Journal

Much of the conversation at breakfast was about the sound the jet fighters throughout the night, but a number of us made our way to a view point in the valley beneath the camp where we could watch the sun rise. Delightful to watch the light catch the peaks of the mountains behind us, then work its way down their flanks and out across the valley.

En route to the viewing point, we spotted what looked like – and almost certainly were – gerbil burrows. A camp cat following the group made a point of showing us how he hunted gerbils – and how he controlled the landscape. Quite a remarkable creature.

Observant readers of these entries will have spotted that there are few people shown here – and little or no litter, though the landscape is often filled with both. Artistic license, I’m afraid. As a gesture, I started to pick up some litter on the way back to our camp. Finding a pair of pink children’s trousers, I gingerly lifted them up and, sure enough, three dead beetles and a scorpion fell out.

Then it was off to Aqaba, with a stop along the way to take a look at a Turkish locomotive that harked back to the time during the Arab Revolt when Lawrence helped direct attacks on the Hejaz railway running to Aqaba.

Once in Aqaba, we stayed three hours in a beach resort while some swam in the sea and pools, and we lounged on a pair of loungers in a shady spot and pondered what we have seen and experienced on this trip – all to the sound of an insistent Arab disco beat. I like music, but …

We started the day with a visit to Little Petra, where Elaine found a moonstone and an agate that took her fancy. Then we set off for Wadi Rum, said to have inspired the title of Lawrence of Arabia’s book, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Reading that book in my early teens, and T.E. Lawrence’s earlier book, Crusader Castles, did a lot to fuel my interest in the region .

When we arrived in the Wadi Rum area, we transferred from minibus to a trio Toyota trucks for an exploration of the landscape – and then a traditional lamb and chicken dinner cooked underground for the majority who were carnivores, and a mezzo-style meal for the vegetarians.

Elaine and ate our meal around a crackling fire, with a few bright stars shining through the cloud which had brought us rain earlier in the day. Indeed, it was drizzling as we first drove into Wadi Rum.

We slept in one of a number of Bedouin-dressed cabins, with a bed that could have been made up of a large number of camel saddles. Still, I slept well, apart from occasional awakenings when the sound of the exercising Jordanian F-16s overhead got too intense. That went on much of the night, no doubt linked to the rising tensions around Gaza.

Today was a day off, under our own steam. We took in the Petra Museum, which is wonderfully designed and highly informative. Then we wandered back into Petra itself, with Elaine in pursuit of two bowls she had seen yesterday, one in Nabataean design, the other Roman. She found them and haggled with a thoroughly genial trader.

We spent today finding our way around the wonder of the world that is Petra. Walking though the wadi early in the morning, before too many people were about, was like being in – or perhaps induced – a state of grace. My interest in the Nabataean people and culture was ignited well before the sun blazed over the canyon rim high above our heads.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves, but delighted we have another day tomorrow to explore further. The day ended with a dinner with a local Jordanian family, thanks to Exodus, with children buzzing all around, plastic grass in the sitting area, a tinkling electric fountain and an insect destroying UV set-up that every so often would let off a crack like an old-fashioned cap-gun.

We were made wonderfully at home, the food was exquisite, with a hibiscus drink and tea with sage. I had a long conversation with our host, covering everything from arranged marriages, through the influence of TV and cell phones on children, to the evolution of the local tourism industry – from a single hotel when he began work to, by his account, some 60 today.

The site is well managed, though my photographs will give an idea of a less crowded place than is the reality. Among the visitors, guided and independent, buzz electric golf buggies and the occasional SUV convoy, plus horses, strings of donkeys, and a fair few dogs and cats of miscellaneous breeds. But thank heavens that they don’t allow drones.

I had wanted to visit Kerak (aka Al-Karak) Castle ever since reading Ronald Welch’s novel Knight Crusader when I was perhaps 10 or 11, back in the early 1960s. It was hugely sympathetic to the people the Crusaders called Saracens – and had a huge influence on how I viewed both the Crusaders and their enemies, the Seljuk Turks.

Having since read many accounts of the experiences on all sides during that seemingly endless and often bitterly fought conflict, I felt a magnetic pull towards such castles as St Hilarion, which we visited several times while living in Cyprus in the late 1950s, and Syria’s Krak de Chevaliers, which Elaine and I visited in 2002.

Two other other castles I had long since known about turned out to be on the menu today: Kerak, which I largely knew because of the vile activities of Raynald de Châtillon, and Shobak (Qal’at ash-Shawbak in Arabic), which I had known as Montreal – and hadn’t realised until today would be on our itinerary.

De Châtillon has had a bad press since he died – partly because some of the histories were written by his enemies. But he truly was one of history’s villains. Indeed, his perfidy resulted in Salah al-Din having his head struck off after the Crusaders’ disastrous defeat at the Battle of Hattin, an event which features prominently in Knight Crusader.

There were many reasons for my feeling uncomfortable at Kerak today, splendid though its military architecture may be – and I was delighted to get a good shot of the glacis that had struck me when I first saw a photograph of the castle back in the early 1970s. Shobak’s later role as a particularly grim prison no doubt lent an additional edge to the sombre mood, but – after driving another 130-odd kilometres – we found walking around Montreal/Shobak Castle as the sun set a real delight.