Jordan — songs of the desert
… with a sip of the bedouin sage tea
“Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow.”
Wadi Rum
The endless desert where the bedouin roam. Silence, solitude, tea, and fire, your best companions. Soaking in the evening sun, catch the glimmer when night is born. The sky lights up with the falling stars, as you walk back into your dream.
Wadi Rum (Arabic: وادي رم Wādī Ramm, translating either as “Valley of sand” or the “Roman Valley” — the latter due to the propensity of Roman architecture in the area), known also as the Valley of the Moon (Arabic: وادي القمر Wādī al-Qamar), is a valley cut into the sandstone and granite rock in southern Jordan 60 km (37 mi) to the east of Aqaba. (Wikipedia)
Wadi Rum Desert with Shakaria village at the back
Camels & 4x4 jeeps are the mode of transport in the vast desert
“No man can live this life and emerge unchanged. He will carry… the imprint of the desert… and he will have within him the yearning to return…. For this cruel land can cast a spell which no temperate clime can match.
”
Jabal Um Fruth
“We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the secret sits in the middle and knows.”
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
Evening sun
The last light
“There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby and invisible.”
Captured two shooting stars in the Milky Way
“Slowly and with care / with sap, with dew / with greenness, with clarity.”
“The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
Dead Sea, Salt
Be calm. Be quiet. Float.
The lowest point in the world at 1269 ft below sea level.
Baptism site
Pilgrims taking a dip in the Jordan River. Israel on the other side.
“The sun rose over the city just as we reached the narrowest part of the gut, Grim leading, and its first rays showed that we were using the bed of a watercourse for a road. Exactly in front of us, glimpsed through a twelve-foot gap between cliffs six hundred feet high, was a sight worth going twice that distance, running twice that risk, to see — a rose-red temple front, carved out of the solid valley wall and glistening in the opalescent hues of morning.”
Petra
Al-Khazneh (Arabic: الخزنة ; “The Treasury”)
Ad Deir (“The Monastery”; Arabic: الدير )
Petra Bubble Hotel
Kings Highway
One of Jordan’s most scenic and ancient routes, the Kings Highway along its 280 km journey winds up and down mountains, twists around tiny ancient villages. It tells a story of the places where the Prophet Moses walked his tribe along the dead sea, the Romans and the Nabateans built cities.
Sheep
Mount Nebo
Panorama of the Holy Land
Amman
Beautiful city inhabited for more than 9000 years.
Amman Citadel
“The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there.”