Noon Heat

Jordan

Jordan was the first Arabic country I visited in the Middle East. It is where I learned to dive (and nearly drowned), where I first rode by camel, the first time I camped in the dessert with Bedouin and experienced their marvellous hospitality. It became the home of my company’s middle east offices as the wider region continued to struggle and Syria descended into civil war. >>>>As we climbed the last steps, the side of the ravine had been cut away to leave the two obelisk forms of the Nabatean God King Dushara and God Queen Uzza, bowed before to pray for fertility. The Bedouin call the ridge Zibb Attuf, the Phallus of Mercy.

Jordan

At the summit a suddenly colder wind pushed us back towards the edge of the cliffs and we toppled over the vastness of Petra’s mountain terrain below. Al-Badhbah, the High Place of Sacrifice, smoothed and bevelled from solid rock, channeled to direct the bloodflow from across the ages.

I woke before dawn, cold to my bones in the pink sand of the wadi. Rolling gingerly to my side, I tried not to crush a large black scarab beetle who had made his shelter in the crevices of my sleeping bag. I watched him paddle off along the little dunes my body had created to hide in a more reliable home. The morning cut like a laser beam across the top of the outcrop, cauterising the sharp stink from the camels behind the tents. A turquoise lizard glinted along the line of the rock, watching me like raw meat about to be cooked in the desert sun.

We found the place in a back street, the cheapest in Aqaba for a last minute dive, and agreed a price with the old man and his son. We wanted to try diving a wreck and they knew of a site along the coastal road out of town. Next morning at dawn we loaded the tanks and wetsuits and we were in the back of a truck. Walking off the road over the rocks and into the sea we deflated our jackets and sank below the waves. The sunken oil tanker rose out of the gloom like a leviathan, sullen and ominous.

Next journey...

Vatican

Locked

Vatican

ALSO IN...

Noon Heat

Share Gallery...