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Three months 'en route', life at home feels like it happened on a different planet a few lights years ago. This is our 2nd month in the Arabic world, one we
find fascinating and very intriguing. Definitely a world we can't possibly describe and a world only to be experienced from the inside.
We've spend the majority of October in Jordan, partly because of the
Middle-East crisis but mainly we needed a break from our daily life on the road. As we experienced in September, full time travelling is still hard work and hasn't become easier although we've spend more time on
travelling by car. The bulk of the 'work' comes from getting used to a new country, the result of 'simply' crossing a geographical line.
Crossing an Arabic (or Asian) border by car came with a considerable
stack of bureaucracy and display of 'power' over our property. We can almost call it an 'art' to make the crossing with the least hassle as possible. 'Baksheesh' is the medicine to make the hassle less painful so to
say. Anyway it comes with the territory of travel in Arabic (and Asian) countries and up till now we can't really complain. But masters of the 'art'? Not really.
The border hassles for Arabs seems to be even
more intense when compared to what we had to endure. Their luggage and (especially) cars are checked more thoroughly than ours. Most of the time we where simply whisked through at the entry and exit points of the
border stations.
Syria has been a real treat for us; the friendly and helpful people, the souqs of Aleppo and Damascus and of course our first encounter with the desert. It's a pity we couldn't stay longer
because of the hefty weekly 100 US$ diesel tax.
Syria is not a truly Islamic country. There are many religions as we noticed by the sudden absence of the call for prayer near the coastal region of
Baniyas.Consequently we saw many women (specially in Aleppo and Damascus) wearing western clothes, not wearing scarfs or being veiled. Although we saw also a few women (we guess) being veiled to the max with zero
skin visible and no way to distinguish front or back apart from the direction they walked in.
We experienced Syria as a safe country to travel in, even at the peaks of the Middle-east crisis. Travelling did
not make us feel uncomfortably for a bit although the daily news was littered with the dreadful events in the Palestinian territories occupied by the Israeli's. Syria is definitely a
country worth while of coming back to in the future, although we expect that western influences will change the country in the coming years.
Jordan has definitely made a step to the western way of living,
however the country is still very much Arabic. Many things of the west have entered the daily live in Jordan with the Safeway shopping centre, McDonalds and KFC in Amman as the most eye catching western icons. A
Bedouin answering his mobile in the desert isn't a particularly strange event. The standard of living is higher compared to Syria however there are still many poor people living in Jordan. The majority of the people
in Jordan are Palestinians and Bedouins, we haven't met many true Jordanians in the 4 weeks we've been there.
Trading is big business in Jordan, we've seen huge lines of trucks coming from Iraq and Saudi when
camping in the desert near Azraq. The red sea port of Aquaba seems to be the number one destination for this huge freight train of trucks. Petra and Wadi Rum of course are the biggest tourist enclaves in Jordan,
prices of living and getting around in these regions are comparable with the western world.
Our encounter with life in the desert is simply breath taking and will linger on in our minds for a long time. It's
a place full of life, as we've seen many many tracks of animals in the soft (fine powder) sand. And some people must be living in underground desert caves or something, because at the most desolated places we where
suddenly accompanied by Bedouins like they emerged from the ground.
The Bedouin are the people who master living in this particularly hostile (most of all a hot and extremely dry) environment. We've seen camels
(Dromedaries) nearly everywhere, herded by one or two Bedouin either by foot or simply a 2 wheel drive car. The latter in places where we even didn't dare to go with our 4WD car. :-)
We've experienced desert
heat, desert fog (not wet, but sandy & hot), desert wind (very sandy!) and strangely rain. The latter is the most fun, getting stuck in desert mud is a variation we didn't think of till we saw the effects of the
mix :-) In the last week of October we noticed a sudden drop of temperature in the morning and evening. The nights became cool (15 degrees Celsius) and the mornings and evenings around 25 degrees. A real treat after
the 33 and up score of the past months.
Looking at people in the Arabic world, we both noticedthat many people spend their time during day-time with simply waiting. Aside the road, in towns, in the desert,
we watched many people standing, sitting (squat position) and laying either alone or in small groups. No apparent activity going on, just gazing, passing time.
Imagining ourselves in such a position we would feel
restless after a short while, looking for something to do, someplace to go to, anything else than doing nothing. Being busy doing nothing, might just be a logical reaction on the extreme heat during day-time.
Something we haven't got in our small and particularly wet and windy country. Making yourself useful at all times is something we've learned from childhood. And yes, trying to make yourself useful in extreme heat
comes with lots and lots of sweat. Well....this might be just the thing the locals find so incredibly interesting to look at while being busy doing nothing. :-)
Getting the ingredients for lunch and dinner in
Syria and (the less tourist area's of) Jordan is something else. The large amounts of small shops have a fairly limited selection of food on display. Not because there isn't more to offer but the average Arabic
doesn't need that many single items as we're used to at home. Specially the fresh stuff, like milk, cheese and yoghurt is mostly expensive and isn't sold in every shop. We've seen lots of canned food, Brazilian
corned beef as the number one. So consequently our evening meals contained endless corned beef variations.
