Jordan Challenge 12.3: Petra Comes Full Circle

The first time I visited Petra was in June 2010, on an extremely memorable visit with Siham and Connor.  That time we saw the Siq, the Treasury, the Monastery and all the other sites that have made Petra world-famous.  On that visit we also spent an unforgettable night in a desert cave, hosted by our new friends, Khalid and Ibrahim.

My all-time favorite photo: Siham and our friend Khalid from two years ago, and our first trip to Petra.

Ibrahim, Siham and Connor at Little Petra -- also two years ago.

 Last year, I was lucky to return to Petra with my friends and former students, Kate and Alexsis, when the three of us were in Jordan and the West Bank, doing research on the Millennium Development Goals in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

Alexsis and Kate from our Petra visit that was almost exactly a year ago.

Given that I knew I'd be living in Jordan for ten months, and hoped that I'd have multiple visitors, this year one of the Challenges on my list was to try to see Petra in three different ways.  Earlier this year I did two of them; Petra by Night with Chris, and Petra for Morning People with Paul. And last week I completed that challenge with my Petra Full Circle visit.  The visit earned the name in two senses; first, in going there with Siham, we were able to go back to the place that we had discovered for the first time almost exactly two years ago.  And second, in visiting with Siham and Leah, we were able to take the entire project encompassed by first 52 New Things and then the series of challenges of the last two years back to the beginning in a sense. And of course, as is always the case when the three of us embark on an adventure, we had a lot of fun!

As my colleague Amy pointed out, wasn't it clever of me to dress in matching stripes?

Siham and Leah enjoying the fact that the tour buses had totally cleared out of the Siq, leaving it all for us.

A shot of the Monastery taken by Leah -- the reward for climbing the 850 steps to get there.

The best jump shot of the trip award went to Leah this time, posing in front of the Treasury.

Jordan Challenge 34: Go Snorkeling in the Red Sea

Despite the brief nature of Leah and Siham's visit, we managed to get in what I like to think of as the Triple Crown of visiting Jordan: Petra, Wadi Rum and Aqaba.  Aqaba's claim to fame is that it sits on the very small bit of coast that Jordan has, which borders the Red Sea.  This makes Aqaba important commercially as the country's only port, and for tourism as it's only seaside city. But what is most spectacular about Aqaba is what lies beneath in the form of a vibrant coral reef just begging to be explored.

The beaches south of Aqaba are beautiful, and who wouldn't want the occasional camel adding to the scenery?  But the best part is what you can't see: the incredible coral reef just a few meters out from the shore.

Since we only had a day to spend, we headed pretty directly to an area known as South Beach and got fitted out pretty quickly with our snorkeling gear.  Siham wasn't feeling well, so did some sunbathing while Leah and I followed our aptly-nicknamed guide, Shark, through a reef called the Japanese Garden.  It was spectacular! There were corals in all kinds of shapes, sea anemones, starfish, pipefish, jellyfish, and brightly colored tropical fish. 

A dried-up version of the sea urchins we were swimming with.  Our guide, Shark, plucked off a spine and ate it, claiming it was full of minerals.Siham tried one and said it tasted like the ocean.

It really did feel as if I'd been shrunk and was swimming in the most exotic fish tank I'd ever seen. If time allows, I would love to go back and do a "try dive" with oxygen to be able to go deeper.  But for now I'm just grateful to have been able to see this unexpected side of the desert kingdom of Jordan.

Taking in the sun after we did our snorkeling.  I wish there would have been a way to capture the reef in pictures.  The fish were so beautifully colored, and there was a bright purple coral that I wish I could captured on film.

Shark insisted that try on the sea urchin as an accessory back at the dive shop where we rented out equipment.

Sometimes Life Comes Full Circle

So, last week I got about as lucky as a person possibly can when my friends Siham and Leah came for a visit.  It was only a bit more than a week, but we managed to pack it with all sorts of activities, including meeting all the students in both my classes as well as many of my Fulbright friends.  We also went to Petra (completing my goal of Visiting Petra Three Ways), Wadi Rum and Aqaba (where I was able to cross snorkeling in the Red Sea off my list). 

