Jordan

Amman

Slightly chaotic and disorganized Amman is quite a contrast to automated, sterile, and mostly modern Dubai. There is not much to see in Amman, but we enjoyed our two days here - sampling the food, checking out a few Roman ruins (which are not a real competition to Ephesus), bargaining with taxi drivers, and exploring Royal Automobile Museum. The car museum turned out to be the highlight of Amman. The previous king of Jordan was quite a car buff and amassed an amazing collection of old, rare, and just plain expensive cars and motorcycles. It's not often one can see a couple of hundred million dollars' worth of rare cars in one place. All cars are in an absolutely immaculate condition, I've never seen better. I suppose if one's hobby is restoring old cars, being a king really helps...

Karak

Karak castle, located approximately half-way between Amman and Petra, is one of the better-preserved castles dotting the area. The castle has massive underground catacombs (and Jordanians have not yet got into the habit of roping off all potentially dangerous areas), so I spent a few hours exploring them.

Dana

Dana is a tiny village (about four little guest houses and another couple of dozen houses in various stages of decay). It hangs on an edge of a massive canyon leading all the way to the Dead Sea - it is in the bottom-left corner of the first picture. I spent a day hiking an edge of the canyon; the pictures speak for themselves.

Petra

Wadi Rum

I spent two days in Wadi Rum, a desert area near the border with Saudi Arabia (the closest I got to Saudi Arabia was "it's on the other side of this big hill"). The area is inhabited by Bedouins who now got into the business of showing visitors the area. It was very interesting to see how they live and to get some first-hand information about the desert.

They let their camels roam freely, as they usually come back to the camps for water. However, every rule has an exception and sometimes the camels end up crossing the border into Saudi Arabia. The Bedouins have a great system for getting the camels back. They contact people in Saudi Arabia and give them a description of the stray camel. When their Saudi Arabian brethren get hold of the camel, they keep it without food and water for a week to make it a bit thirsty. At the end of the week they take the camel to the border, give it a kick, and the camel trots back to the known source of water at the camp. Quite an ingenious system!