Also soft drinks like cola, fruit juice is not always there and when sold relatively expensive. 'Tang'
was our all-day solution, a powder to mix with water giving it an orange or citron taste. And well with average temperatures of 35 Celsius we "tang'd" ourselves with at least three litres a day. And
the morning and evening exercise was to squeeze 6 litres of water through our MSR ceramic hand filter. This filter definitely has saved us from lots of runs to the toilet, not to forget the savings in cash not
having to buy the 1,5 liter plastic 'mineral' water bottles.
Our short-wave receiver kept us up to date (BBC, VOA, Deutsche Well ,Radio Netherlands) with the events in the world and of course the daily life
in our home country. We must admit Radio Netherlands doesn't supply that much of detailed information about events in the World. The BBC and Deutsche Welle kept us better informed (faster with more details)
specially with regards to the Middle East crisis. One Dutch news item made us sigh really really deep; the report covered the shocking results of an investigation covering the noise level of the average supermarket
shopping cart. It made us quickly remind about our luxury life we live at home.
This month we also reconsidered our travel route. Getting ourselves into the Arabic 'boot' (UAE, Oman, Yemen) is nearly
impossible when coming from Jordan. The Saudi bureaucratic wall is huge as we experienced in Amman. A minimum of 6 weeks waiting for a transit visa with really high chance of being denied an entry. A reason? We can
only guess. Independent travel by car might sound as a real nightmare to the Saudi government, something not to be given away easily. Although there is significant rumour that the Saudi's are opening up their
country. But again in first instance for (financially privileged) groups as the rumour goes. Too bad for us, we heard several accounts from locals about the stunning untouched beauty of the mountain region near the
Yemeni border.
With the 'arabic boot' moved to our future travel list, we considered exploring Egypt. But again a mostly financial complex 'bakshees' situation when taking your own car, not to forget the
Middle-East crisis also affecting Egypt and the on-going elections in Egypt. Anyway, to make a long story short after 10 days of collecting and weighing all shreds of information we decided not to make the crossing
to Egypt. At least not by car at this moment in time.
Probably if we hadn't planned our 10 day break in Aquaba, we would have entered Egypt. So, is the lesson learned that having too much time to think gets us nowhere? Nonetheless, Egypt is still on our travel list for the future together with the 'Arabic boot'. These regions just need a more detailed 'plan the campagne' to get in, through and out without being trapped in tourist enclaves (Nuweiba in Egypt) or banging on huge (Saudi) bureaucratic walls.
Without completely retracing our tracks through Jordan and Syria, we drove mostly desert roads. Again stunning views and also the experience of different winter weather. We saw people dressed in many layers
of clothes as if the region was suddenly transformed into Antarctica. Temperatures hovered around 25 degrees Celsius in daytime and 10-15 degrees at night, still T-shirt and fleece time for us :-)
At some points
desert tracks where muddy, a sign of rain, a gift highly appreciated by many people living in the desert. As we where told, rain was early this time and finally significant in comparison to the extremely dry winters
of the past three years. This meant good business for the locals living from herding sheep and camels, the instant vegetation in the desert provides enough food for the herds to grow, in stead of shrinking in dry
periods.
City life in Damascus and Aleppo was (again) fascinating, two places of intense trading in the Middle-East. Suprisingly, many of the businesses trading similar goods are located in the same region.
All shops clustered in Car souqs, spice souqs, rugs souqs, clothes souqs, gold souqs and many more. Very convenient for the shopper, but undoubtedly harsh competition for the shopkeepers. We're still wondering how
so many shop-owners can survive, running identical businesses clustered so tightly together.
We look back at an eventful 3rd month and realise that live goes fast, now halfway in our 6 month sabbatical and
still 3 months to go. At lot has happened since, things we couldn't possibly have pictured in our wildest dreams. Remembering specific events in those three months is sometimes not easy, our daily diary is a big
help in doing so.
Looking at our travel map we see almost 50 different GPS mapped campsites starting from Turkey, either on camping's or in the free. Some of them really hard to find, others very obviously
located along big transport routes. Murat camping in Dogubayazit near the Iranian border still sticks out in our minds. A point where many independent travellers gather on the overland route to south-east Asia. A
wealth of travel information can be found here. For us certainly a place where we hope to touch down again for future overland adventures.
And yes, 3 months on the road made us think about future overland
trips. Not because we had so much time left to work-out detailed plans, but going through the experience itself makes clear what overland travel in Asia takes which in turn enables us to go even further next time.
Very much a learning experience in many different ways. One that takes lots of time and energy but has been incredibly rewarding. And last an experience which hardly can't be acquired in a different way than making
a self-organised Asian overland trip.
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