lot of sitting and a little bit of chatting with various border security people. Probably the best part was when we were being questioned about our studies in Egypt.

Israeli: So you're studying in Egypt... What do you think of Egyptian culture? Arab culture?
Bob: It's great, we're really enjoying it.
*Deafening silence reigns. Every Israeli security guy, both the uniformed ones doing something and the guys hanging around in civvies but obviously carrying guns, look at Bob.*
Bob: ...kind of. It's ok. I mean, it could definitely be better. I like America more.
*Everyone relaxes and returns to what they were doing.*

Most of the delay was due to the fact that one of the people in our group was a Muslim from Taiwan. Given the historic ethnic conflicts between the Taiwanese and Jewish races going back generations, this came as no surprise to any of us.





Two views from where we sat in customs. The view of the Red Sea was nice, but the general consensus was that we would give Israeli customs a higher rating if they actually had a 'stuck in customs' beach where Muslims and their traveling companions could go for a swim (albeit in some sort of barbed wire-enclosed area) while waiting to be cleared.

We eventually made it into Israel, crossed six miles of it around the tip of the Red Sea, and entered Jordan. A few hours later we were in Wadi Musa, the modern town that has arisen next to the ruins of Petra. For the next day and a half we poked around Petra, climbing all over various cliffs, exploring ruins, and generally having a good time. Pictures of all this follow.



You'll recognize this building, I'm sure, from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The Holy Grail is unfortunately not currently on display.



Buildings in Petra. Not much to say about these in particular, but by now you're no doubt wondering how people carved an entire city out of the mountains. It's actually not as hard as one might think - most of the rock here is sandstone, meaning that it both carves easily and erodes rapidly, which contributes to Petra's gradual disappearance. Blowing wind and climbing tourists are taking a fairly heavy toll.

This brings up the point of the double-edged sword of Western tourism. Petra was a relatively forgotten and unknown backwater until Western tourists began flocking to it in the last century. Western attention has brought attention and funding to the region and has allowed for restoration efforts and archaeological studies, but ever increasing numbers of tourists simultaneously cause the rate of erosion to skyrocket. It's something to think about.



The sandstone around Petra is found in vibrant shades of red, yellow, green, blue... basically every color you can think of you can find a chunk of sandstone for. This has contributed to the growth of a thriving sand art trade. Having people intentionally grinding up chunks of Petra every day doesn't help its preservation either.

In a delicious bit of irony, I got hit by a car my second night in Petra. After surviving the insane Cairo traffic for two months, I'd gotten used to one-way streets (there are too many parked cars on most streets to have more than a lane and a half open for traffic, and letting this go in two directions would make the system even more anarchic than it is now). In Jordan, however, traffic laws and populations levels are ideal enough that traffic can flow in a well-regulated fashion in two directions. I'm sure you see where this is going. I stepped into the street, watching the car moving towards me from one direction, only to be hit squarely from behind by a car moving in the opposite direction. The irony of surviving Cairo only to be hit in Jordan was not lost on anyone in our group, and we all had a good laugh about it.

The next morning we crossed the Sinai again, this time during the day. The sun was both a curse and a blessing, in that it made what was a 85-degree trip by night a 110-degree trip by day, but also provided the light for me to see a bit of Sinai as we crossed. Remnants of Israel's and Egypt's various fortifications and defenses of Sinai were everywhere - rolls of barbed wire, remains of pillboxes, craters, Sinai has it all. Particularly sand. It has a lot of that.

Anyway, after 7 hours of Sinai-crossing fun, we arrived back in Cairo. I now have three more days for some final thoughts before I go back to the States.