Sham is arabic for Syria

In Jordan, and Syria, they have milkshakes and ice cream and donuts, no slurpees, but they have chocolate filled croissants and breadsticks and good pizza and chicken cordon bleu and this really salty cheese that you can tie into knots.

I've been travelling in Syria for about a week. A friend of a friend (who I had met way back when) lives in Kenya working at a refugee camp (I think it really does seem a million times worse than it sounds....) planned a trip to the Middle East, we got in touch and travelled together for a bit, sans bike. I'm in Damascus right now, she left today and I would have ridden north, but it was raining and I just couldn't be bothered to get all wet and cold....

Damascus is cooler than I expected and I expected it to be cool. The old city is I don't know how many thousands of years old and the streets are narrow and windy and cobbly and alive. There are Mosques and Christian churches and art gallery's and fancy hotels and fancy restaurants all over the place. A lot of the restaurants and hotels in the Old City are updated old mansions with beautiful courtyards in the center where everyone sits to eat. They're covered but have a very outdoor feel to them. The streetlights used in the Old City are dull yellow bulbs and make everything feel slow and blurred. It's fantastic.

The big mosque in the Old City.

In the Mosque.

The 'bazaar' here is the same as the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, in theory, but very different in reality. In Istanbul it's all for tourists and they sell all sorts of fancy jewelry and deocrations but also all sorts of crap. The bazaar here is still used by Damascenes. They sell normal usable things like candy and clothing and shoes and hair dryers and ice cream and lingerie. Lots and lots of lingerie. Lots. Weird lingerie. I can't figure out who is buying it....

This isn't the lingerie. I'm not sure what this is, but it is for sale everywhere. I didn't get any pictures of the lingerie for sale, I would have felt uncomfortable for some reason, taking a picture of the leather top with nipple holes and the matching crotchless furry panties. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Citadel in Aleppo. Another old, quaint, city. Aleppo and Damascus have become two of my favorites.

In the Citadel.

Old Aleppo.

Old Aleppo house. This has been converted to a museum. But this is the typical courtyard which is now turned into restaurants in a lot of places.

Door knocker in the Armenian Quarter. When the Armenians were kicked out of Turkey in the early 1900's they all headed towards Aleppo. Most of them didn't make it. There are supposedly quiete a few Armenians still there. I tried asking people how they were doing in Armenian - "von ces?", but I got a lot of blank stares...

Palmyra. The ruins are Roman and are some of the coolest I've seen and I've seen lots of ruins and I don't really think ruins are too cool anymore. The color of the rock is this sandy orange. The place was huge and it was cold and windy so we didn't stay long.

Devon.

Damascus.

Devon and my Palestinian buddy (the one who was engaged to his cousin....I wrote about him when I was in Damascus last month...the engagement is still off...he's giving her another chance, but he's feeling done with her....). We are eating ice cream from some place which has been selling ice cream in the bazaar for 200 years. It's vanilla wich crushed pistaccio's on top.

Dead Sea

I've been really digging riding in Jordan. The roads have been relatively empty and the hills are long and continuous. I don't mind up hill at all, but it drove me crazy in Turkey when there were lots of little hills. I'd much rather sit down for a 2 hour climb than twelve 10 minute climbs.

I rode into a town called Karak., an old place with a crusader castle built in the 1100's. There was a museum with things from the Iron Age on display. The Iron Age. I thought it was strange. I'm sure I've seen artifacts from the Iron Age before, but it just kind of hit me how old these places are.

Karak reminded me somewhat of Pakistan. The signs for stores, the types of stores, the retrofitted electrical wires all over the place. The food here is better and they only really use cars (instead of cars, motorcycles, trucks, donkeys, donkey carts, horses, horse carts, rickshaws, etc....), but it had the Pakistani feel to it. Made me miss Breckan and Spencer (in that order).



They have TV's for sale in Karak...



I try and eat falafel sandwiches at least 3 times a day. They cost about $0.45 and are delicious.



I had a 27 km downhill ride from Karak to the Dead Sea. It's 422 m below sea level, which is kind of weird to think that I was technically lower than humpback whales. The day was hot, around 100 deg F. And as soon as I found a place to get in I did. It's 31% salt or something and that thing is floaty. When on my back I had to bring my knees all the way to my chest before I could get the leverage to drop my legs down to the upright position. It was a funny feeling.




It's really hazy in this part of Jordan. It never was in Wadi Rum. I had a hard time seeing where the water ended and the sky started.



There was a beautiful climb out of the Dead Sea. It took me about an hour. There is road on both the right and left sides of that picture.



Yeah, it took an hour to go UP to sea level.



At the top some guys invited me to have dinner with them. They all work together and have a monthly picnic overlooking the Dead Sea. One guy brings his kid to pour the tea and clean the dishes....

