Floating in the dead sea - a nice end to a long trip

The previous post in this series is here..

We were done with Wadi Rum. There were more flight changes for part of our group. So BIL and family had to stay in Amman for an extra day. The rest of us had rescheduled our return (which was originally through DC on United) to go through Doha on Qatar airlines with a 8 hour gap in Doha! 

At least we would all be together till we were done with the dead sea experience. It took us a good 3+ hours to drive to the dead sea from Wadi Rum. We drove along the Israel Jordan border and stopped at Aqaba to see Egypt, Palestines West Bank, Jordan and Israel from the freeway. You can see it in the video. No wonder the place is tense all the time! The population density around the red sea area was incredible!

Then we were driving alond the dead sea. It was desolate. We could see a lot of farming on the Israel side, but nothing on the Jordanian side. We were blessed by the camel gods again on the drive. . 

Zaid stopped us at a store to buy some beauty products made from the dead sea. We spent 30 minutes there. It was interesting to know so many dermatology clinics and skin care treatment centers sprout around this area based on the curative aspects of the salt and water.

From the store we went to the Crowne plaza where a lunch had been arranged. It was an amazing buffet with a lot of vegetarian options and we got to drink tea with fresh cow milk for the first time in 5 days! There was a cake cutting celebration! With our tummies full, we were apprehensive of going in salty water.. what if we swallow some and the lunch comes out?! 

It was too late to discuss. So off we went. There is a beautiful elevator that takes us down to the water level in the Crowne Plaza. They also gave us towels and pool access as part of the service. It was all pre-booked. There are a lot of villas and long term housing accomodations in the crowne plaza. We learned that medical tourism, especially for dermatology is famous here and folks do stay there for 3 months at a time to take daily dips in the dead sea!

The signs that said Beach access were a lie. There is no BEACH! it is a bunch of rocks you walk on and eventually float.

This is highly risky. Out of the 8 people in our group and 6 others on this so called beach 5 of us had cuts and bleeding injuries when we came out of the water. Happy that no one hit their head on the rocks! 

Yes, you do float in the water and if the salt gets to your eyes or mouth, it stings badly and you have to rush to the shower to clean it out. There is no sand and the rocks on the floor cut your feet! My thighs were all bruised and bleeding (realized it much later), San's back was all scratched.. 

Like my niece aptly noted "the dead sea will take away all your pain and then double your pain by the time you are done floating!"

It was an interesting experience though. You get smeared with oily black sand, let it dry on you for 5 minutes, then go wash it out, float a bit, then get hosed down with fresh water.. followed by selective sand washing again and a final salt scrubbing.

When the entire thing was done, my skin was very very smooth but extremely dry! The supposed super moisturization didn't work on my skin. Maybe the salt water dehyrated me a lot. We were asked to drink a lot of water after that dip. The dead sea has 6-8 times the salt of regular seas and is also oily!

We walked back the hotel area and hung out by the pool. Then said our byes. It was time for the four of us to leave for the airport.

It was an hour plus drive from the dead sea to Amman airport and we saw tires burning in different places. We were hoping that my BIL's family stay safe the next day they were on their own and made it to our flight on time.

At Doha we took a transit Visa for 20 USD each. Then we took a taxi (they are reliable and affordable) to the Central Inn (15 minutes from the airport) and crashed there for the night. We got 5 hours of sleep. We already had boarding passes on carry on luggage only. We were back at the airport in the morning just in time to clear immigration, security check and board our flight to SFO!

The long return flight was actually good and the Vegetarian meals was excellent. This is my first time flying Qatar Airways, and I have to say they did a great job!

A video highlight of the drive to the dead sea and the experience there.

For the first time, I have managed to finish blogging about a weeklong trip within a week of returning. My family knew I wanted to finish it this time and have let me keep at it...

Yet to blog about the anniversary trip from July. Hopefully will do that over the next few days!

Thanks for reading through this series! 

This traveling family wishes you all a wonderful 2025!!!! 

