highlights from the hashemite kingdom

a week is much too short to experience the many sides of jordan. but here are some of the highlights from the trip: fascinating areas ripe with ancient histories & natural wonders spanning centuries, putting my place in this world into perspective.

jerash
cobbled streets with wearmarks of carriages of the roman days, towering pillars & collonnades which whisper of the power that must have dwellt in these ancient cities.

a gateway of the temple of zeus, built AD 162


the 800m long cardo maximus, or collonaded street, was first built in 1st century AD & consisted of 500 columns!!




the agora, where main markets & public meetings were held


the cathedral, covering the remains of an earlier temple


remnants with the modern jerash in the background




dead sea
we spent on luxurious day bobbing & rolling like corkscrews on the surface of the dead sea. alternating floating on the thick oillike mineralrich water with coatings of black salty mud, it was a great & fun experience, not to mention reviving & revitalising. wish i had a dead sea closer to home...

jordanian coast, with a hazy israel on the other side:






warm black luxurious mud!




petra
finally, petra. what to say, this place blows me away, i don't know which pictures to chose to convey some fraction of the feeling of this aweinspiring place.... narrow passageways of towering rock, sandstone of shifting reds yellows browns, the most amazing stonecarvings which unfold around every corner, highly developed architectural & engineering feats from an intriguing ancient civilisation... several days of jumping around on the cliffs would have been needed to explore the 800 registered sites in petra - & it is estimated that only about 5% of petra has been excavated... next time i am bringing my climbing & hiking gear...!

djinn (spirit) blocks, built by nabataeans in the 1st century AD


the siq, a narrow 1.2km passageway with sandstone walls towering skywards up to 200m


remnants of a stonecarving, with a man leading a camel that is still discernible in the rockface


the siq ends dramatically with the al-khazneh (treasury), remarkable well-preserved with it's fantastic carvings.


the name stems from a local legend of hidden treasure, but it was actually a tomb for a nabataean king. it dates from somewhere between 100 BC to 200 AD.




the area is full of tombs, with facades carved out of the rock


the roman soldier's tomb


the monestary was built in 3rd century BC as a nabataean tomb, but is thought to have been used as a church in byzantine times, hence the name


view of the kings tombs




rock detail