They made Mansef, which is the Jordanian national dish. It's rice laid out on a big platter of flat bread. They put some kind of beans and chicken in it and a white sauce, which I think is dried and salted goat milk. Three of us sat around one platter and shared it, eating with our hands (I sanitized my hands first....but I don't think they did....). They would grab a handful of rice and ball it up (only using one hand) and eat it. I couldn't ball it to save my life. It would squeeze out of my fingers or stick to my hands and wouldn't ball. It was delicious.







Dinner was going to happen in the dark, so I walked around while it was cooking to find a place to camp. Far enough from the road that cars wouldn't see me, but close enough that it wouldn't be a pain to get there. I found a few good spots that would have worked great, but my dinner buddies weren't having it. At first they thought I would be too cold (I didn't even use my sleeping bag that night it was so warm), but when they could tell I didn't care about the cold they moved onto wolves. They were convinced that I would get eaten by a wolf. So much so, that they gave me their phone number so I could call them in the morning to tell them I was safe. That appeased them for about 2 minutes until they got to thinking about the wolves again. They wouldn't give up, so after we ate they drove behind me, in the dark with their lights on (I don't like riding in the dark...), to a police check point 4 km up the road where they told me the police would watch over me....then they drove off. My campsite ended up being real crappy and rocky, but I didn't get eaten by wolves....

Visa Extension

Jacob went to the airport on the 10th, I was still in Petra and tried to get my visa extended. It expires in 5 days and I'm not yet done with Jordan. The cops in Petra (technically the town is Wadi Musa, Petra is the old town which is now the tourist site) told me I had to have a blood test to prove I didn't have any diseases....So I took the bus two hours to Aqaba to get my visa extended there. Same story. I tried reasoning with the guy that I've already been in Jordan nearly a month, if I had diseases I would have spread them all over the place by now, but he isn't into reason. So I had my blood drawn.

The results wouldn't be done for another 3 days, so I went back to Wadi Rum and rode my bike north to Petra, dropped my bike at a hotel and then took a bus back to Aqaba for the extension. My blood is clean, but I had to wait an extra day for the extension because the police ran out of ink to take my fingerprints with...

The police station is very bizarre. There are 3 guards out front who mostly just sit around all day. I just tell them I need to go inside and they let me. It's an outdoor courtyard with offices all around. Most of the offices are bare save for a picture or 3 of the King. Most of the offices also have television sets with a satellite receiver....so they can watch TV all day....

One of the offices has a small jail cell, much smaller than on the Andy Griffith show. Positioned in a corner so there are only two walls worth of bars. Of the three times I went to the police station there was always at least two or three guys standing in the cell in kind of a daze.

When I came back to the police station this morning, at 8 am like I was told, I had to wait 20 min for the guy to finish his tea and cigarette. Yes, it was infuriating. The garbage can I sat next to was made in China.

I can't ever figure out how these government offices work. There are about 5 police guys in the office I am in, and they all do part of the work, but at each their own pace. None of them get frustrated with the others if they take their time. It slows the whole process down if one of them is slow, but, eh. All of the office supplies are locked up in a closet for the night and they only pull things out when they need them. There is a plastic 'desk organizer' on one of the desks with little slots for paper clips or pens or whatever, but all the office supplies are in the closet in the box the 'desk organizer' came in. It said 'desk organizer' right on it....

The officer starts looking at my paper work, gets up, asks his partner to move his seat, the partner stops what he is doing, stands up and moves his seat, so the first officer can squeeze by and grab a pen from the 'desk organizer' box inside the closet. One minute later the whole thing repeats itself for the stapler.

I get all of my fingerprints taken. First each finger individually, then each hand individually, then I get blank stares when I ask for a place to clean the ink off my hands....Outside, the pale blue columns are all covered in black fingerprints...

The new stamp I get in my passport is so old and worn down that it takes two officers (each having to initial what he has written) to verify that my visa expiration date is in fact now April 15. This took over an hour. And they were only processing two other passports at the same time as me.

I just got off the bus in Petra and I'll continue heading north, on my bicycle.

I've only ridden about 115 km in Jordan and so far it's been good. I was able to find a very nice road paralleling the highway, but without any of the traffic. The views are expansive. It's desert still with no vegetation except for some scattered sage brush. Every 20 min I pass some local grazing goats in the nothingness. I don't know what the goats eat, but they still graze them.

Most people I pass wave or say something. Usually "Welcome Welcome Jordan Welcome", or some other variation including the words "welcome" and "Jordan". I love it.