Glamping in Mars.. the Wadi Rum desert

The previous post in this series is here..

We raced out of Petra towards Wadi Rum desert to catch the sunset there. It was supposed to be the highlight of the evening.

We stopped at the mountain sides to see the desert from a distance for two minutes. Rest of the time it was just driving. We saw the original railroad that the Ottoman Empire had that was bombed out by the locals to help the British divide and conquer them.

After 2+ hours we showed up at the camp.

The terrain here is out of this world.. a lot of Alien movies are shot here. Martian was also shot here. Everything has a red glow to it. The sand eroded rocks formations look unique.

The person at the reception told us that we were the only guests in the entire camp for the night, thanks to flight cancelations and state department warnings! He was sad. He said normally the place is full two days before Christmas. Today we were the only visitors for not just this camp but most of the camps on this section of the desert.

Our guides realized there was not enough time to catch an open jeep ride or camel ride to go see the sunset from the dunes.. So they said "just go up to the top of the hill in the camp and you will get the view!".

We walked up, took pictures, saw yet another group of cats there and walked back down. It was eerily silent.

They would turn on the hot water for 30 minutes to an hour just for us given the camp was empty. We agreed on a time and it worked out. There was a dining tent and a post dinner fireside tent. We were the only visitors. The cooks were from Egypt and both of them did a wonderful job serving us vegetarian dishes. Did I mention the cabins were really nice inside! 

Got my paruppu sadham and roti (the Jordanian version) and was happy! We had some good tea next to a fire, joked around for 30 minutes and it was time to go sleep. It was freezing outside and the cats kept trying to get into the cabins. Some of us were already showing signs of allergies thanks to the cats and we were running low on Claritin supplies!

The night sky is supposed to be amazing here.

We were able to see a star studded sky with our naked eyes after they adjusted to the dark, but there was simply too much light pollution from the camp itself. They refused to turn off the flood lights. Then there was light from all the other camps. We spent an hour sitting above the last cabin on the hill to take these pictures. Most of them are 10 second exposures..

a sample..

A gallery of night sky portraits..

By this time we got worried texts from the ladies on why we didn't come back. I tried to clean the skylight filter on my SLR as it was showing hazy images.. only to drop it on the floor in the dark. That "clink" sound of glass breaking was not good. Guess San is going to find out that I broke a 50$ filter by reading this blog..

We had a good nights sleep but we all had to set an alarm to catch the 30 minute hot water window before breakfast. I woke up earlier and ran up the hill again to catch some golden hour photos before sunrise. They were "meh".. and by the time everyone assembled, the sun was up!

A candid shot of a scared San.. she is afraid of all dogs and cats and animals in general.. these cats were very aggressive and woud hiss at us and try to scratch!

A better pic after I shooed the cat to the side.. 

A video highlight of Wadi Ram!

we drove out of Wadi Rum (Valley of the Moon is what it means) after saying bye to the camp..to some amazing views in the haze after a simple breakfast. There was no milk for tea. Apparently cows milk in an alien concept here. The cheese they have is all goat cheese. It was good.

It was a 3+ hour drive to our last destination..

God one ups Money - Ad Deir Monastery in Petra

The previous post in this series is here..

Our last stop was the Ad Deir Monastery. We had been told by folks who went before us, not to miss this place. It was not easy to get to as it was a strenous hike. It was good the kids decided to go for a mule ride as did their parents. The other four made it slow and steady. There are vendors every 500 meters or so trying to sell the same stuff to weary travelers. It definitely made the experience difficult. 

When the mule guys started bargaining with us at the Cafe saying it will take you 1 hour to go up but we can go in 20 minutes on the mule, it was not believable as they had to walk along the mule anyways! so "if the mule handler could walk up in 20 minutes, so could we" was our logic. For the most part it is true. San beat the mules. I was 5 minutes behind the mules. However, it is an exhausting hike. So it was wonderful to get to take in the views and do some photos and videos! The ladies had been praticing the same move at every place to do a collective "Reel" and we did that here as well. I am to edit that masterpiece but haven't gotten to it yet!