With the women of my Pressure Groups class during our end of the year dinner: Feda'a, Amani, Leah, Siham, Rola, Heba and Areej (Abdulazeez missed the photo op by thoughtfully rushing to the pharmacy for medicine for an emergency burned hand)

Enjoying the excellent night view at Books@ Cafe with Fulbrighter friends: Grace, Christina, Leah, Elizabeth, Siham, Jayme, Cooper and Kelsey

At Al-Quds restaurant sampling mensaf: Cooper, Mike, Leah and Siham

Posing with my Health, Environment and Human Rights class students after they completed their presentations: Siham, Mary, Noura and Leah

I plan to do some separate posts on some of these activities, but I also just wanted to take a minute to reflect on the fact that it was Leah and Siham who co-originated the idea of 52 New Things that started this blog and Siham who came with me to Jordan two years on my first trip here. (And while I'm thanking people, I should also point out that another close friend of all three of us, Jamila, set up our original connections here in Jordan for us, and would have been here too, had she not been racing a deadline to complete her PhD at Oxford.) As my adventure in Jordan draws closer to its conclusion -- I have less than a month left here now -- I'm so grateful to them both for helping me to create the path that led me here for this year, and for coming to explore the results of my time in Jordan together.

Siham and Leah (hiding out here in Wadi Rum): hard to imagine a better pair of travellers, explorers or all-around friends!

Jordan Challenge 33: Be Part of a Winning Trivia Team in the Middle East

So, life suddenly got very busy in a hurry here.  The coming week is finals here at UJ, Leah and Siham are in town for the week, and my love-hate relationship with my oven took a turn for the worst yesterday when it exploded in a giant ball of fire that that left me with a burn on my left hand and singed off my eyebrows and a lot of the hair around my face.  I'll do separate posts on most of that, but realized that I haven't been keeping track of Jordan Challenges very well lately, when in actuality, I just helped achieved a small victory for Fulbrighters everywhere last week during a short trip to Jerusalem.

The trip to Jerusalem was actually very serious, and will be the subject of its own post at a later time.  Last week I was fortunate to be able to participate with my excellent fellow Fulbright friends Mike, Luke and Cooper in a tour of the South Hebron Hills of the West Bank.  The tours are conducted by Breaking the Silence a group founded by former Israeli soldiers to share the realities of the occupation with civilian Israelis and ex-pats like us.  It was sobering, to say the least, and I will write about it on its own in a serious post that I sincerely hope my friends, family and students will read about and discuss. 

But on a lighter note, I am happy to report that I can now add "Trivia Night Champion in Jerusalem" to my CV.  The guys, who the rest of the Fulbright group collectively refer to as the Carpetlanders (because you cannot help but notice the carpet as a particularly salient feature of their very spacious apartment) are my close neighbors.  This has been an enormous stroke of luck for me, because they are tremendous people who I love hanging out with (as well as being awesome and generous cooks).  The facts that they like to cook pad thai and other complicated dishes and I like to bake cookies and we all love to discuss current events  have paved the way for a symbiotic relationship that a biologist might point out as exemplary.

The Carpetlanders: Cooper, Mike and Luke.

When we checked to the Abraham Hostel in Jerusalem, they asked if we might be interested in participating in a Trivia Night competition, and the answer was an obvious yes.  The Carpetlanders are also resourceful and inventive, and had recently created a new dish, the Shwomelette.  A Shwomelette is an omelette filled with shwarma meat and chopped tomatoes and onions, preferably procured from Reem, the best shwarma stand in Amman.  So, our team became the Shwomelettes, to which the guys insisted on making my participation also clear, so we became the Shwomelettes Featuring Trish (SFT).

I am pleased to say that we dominated the competition.  We knew, among other things, the capitol of Uzbekistan (Tashkent), the first pair to successfully summit Mount Everest (Hilary and Norgay), and the country that recently had a law proposed to allow a man to have sex with his wife in the hours immediately after her death (it was not passed, but it was Egypt).  Clearly, we Fulbrighters are veritable fonts of useful information.  Among the other teams only one, the Three Hamasketeers, matched our score, and we failed to break the tie in two elimination rounds.  So, we did the only logical thing and declared both teams as Trivia Night Champs and split our enormous earnings, which just covered a single drink for each us for a mutual toast in honor of our worthy competition and the importance of Trivia Nights among travellers.