One kid threw a rock at me. I stopped and turned around and yelled a lot of obscenities and he ran away. I really wanted to chase and then mace the hell out of him....but my mace was buried and I'm somewhat scared of his older brothers getting in a car and deciding that what I did wasn't cool, and wanting some type of retribution, and I really really stick out...I think I'll keep the mace out of reach (it's not at all my personality, but lately I get so damn fired up when I think I'm not being treated the way a human should be treated. One time in Azerbaijan at a police check point one of the cops' little yappy dogs ran at me yapping and nipping at my bags. I stared at that cop and unloaded every bad word combination I could possibly think of. All it did was caught him off guard, I rode away feeling better and then relaxed very quickly. Almost like I was swatting at a fly. The other day I got in a cab to get my blood drawn, I knew the fare should only be 0.40 JD (something like $0.50). I told him to start the meter, he said 'no problem' and didn't start it. When I got out I handed him 0.40 JD and he said it was 0.50 JD. I said 'no problem', started getting out of the car and when he protested I yelled at him. I say all this because I don't think I've ever really yelled at anybody in my life. I kind of enjoy it...).

Petra

Jacob wanted to see Petra before he flew home, and so I hitched with him about 1.5 hours north.

It lives up to the hype. Lots of incredible structures carved out of the rock. Very similar to what Ben and I saw in Cappadoccia, Turkey. Except these people went great lengths to make the facade's fantastic. A lot of the 'building's' I went into weren't much on the inside. No frescoe's and no real sign of what they did there. But the facade's were unreal.


The place is packed with tourists and touts selling camel rides, donkey rides, horse rides, horse carriage rides, jewelry, tea, t-shirts, bottles of differently colored sand depicting desert scenes and all sorts of other crap. The above picture is the 'Treasury'. At least, that's what archeologists assume it is....You walk about 1/4 mile down a narrow canyon and then it suddenly appears. It is situated where the canyon widens out, which makes for a large courtyard in front of the treasury, then the canyon dives right for another 500 yards and then opens up again. This courtyard is full of restaurants and people selling stuff. It takes from the ambiance....




Camel are ugly ugly animals.


After the canyon from the Treasury opens up there are several other buildings or facades. Above is the monastery. There some 800 steps to get up to it. Jacob and I are sitting in the entrance. Inside was a large room and that was it. All that facade for a single room. It was fantastic.


Jacob walking down the street of collonades.


Jacob and I.


Some of the rock had stripes which made it look like a tiger. Or fish scales.

More Rum

Just got done with climbing.

I got sick of it really fast near the end. We had a long route turn really long and the loose dirty rock kept getting more loose and more dirty and just freaked me out. We climbed a couple of days after that, then it was time for Jacob to go home.

Aqaba is on the coast and about an hour ride from Wadi Rum. The weather is nicer there and they have restaurants, so we took a rest day and went to Aqaba for the night. Buses, for some reason, only run early in the mornings to Aqaba, so we hitchhike. It's so easy hitchhiking in Jordan that we never even bothered figuring out when the bus goes back to Rum. While hitchhiking back to Wadi Rum a 28 year old guy gave us a ride. He drove a Mitsubishi SUV. He does some type of translating for a living. I didn't understand at all what type of business he translates...

I asked him about dating and getting married in Jordan. This is how I understand it: boys tend to wait until they're about in their 30's (at least, this is what this guy told me) girls when they're in their early 20's. Anything older than 30, for a boy, means you have something wrong with you. As in, "why would I ever do business with a 33 year old unmarried man? If he's not married at that age it means he can't handle a woman. If he can't handle a woman, how can he handle a business?".

When a guy sees a girl he likes, or thinks he could potentially like, he sends his mother over to talk with the girl and the girl's mother. If the boys mother approves, then the boy and the mother go over to the girls house and they get engaged. The engagement is essentially the dating period. They have a wedding date set, but it is the time for the boy to decide if he wants to marry this girl or not (I'm not sure if the girl is allowed to say no....but logically she just has to act bitchy to turn the guy off if she doesn't like him....).

If the boy is getting old enough to get married but hasn't found a girl he is interested in, then his mom goes and looks for him. The guy I talked to told me that if his mom found him a girl, he could say 'no' if he didn't like her. But he would never even consider marrying a girl if his mother didn't approve of her.

This system makes everything seem so easy....


We got sick of eating chicken and rice for dinner EVERYnight, so we started making a pasta, carrot, tomato, tomato sauce, tuna, eggplant, onion, cheese dish.



We took a 45 min jeep ride out to a place called 'Barrah Canyon', to climb there. Some Austrian climbers came with us. It was cold the whole time.


We climbed with Dan, from Arizona, for a few days. That's him on the left. For some reason Jacob was producing snot at an unbelievable rate. Most of my pictures of him look like this.


Dan. Our camp was in the small canyon on the far back left of the picture.



Dan again. We did a route called 'Ocean Slabs'. It didn't require any ropes, just a lot of walking up really steep sandstone slabs.


Jacob in the top left of the picture.



This is Ahmed's house. Every time we walked past he invited us in for tea. He runs a desert tour company and is looking for someone to help him respond to emails (he can't when he is in the desert....). He's offering room and board in exchange....if anybody is interested.