The slideshow of all the cats and mules we saw in Petra

The Nabatean people knew how to cut solid rock from the mountain face into large pillars and halls. They had a whole city within the canyons with excellent control of their most important resource .. water!

They had a script that was the starting point for the Arabic script. Somehow like everything we saw in Egypt, this too disappeared over time!

This is a popular world heritage site. It is usually crowded like crazy around Christmas time. However, given the conflicts in the area and flight restrictions, the place was empty. Hotels and shops were deserted. There were hardly 100 tourists that morning. No wonder every vendor was trying to get us to buy something there.

there is a vantage point a little higher up where we get better views of this amazing carving.. 

After the monastry we all came down walking to the Nabatean cafe. There was a lion key entrance which was on the map but we could not see it on our way up. San, myself and our niece were walking ahead by a few hundred meters. She was alert and said "Athimber, that lion thing is somewhere here to the right!". Her sense of distance was amazing. Sure enough inside a small gap we found this sign for Lion Triclinium. There was no path and you had to climb up rocks to get to it. Ran there solo to get these pics.

It was a pleasant walk down in the canyon shade..

At the cafe folks in the group ordered some fruit juice and gave it rave reviews. So far this day was going great and on plan!

Wanted to just walk back to the entrance. My estimate was it would take us an hour to get to the entrance if we walked fast on flat terrain. The group was tired as a whole. So we decided to walk to this shuttle and take it to the entrance. 

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There was a 20 minute hike from here to a shuttle stop. This whole Free shuttle is a borderline scam.  Originally was going to forget about this experience. But as a warning to others have to put it here. The shuttle is supposed to take 20 minutes to get back to the entrance with a stop at a Bedouin village. First of all no one mentioned the strenous hike up a hill go to go a shuttle stop. There are no directions to this stop and no signs of where it it! We even crossed more structures outside the site while walking..

The shuttle stop is a clearing under a tree.  Once we got there, luckily for us the van got full right away. so the driver and the guy in charge said "we will go stop at this bedouin village and keep going". Once we sat in the van, he tells us "we have to wait at the village for 15 minutes and then take off. that is our rule". Everyone in the van was tired. No one planned to get down. So we told him, "we are exhausted. we will sit in the van for 15 mintues". He said "okay. that is up to you". 

We go the place and there is a walkway with a string of shops. A guy at the shops tried to force us to get down. He said the "rule" was you had to get down and shop before the van took off. The rules kept changing every 10 minutes!

Every group within the van had people who were injured or too tired to get out. This guy was just off like a psycho. Maybe he was already having a bad day! He turned off the AC in the van, closed the windows and tried to force us down after he made the driver get out. A french family (where the mom was clearly suffering a foot injury.. she could hardly get into the van) told him "no. we are not getting down" and this guy got all jumpy and treatened to take folks out and "shoot" them if we don't follow his rules and started using abusive language in front of everyone. He was shouting "I will f^%k you all up!" in front of all the women and kids.

Then he called the driver out and sat in a bench to have tea. We had already sat there in the hot van for 20 minutes. One of the families managed to call their guide and driver to that point to pick them up. They had really small kids. There was an altercation there on how they were not allowed to get in.

After this he was showig us a cheers sign with tea in hand smiling while we had tired and hungry people sweating in the van. So I took his photo as he tried to go all out to show us he is boss. Finally a bedouin woman came up to me and said "you took a photo or video. I am a bedouin woman. You cannot take my photo". I told her that I was taking his picture and she happened to be in it as she was supporting his bad actins. But I respect women and children unlike them and deleted the video in front of her. Then asked her "are you a good person? He clearly is not. Tell him we have tired women and children in this van and he needs to let us go, now!". She talked to the jackass and finally the driver started the van after we had wasted 30 minutes there.

If you are planning to take this "free shuttle", know that they expect you to get outside the van, walk around, buy things and only then you get back in. Given these guys control the van, they can hold you hostage in this place. The regular cars cannot come in there. You are better off walking back to the entrance from the Nabatean cafe on a flat trail back through the canyon. it would have taken us maybe another 20 minutes. 

