The Great Outdoors

I have been getting out of the city quite a bit on weekends lately, so thought I would share a few photos and notes about my various travels.  I was also out on my first bike ride in the countryside yesterday - which was amazing.  First time on a bike since February.  What a joy.  But that I will save for another post.

As-Salt

Just to the west of Amman, Salt is an Ottoman era town that thrived in the 19th Century with strong trading links to Nablus in the West Bank. This town has one of the most intact historic downtowns in the Country, built from beautiful, local, honey-coloured limestone.  It is purportedly the home of sultana raisins, and there are lovely terraced olive and grape groves that ring the steep hills surrounding the town.

The old pedestrian souk is still happening with household goods and food and live chickens and tandoor bread ovens and clothing stalls all doing a busy trade.  I walked up to the top of one of the hills ringing the town and found an old Ottoman era Turkish cemetery, still well-tended, and a bright shiny mosque.

I did stick out like a sore thumb in Salt on a saturday morning - not in hijab, unaccompanied by children or a man.  It was the first place I have been actively followed by young kids and teenagers calling out to me, wanting to talk, the insistent "hello, hello where you from" - a weird combination of exceedingly friendly and faintly menacing. 

Three hours and two very steep climbs in high heat saw me happy to get back to Amman and its urbane charms and relative anonymity.  The brightness of the sun gives all my photos from that day a bleached-out look.  Looking at them, I yearn for shade.

Dana Nature Reserve and Kerak Castle

A couple of weekends later, I went on a little overnight camping excursion to the Dana Nature Reserve  about 2 hours south of Amman with a friend and his mother, who was visiting from Mumbai.

Before heading into the campsite, we stopped by the original village of Dana nestled into a rocky hillside, overlooking a deep gorge leading down to the Dead Sea.  There has been some kind of human habitation in the village and gorge below since the iron age - closer to the sea is the oldest discovered copper mining site in the world.

The village itself dates to the Ottoman empire - probably 400 years old - and is hewn from local limestone.  It was abandoned in the 1970s, but is now growing again as part of an eco-tourism initiative run by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), which has seen the village become a destination for hiking, bird-watching and wildlife research, at the same time as creating jobs for local residents.  (As an aside, the RSCN is an amazing operation and Ontario could learn a lot from them about how to integrate environmental protection, eco-tourism and local economic development more effectively!)

Our campsite, also run by the RSCN, was about 10 km from the village and perched at the edge of the gorge, as well.  The heat and stillness and white canvas tents surrounded by sand and scrub grass made it feel a little like the high savanna in Africa.  From here, we watched the sun set, sat around in a bedouin tent drinking mint tea, looked out at the amazing night sky and all went to sleep early in our tents.

The next morning at 7am, I went for a hike by myself in the cooler morning air for dramatic views and lots of birds and a couple of brilliant blue lizards.  My friend who was out on a hike much earlier than I was lucky enough, in the dawn light, to see 3 groups of oryx - an antelope native to the region that is threatened with extinction from over-hunting.  A reintroduction program at Dana is seeing populations growing here - a success story. (Not to mention that "oryx" is an excellent scrabble word!).

On the drive back from Dana, we stopped by the Kerak fortress built on a high peak by Christian crusaders in the 12th century.  More fantastic views and gorgeous bleached limestone walls and, unlike our other stops, piles of old stone missiles from catapults of years gone by.  

I cannot get over how easy it is to access amazing natural and historic sites in this country.  Everything is easily within reach and designed to make you feel welcome.  Also something we could learn to do better back in the homeland.