Team Shwomelette Featuring Trish and the Three Hamaskateers pose for a victory photo.

Jordan Challenge 32: Visit a Nature Reserve

One of the worst things about realizing that my Jordan adventure is getting closer to the end is accepting the fact that there is not enough time left to do all the things I had hoped to.  So, my new strategy for getting the most out of the time I have left is to try to automatically say "yes" to opportunities that come my way on without much notice.  So when my friend Grace told me that she and her apartment were going to Dana Nature Reserve for the weekend and asked me if I wanted to come I didn't hesitate.  I just said yes. And it was great.

The sign at the "Towers" at the base of the Reserve.

Sadly, Jennifer got sick and had to back out of the trip, but the group picked up Aaron, who just arrived in Amman after a semester studying in Dubai.  He'll be travelling in some other parts of the Middle East soon, but also accepted Grace's invitation to check out the Dana Nature Reserve.

Our awesome campsite.  Lovely roomy tents, food and bathroom facilities, and best of all, a Bedouin tent for tea and socializing.

Grace, Hannah and I as Happy Campers!  Always wanted to be able to put that in a caption.

When you arrive at the Reserve, you check in at the Main Office, and then, if you are like us, and staying at the Camp Site, you get shuttled down in a truck.  From there, you get assigned a tent and depending on your time frame, can pick any of a number of hikes to do.  If you do an unaccompanied hike, a guide will give you instructions on how to take the trail, which is usually marked not by signs but by piles of rocks at crucial points.  We did two short hikes.  Our first day we did the "Cave Trail" before dinner and on the second we did "The Mountain" after breakfast.  Although both turned out to be shorter than we expected, both had a few stretches of scrambling sufficiently challenging enough to cut our chatter short and get us panting in the sun a little.  The camp site is in a spectacular setting, and one of my favorite things was just climbing around the nearby rocks and looking at the mountains of the area in the early morning before breakfast.

Hannah, Grace, Aaron and I at the mouth of the big cave on your Cave Hike.

Aaron and Grace taking a breather before tackling another level of the cave.

Aaron and Hannah sitting on the rocks in the early morning before breakfast.

Our drive back including a stretch along the Dead Sea, which afforded Aaron the opportunity to take a quick dip and be able to experience the amazing buoyancy that always surprises everyone who goes in the water -- although he paid for the experience of roadside (i.e. no-shower) bathing with itchy skin all the way back to Amman.

In the Dead Sea everything and everyone floats, as Aaron demonstrates here.

Once a long trip enters its home stretch (I've been here eight months, with a little over seven weeks left to go), I think there is the tendency to start mentally disengaging, and I would hate to do that, since there are still so many things I want to do, and people I want to spend time with.  Going to Dana helped to remind me of that, besides being a spectacular site in its own right.  Definitely a great way to spend a weekend!

Jordan Challenge 31: Making a Cairo Top Ten List (Part II)

So, I've posted numbers 10 -4 of my Top Ten List earlier, but the post was getting so long, I thought it made sense to break it into two.  Here is the rest of the list -- that is, the three best things about my recent trip to Cairo.

3.  Travel with Grace.  As an avid traveller, one thing I came to realize a long ago is that travel companions often make or break the experience.  I have almost always been blessed with awesome travel companions (though some, like my sister Katrinka and friends Jamila and Berit, might not feel the same about me and would be happy to tell you stories about how I almost killed us all with some ridiculously miserly moves that wound up being penny-wise and pound-foolish). As far as I'm concerned a good travel buddy is someone who has a great, sunny attitude; never sweats the small stuff (and considers my legendary (as in terrible) sense of direction an example of the "small stuff"); thinks it's just as fun to bounce onto a sweaty crowded form of public transportation or wander through a crazy chaotic market as it is to go somewhere in the guide book; and agrees with me that the only reason a traveller ever has a right to be cranky is when they are hungry, in which case the nearest scruffy-looking place that gets a lot of local traffic is probably a good bet.

Turns out Grace maxed out on all my criteria. Plus, she was constantly being complimented by everyone and their uncle for her excellent Arabic; had infinite energy and patience for the endless parade of vendors offering free goods and then reneging with demands for baksheesh; loves talking politics as much as I do (I highly recommend her blog, which can be viewed here); and generally charmed all of Cairo with her winning ways.  The moral of the story is that as travellers go, she is positively top-notch, and anyone reading this blog who ever has the chance to hit the road with her should jump on the opportunity immediately.  You will never regret it.