This 30 mintue experience thanks to one mans rudeness, turned the 6 hours of amazment that the Petra site had given us. All it takes is one person to spoil a trourist experience. The folks in Petra should make sure that their rules are advertised clearly. They should definitely take this guy and that driver away from any customer interfacing job or at least train him properly. 

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We all told each other to forget this and move on. When we were finally picked up by Zaid and Ala at the entrance, told them that they should have come with us inside Petra, even if they didn't come to the monastry. That might have saved us time and pain. Having paid guides who don't come with us is pointless. 

We stopped at our hotel, loaded the bags into the two vans and were off to the next stop a good 45 mintues later than planned. We were all hungry. Zaid said we could go to the City of Petra and grab some Falafel sandwiches to go.

Again, we made a mistake. The guys at the store didn't understand English. We needed vegetarian stuff. We lost 20 minutes trying to order. A student customer who spoke English, managed to translate for us. We gave feedback to our drivers/guides that at least one of them should have come with us instead of staying at the parking lot with the folks who didn't want to walk. All I wanted was some Pita bread and fries and that translation took longer!

We realized that in Jordan our guides were going out of their way to make sure we weren't seen with them during walks. It was weird. Maybe it had something to do with the issues going on locally! If your guide is not willing to walk with you anywhere, think twice before going on your own!

Finally we were back in the van and off to our next stop.. both drivers promised a race with the sun to make up for the bad experience. 

It has been a long long wait to visit Petra

Previous post in this series is here..

Ever since we watched Indiana Jones and the last crusade and heard about Petra, my brother and me wanted to visit this place someday. He got a chance to visit Israel for work like 15 years ago and he saw Petra. Being a man of few words he just said "I went and saw Petra on a weekend. It was good". Was thinking of him when I walked through the site entrance that morning.

Finally after a week of traveling, we got to sleep from 10PM to 6AM. We could have slept longer but the entire group showed up at Breakfast right after it opened at 7 and everyone was giving a sheepish grin. No one could sleep longer and we were all hungry! The breakfast area in Le Maison hotel is awesome and there was a guy making pancakes and omlettes on demand. Given there were a total of 16 people in an area set for 200, things moved fast. 

Our guides had told us that we were to leave our bags at reception and walk through the site after exchanging the online passes for physical tickets. There was a horse ride for the first 1/2 mile included in the ticket (but you tip the guys who hold the horses) and a free shuttle from the last point back to the entrance. 

It was a 10 mile distance to cover. He told us that if we walk briskly we should be done by 1 or 1:30 PM and meet them at the hotel reception before 2 PM. We had to start driving latest by 2PM to see the sunset at our next stop..

When the group questioned it later that day, I reminded everyone that people can wait, the sun won't! 

We were the first tourists to enter the Petra site that morning as soon as the ticket place opened. San and me decided to walk even the first 1/2 mile instead of taking the horse.

There is a Madras trail in Petra!!! 

The idea was to go through the canyon and meet everyone at the Treasury building.. which is the face of Petra that is one of two highlights. 

A video of the first part of the walk all the way to the end of the roman road (execpt the approach to the treasury.. which is in the second video)

There were two well decorated camels (which you also see in all pictures) and a kid who bargained with us for taking photos and videos. We went with it and the kid did an outstanding job with the videos. 

This kid was really good. The artistic parts of the video were all taken by him on my iPhone 13. DO NOT MISS THIS VIDEO and if you do go to Petra, do pay this kid to take your video! 

The moon going down into the canyon was amazing. The Sun was still coming up when we were walking through the canyon.

We spent a good 30 minutes trying to hike the trail to the ritual site on top of the hill called the "High Place of Sacrifice". The map did not clearly show how long that trail was and there were no markers or signs to tell us we were on the right track. Once we went high up and did not get a comfortable feeling, we decided to come back down. Either we missed a turn or it was not a short distance hike as suggested by the map. 

this is my friend doing a victory pose when we walked up the sacrificial high place..

