Posts Tagged ‘middle east’

Jordan Gallery Posted

Another long-overdue collection of images is finally live on my site. Please take a moment to browse my photos of Jordan here.

Though a not insubstantial time has passed since my visit, the memories are as vivid as could be. Here’s just a quick sample: Hiking in Petra, hitchhiking with some random moustached man whose car interior was totally and completely wrapped in cling film and who smelled like candy, floating in the Dead Sea, leaping from ledges into sand dunes and racing down them like a kid, getting pelted in the back with a stone by some seven year old girl (wtf!), getting chased by camels, balancing precariously on giant natural arches, walking in Moses’ footsteps, exploring medieval castles and forts, having an ibex steal a potato from us, eating some pretty great food, listening to the haunting, synchronised call to prayer alone on a hilltop beneath a roman ruin in Amman, rescuing a donkey from a cliff, etc..

There are plenty more memories to be shared in photo form, so please visit the gallery.

Petra, Jordan


Petra’s Street of Facades

Photo of the Day

Clouds were a rarity on my trip to Jordan. Most days, the sky was a swath of blue interrupted only by the blazing sun.

Today’s photo of the day shows one of the cloudier evenings I experienced there and still, it’s only wispy, thin clouds obstructing my view of the stars. They certainly didn’t prevent the moonlight from reaching the Street of Facades in Petra, a group of ancient tombs carved into the rocky hillside.

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Stars shine through thin clouds over the moonlit Street of Facades at Petra, Jordan.


Sunrise from Jabal Umm ad Dami

Photo of the Day

One of the highlights of my five-day stay in the desert of Wadi Rum was a morning ascent of Jabal Umm ad Dami, Jordan’s highest mountain. In pre-dawn darkness, my guide and I clambered over the rocky terrain to reach a ridge partway up the mountain where we stopped for some breakfast and waited for the sunrise. We were treated to the scene in today’s photo of the day.

My guide, Sallah, had a potato we had baked the night before in the embers of the fire and was going to heat it up for me, but I had already had enough food to keep me fuelled, so he left it on the rocks where we could pick it up on the way back down. After reaching the summit, admiring the views and starting back down, Sallah found some ibex tracks and was trying to see which way it went as we approached our breakfast spot. Much to his confusion, when we arrived, the potato was gone. There were no ibex tracks leading directly to the spot, but there no other markings and he couldn’t think of any other animal that could have taken it, so he concluded that an ibex stole our potato!

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A panoramic view of the sunrise from a ridge on Jabal Umm ad Dami, Jordan's highest mountain.