Still another of Grace's amazing travel skills is that she has perfected the art of the jumping picture in front of the world's major landmarks.  She can now add her pyramid jump shot to the ones she did in front of the Taj Mahal and the Siq of Petra in recent months.

Grace with her two new police buddies about one minute before learning the crucial lesson that police, too, feel that baksheesh and the pyramids go together in perfect harmony.

And here, showing off her happy temperament as we embarked on our felucca ride.

2.  Seeing a whirling Dervish performance. Thanks to our friend Kat, this one made it onto our travel itinerary.  The performance was free and held in an amazing building, the Al-Khouri Mausoleum.  The only drawback was that lots of other people also wanted to get in on the fabulous free performance, so although we arrived 45 minutes early, that wasn't early enough to avoid a nail-biting wait outside the giant doors in the hopes that we'd be admitted from among the throng outside.  But the wait was so completely worth it.  The whole performance was not like anything I'd ever seen.  It began with several musical numbers by white-clothed musicians, some of whom also did some spinning, and then they added the spinning dancers in fabulously bright costumes.  It was incredible how long they could maintain their spinning, and the whole thing is pretty mesmerizing.  I feel like I could watch it for hours.

In fact, it's a funny thing.  I've done a lot of religious tourism since coming to this part of the world.  I've visited Mount Nebo, where Moses is believed to have talked to God, Bethany beyond the Jordan where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, and a variety of other holy sites and mosques, churches and synagogues in Jerusalem and elsewhere.  But nothing has felt as spiritual to me as watching the dervishes spin, maybe because they seem so joyful. Although this performance was clearly created with the audience in mind, the practice of spinning was developed by the Sufis, a mystical branch of Islam, as a form of moving meditation. If I have the chance to see more of it (hopefully in an upcoming trip to Turkey with my friend Elizabeth), I surely will.  And I would strongly recommend that anyone who can, should check it out as well.

The musicians were as important as the dancers (and at some points were one and same).

On top of everything else, the performance space, complete with a balcony on the stage, was quite amazing.

My favorite image from the whole trip.

1.  Visiting Tahrir Square. One of the greatest gifts of my time as a Fulbright has actually been it's timing.  The Arab Spring and its aftermath is continuing to unfold around me.  Since the first hopeful manifestations of the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, Bahrain, and Yemen, optimism has been replaced with cynicism, fear and violence in many places (with the notable exception of Tunisia).  And many of the people I've talked to have cynical interpretations of events as well, wondering aloud, for instance, what role foreign elements (including the US government) have played. Yet, despite these developments and suspicions, I think nothing captures the imagination, the optimism and the idealism of the original revolutions so well as the phrase "Tahrir Square".

Having Grace around to translate the tons of graffiti on the government buildings behind me added a whole additional layer of meaning to the experience.

The Square is actually a very big traffic circle and is bounded by a number of notable buildings, including the Egyptian Museum, the headquarters of the National Democratic Party (NDP), the party of which former President Mubarak was head, the headquarters of the Arab League, the old main building of the American University of Cairo, and the Mogamma government building, that housed many government bureaucracies and in some ways symbolized the bureaucratic labyrinth of the state. On the 25th of January, 2011, an estimated 50,000 people occupied the square to protest then-President Mubarak and by February 1 that number had swelled to at least 300,000. Decisively, the Army swung its support to the protesters when ordered by the government to attack them, and Mubarak resigned on February 11, (Obviously, there is a whole lot more that happened, but that's my two-sentence oversimplified summary.)

Although the ousting of Mubarak, which was led by a secular youth movement in alliance with many other groups that had been repressed by the state, including the Muslim Brotherhood, was seen as an inspiring victory to supporters of democracy in many places, today, the outcome of the revolution remains to be determined.  The Army is running the country through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), it says, on a temporary basis until elections have been completed.  Parliamentary elections have already happened, and the secular elements that were at the forefront of the revolution, including many female activists, are concerned that the Muslim Brotherhood and the more conservative religiously-base Salafis won the largest numbers of seats, and are proposing legislation at odds with some of the secular movement's demands.  The Presidential election will happen around the third week of May.  In the meantime, Tahrir Square remains a focal point for demonstrations held just about every Friday, as various elements of the revolution continue to try to consolidate their gains into the actual structuring of a democracy that respects the rule of law.


