Normal geography - to me - is flat valeys, with the occasional hill. Jordan felt like the inverse. Most the time we cycled on a relatively flat plateau, and every now and then the earth opens up as if a superhuman force (god, one would presume in this part of the world) had carved a valley into it. 1000m decent, cross a river, followed immeditely by 1000m ascent and continue on the plateau. It was comical. And with each of these ‘dips’ came a temperature swing of about 10C. Getting warmer on the way down and cooler again when going up the other side.

On our fifth down of t At the bottom of our fifth down of the day, this father and son team waved us to stop. They worked by the side of the river. The son operated a massive digger, his father stood by the lorry. “You cannot cycle that way”. Oh dear. What is the matter? Is the road closed? “It is too high - you cannot cycle”. That was sweet. We told them that we liked cycling and that this was just what we do. That did not appear to make any sense at all. The father started to gesticulate that our bikes should go in his lorry and he would drive us up the climb. Initially that made no sense to us.

The sides of the lorry were about 3 meters high. You could not lift the bikes over the sides - no change. This was exactly the sort of challenge these guys lived for. Out comes the digger, into the bucket go the bikes, and up into the air they lift. I need not stress how precious I am about these bikes, but father and son display amzign skill and hand our precious load with great care from the bucket into the truck. We hop into the driver’s cap, sitting four abrest and slowly work our way up the climb. This probably wasn’t much faster than cycling and yet, it felt proberly cool to be driven for a change.

At the top we thanked them with our fragments of arabic and explained that we had planned to cycle for about another 30km that day. What came next is one of these tragic moments of unexpected hospitality: they asked us to come to their place for tea and probably a full evening meal. I still have second thoughts about it to this day. We are keen to keep cycling and decline. Their disappointment is heart breaking. The appropriate way for us to show appreciation for the considerable favour they did for us would have been to accept their hospitality. Instead we still lived with a mindset that we needed to make ‘progress’.

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

Petr II

Having been denied entry to Israel at the King Husein border crossing, Petr is undeterred and now walks south to the next border crossing at Aqabar to try again. The border guards had told him that there were already ‘enough religeous nutcases’ in Israel and that they didn’t need him as well. I hope those border guards are slow to communicate this down to the southern crossing, or Petr is unlikely to spend Christmas in Israel. Good luck to you, man. Great to meet again. You are a stoic inspiration.

↓

Petra

A side-effect of 11 September had been to removal of nearly all tourism. Petra is one of those mass-tourist attractions. Car parks and car parks for bus loads of visitors are placed a tasteful distance away from the actual site - and they were absolutely empty. # Petra

A side-effect of 11 September had been to removal of nearly all tourism. Petra is one of those mass-tourist attractions. Car parks and car parks for bus loads of visitors are placed a tasteful distance away from the actual site - and they were absolutely empty. # Petra

A side-effect of 11 September had been to removal of nearly all tourism. Petra is one of those mass-tourist attractions. Car parks and car parks for bus loads of visitors are placed a tasteful distance away from the actual site - and they were absolutely empty.

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓

↓