Traipsing around Jordan..
Saturday, October 20, 2007
So for the past 12 days I have been acting as tour guide/bad translator/Eid grinch and have been showing my khaleeji friend Alex, around Jordan - and also seeing all the sights and sounds of Jordan that I have not visited so far (mostly owing to keeping weekends to catching up for lost sleep and/or waiting to get resident status)
Over the past days, I've visited Petra, Wadi Musa, Madaba & Mount Nebo (again), the Dead Sea, Aqaba (again, YAY) and Wadi Rum..
..hopped on and off to enough buses to last me till another sight-seeing spree begins, stared despondently at an open road for a bus/cab, bargained with cabs, translated painfully, befriended the tourist police..
But my favorite memory of the past few days is sitting on a bus enroute to Shuneh (a stop on the way to the Dead Sea) and talking to a Bedouin farmer who spoke to us with the same open friend. Suddenly he gestured at us to look out the other window and said one word - 'Jordan'.
The most breathtaking scenery - mountains and valleys, an unending landscape that falls before the border between Jordan and Israel and Palestine..and a clear blue sky. I wish I had a picture, but nothing beats what the memory I have in my head.
I thought a lot about that moment afterwards. Sometimes long drawn out sentences about picturesque settings are not important. I have been in Jordan for exactly 5 months and 6 days today...in this time I've grown to love this country, to have it feel like home, to feel miserable at the thought of leaving, to feeling shocked on realizing such a long time has passed and it still feels like yesterday when I excitedly hopped off a Royal Jordanian plane - even now, when a phone call from home about how 130 people died in Karachi on Saturday* makes me feel like the world has slipped out from under my feet.
8 more months to go - and then who knows where to next?
*this is the last i will say on this. being away from home does not give me the right to be a pseudo-intellectual commentator on the state of affairs at home given my only source of news is myriad news websites.
Over the past days, I've visited Petra, Wadi Musa, Madaba & Mount Nebo (again), the Dead Sea, Aqaba (again, YAY) and Wadi Rum..
..hopped on and off to enough buses to last me till another sight-seeing spree begins, stared despondently at an open road for a bus/cab, bargained with cabs, translated painfully, befriended the tourist police..
But my favorite memory of the past few days is sitting on a bus enroute to Shuneh (a stop on the way to the Dead Sea) and talking to a Bedouin farmer who spoke to us with the same open friend. Suddenly he gestured at us to look out the other window and said one word - 'Jordan'.
The most breathtaking scenery - mountains and valleys, an unending landscape that falls before the border between Jordan and Israel and Palestine..and a clear blue sky. I wish I had a picture, but nothing beats what the memory I have in my head.
I thought a lot about that moment afterwards. Sometimes long drawn out sentences about picturesque settings are not important. I have been in Jordan for exactly 5 months and 6 days today...in this time I've grown to love this country, to have it feel like home, to feel miserable at the thought of leaving, to feeling shocked on realizing such a long time has passed and it still feels like yesterday when I excitedly hopped off a Royal Jordanian plane - even now, when a phone call from home about how 130 people died in Karachi on Saturday* makes me feel like the world has slipped out from under my feet.
8 more months to go - and then who knows where to next?
*this is the last i will say on this. being away from home does not give me the right to be a pseudo-intellectual commentator on the state of affairs at home given my only source of news is myriad news websites.
Labels: jordan journal
posted by saba at 11:52 PM, | 
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