There are a few tents still pitched in the Square which protesters continuously occupy.  This one is a solidarity tent for Syria. The boy in the picture is 13 year old Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, who has come to be a potent symbol of Syrian state oppression when he was tortured, murdered and mutilated by government forces after being detained for participating in a May 2011 protest.



No translation needed on this one -- protesters say it is time for SCAF (the military "temporary" government) to transition out of power.

One of my favorites -- highlighting the equality of girls with boys.

Ironically, though these were my three favorite things of the whole trip, none of them cost me a dime (or in Egypt, that would be a pound).  Yet each was priceless.  In a sense they collectively represent the components of travel at its best-- the opportunity to share the experience with others who are as excited about it as you; the chance to be moved by something beyond your own experience, and the chance to appreciate the experiences and actions of others that had before seemed distant and disconnected.  However the Egyptian Revolution resolves itself, it is impossible to go to Tahrir Square and not be moved by the collective courage and imagination of the thousands of people who demanded (and are continuing to demand) democracy and human rights for everyone. Cairo has always been a major tourist destination for people the world over.  I hope that the inspirational actions of Egypt's citizens give the rest of the world one more reason to want to come and see Egypt's contributions to world civilization.

Jordan Challenge 31: Making a Cairo Top Ten List (Part I)

So, it's been a couple of weeks since I got back from my trip to Cairo with my most amazing friend and fellow Fulbrighter Grace, but I've been at a loss about how to write about what we saw and did there.  But then last night, while talking to my equally amazing friend and fellow Fulbrighter Elizabeth, she pointed out the solution when she observed that I am a dedicated List Maker.  That has, after all, been a central theme of this blog from the start.  The challenge in this case was in keeping the list to a Top Ten, and even that was fairly hefty, necessitating a two-post write-up.

Here it is: my top ten Highlights of a Long Weekend in Cairo:

10.  The Pyramids of Giza (of course!). Fairly obvious, I know.  We could have done fine without the extremely aggressive purveyors of camel rides and plastic pyramids but it surely is an amazing thing to get up close and personal with probably the most famous geometric shapes in the world. I had visited once before but had never gone inside one.  This time we bought tickets and went inside the  Great Pyramid of Khufu (the biggest one).  I don't know why Middle Eastern tourist attractions are so fond of making you check your camera at the entrance (same thing at the Egyptian and Coptic Museums and at some cool places in Beirut), but as a result I have no photos from inside the Pyramid.  Nonetheless I can report that climbing up the inside is actually an unforgettable experience.  Rather than a staircase there is a gangway, and the passage is so low, you actually have to walk up bent over.  There are warnings not to go in if you are claustrophobic or have heart or back conditions.  We joked about it till we went inside and realized they were serious.  Climbing up makes you wonder how on earth they got the stones (which weigh several tons each) of the pyramids up at all.

Getting ready to give up my camera and head into the Great Pyramid of Khufu

A rare moment of not being surrounded by anyone who wants to sell anything.

9. Saqqara.  The Pyramids of Giza are not the only ones in the area, just the most famous.  Saqqara is a big complex south of Cairo that we also visited, which includes the Step Pyramid of Zoser and a very cool museum on the grounds.

Grace and I in front of the Step Pyramid of Zoser.  Grace's headgear and my bundle were both thrust upon us by our picture-taker, who was gearing up for the big moment when he would hit us up for baksheesh (a tip). Look out if these guys ever get together with the traders of Wall Street.

8. The Khan Al-Khalili Bazaar.  If you want to appreciate the architecture of Old Cairo, a good way to do it is to hit the Khan Al-Khalil Bazaar (and that way you can buy souvenirs, too).  Wandering around there reminded me of being in Stonetown, Zanzibar, which is an awfully high compliment as far as I am concerned for a place.  There are lots of twisty alleyways and beautiful doors and windows and the smell of spices and shops and stalls for everything from scarves to exotic lanterns to boring plastic kitchen utensils (which reminds that you the real citizens of Cairo and not just the tourists go there, too).

Everywhere you look in the Khan Al-Khalil is another beautiful building detail.

Grace, Lucy and Kat taking a breather from some serious bargaining (Kat wins the prize with the amazing lamps she bought).

7. Al-Azhar Mosque.  Grace and I both bought scarves at Khan Al-Khalil, which were pressed into service at our next place on our itinerary, the Al-Azhar Mosque.  Happily, this mosque is open to non-Muslim visitors (provided they cover themselves appropriately), and is interesting not only for the beauty of the mosque, but for its claim to fame as the world's oldest surviving university (established in 972 AD).  It is still considered the foremost Islamic institution for the study of Sunni theology and law.  Grace told me that the students and their teachers are paired off, and the students learn through an intensive one-on-one form of the tutelage; we saw the work going on for ourselves as we toured the courtyard and some of the areas inside the mosque, and the pairs of students and teachers in conversation with one another.

Grace dons her brand-new headscarf before we headed inside to see what old-school one-on-one Quaranic instruction looks like inside the mosque.

6. The Citadel and Al-Azhar Park. We made the trek up to the Citadel fairly late in the day, so didn't have to time to go in all the different mosques and museums enclosed within the walls of the structure, though we did venture in to the biggest mosque and had some great views of the rest of the city from the Citadel walls.  The Citadel was constructed by the Sultan Saladin in the 1100s to protect Cairo against the Crusaders. On the way up to the Citadel, Grace and I had passed the Al-Azhar Park, and had resolved to go visit it on the way back down. We were so glad we did.  There is an admission fee to the park, but it is well worth it. It's a beautiful green space full of little lakes and streams and promenades, with tons of Egyptian families having picnics and generally enjoying themselves.  We went to a lovely cafe overlooking the water, with great views of many of the sights we had spent the day visiting.

Waiting for some fabulous strawberry-mango smoothies at the cafe on the waterfront in Al-Azhar Park with views of the Citadel over Grace's shoulder.

5.  Egyptian Museum. The Egyptian Museum is definitely one of the coolest museums I have ever seen in my life.  It is basically Mummy Central.  Before visiting the Egyptian Museum I had been under the mistaken impression that only really big pharaohs and their queens got to be mummies.  How wrong I was.  I'm pretty sure that mummification was not for the poor, but there seemed to be quite a few upper-class-but-definitely-not-royalty mummies in the mix.  Only the really big VIPs got the amazing death masks (King Tut's solid gold mask is displayed in all its glory in a glass case and it is truly splendid); more ordinary folk had portraits placed over their mummified faces, and a lot of these portraits are themselves quite well-preserved.  For me, the most fascinating room was the one holding mummified animals.  Some were royal pets (most interesting in that regard were some baboons which were mummified in sitting positions); some were gods in their own rights (such as some bulls that were living gods while they were alive and then interred with all the ritual accorded a king); and some were, logically, mummified food for their mummified masters. The only good thing I can say about being forced to check my camera outside the entrance is that it ups the ante for anyone whose interest is raised by this description -- if you want to see the mummies, you can't look at your friend's pictures because there are none.  You have to see them for yourself.

One shot of the outside of the Egypt Museum before we gave up our cameras and headed inside to visit what I'm  quite confident is the largest collection of mummies in the world.

4.  Felucca Ride Down the Nile. This one was suggested by our friend and fellow Fulbrighter, Kat, who happened to also be in Cairo, with another friend, Lucy, while we were there.  Feluccas look an awful lot like what we called dhows on Zanzibar -- that is sailboats with a distinctive crescent-triangle shaped sail.  I'm pretty sure that the best time to take a felucca is exactly when we did -- at dusk.  You start out in the light and return in the dark, having sailed along the Nile, looking at the city of Cairo, watching the city life and lights emerge as darkness descends.  Definitely one of the best early-evening activities I can imagine.

Grace, Lucy and I settling in (Kat was taking the picture) for our felucca ride on the Nile.

From the Pyramids to the mummies of the Egyptian Museum to sailing down the Nile, there is so much to see and do in Cairo.  And that's not even including some of the stuff that got nudged off the list, like visiting the Coptic Museum or getting around on the always-adventurous Cairo subway.  But I thought my Top Three Things were so good that they deserve their own post, which I shall write shortly to round out my list.