The plan was to go all the way to the top to see the Monastry. This is the second highlight of Petra. 

In between the group stopped and said "we dont want to go up to see the Royal tombs". so I ran by myself and got a few photos and ran back.  Missed seeing the Church and tiles but my BIL and friend went up for those while I was running back. I got a short break to catch my breath, eat some well deserved Parle G biscuits and we were off to go up. 

Then there were the cats and kittens.. lots of them everywhere. They smell food in the backpacks and jump up from every gap and crevice. We later asked one of the locals why so many cats in Petra. He said "out here we either eat animals or let the inedible ones go..it is a desert!". Guess cats were inedible for some reason in those days and that worked in their favor. You can see them in the second video. will add a separte slidshow for them in the next post..

We did buy some Myrr and Frankinsense from one of the shops. The guy selling had a beautiful turban and he let me take his photo. Told him I could buy the same cloth, but would not look good in that turban. He said I could pass for a local because of the copper tone in my skin. Didn't know what to make of it.

We got to see a very old living pistachio tree on the walkway. Then there was an attempt at a bench photo.. Had to squeeze through the gap to get this one..

The shops were cute.. after we had bought stuff another store vendor showed us photos of Sadhguru in his shop and was marketing his shop as Sadhguru certified! We told him we already bought incense and walked on..

Once the entire team made it to the end of the colonaded street and saw what an earthquake does to large stacked columns, we took in the view from the Nabatean cafe.

By now other tourists who had taken the golf cart and mule service had beat us to this point and enjoying drinks. We were already late. 

So we started hiking up the steps to the monastery. . . 

There are close to 900 photos from just Petra alone between the iPhone and Canon DSLR. Here are a select few in slideshows. A lower back sprain is killing me. Before this break is over, want to finish writing about this trip. So the rest of the photos will show up every now and then on FB! 

and another slideshow in portrait format..

The monastery and leaving the site.. another story!

A slow day in Petra

The previous post in this series is here..

We woke up at 3:30 AM and drove to Cairo Airport from our hotel. Then caught a flight to Amman. There was a pre-paid Visa (thanks to Latif) which we had to get and then clear Immigration and customs. It was a decent airport but the smoking room door was wide open! So the whole area smelled of cigarette smoke. I went to the restroom and found cigarette butts in the toilet. 

This cannot be happening was my first thought. It was an international airport for crying out loud! Came out of that area and once we were out of the airport away from people, took a few deep breaths to calm down. 

We met our driver and guide Zaid. Between him and Ala, our other driver, they were going to drive and guide us for the Jordan leg of the tour. Not all of us could get on the same flight. So six of us made it on a 6:30 flight and the other two were on a 8 AM flight. Given our rest stop break, they made it to Petra within an hour after we reached. 

Most of the folks dozed off during the three hour drive. I was trying to stay up and take videos and also talk to Zaid to understand the area. 

Once we reached Petra, we were all hungry so we went straight to a restaurant suggested by our guides called "My Mom's recipe restaurant". It was walking distance from our hotel and the Petra site entrance and Museum.

The rooftop restaurant was well decorated and cozy!

 

Mom's recipe apparently included too much salt. The lentil soup was good but very salty. The rest of the food was amazing. They had a lot of veggie options. There was even french fries in the menu!

After all of us ate, we went and checked into the Le Maison Hotel. We all got a 2 hour nap. 

We started for the Museum at 4PM. It was a really quiet and nice museum. It was all self explanatory. We spent an hour in the museum, then took pictures outside as the sun started to set. Most of the museum is covered in the video.. I also thought some of the museum claims on plaques were exaggerated..

The first two pics were taken before we went into the museum.. the next two after we came out an hour later..

golden hour makes such a difference..

This was followed by some shopping in the stores next to the museum. We were debating having dinner at one of the other places when we saw that the menus were identical with slightly higher prices. So it was decided that we go back to the rooftop at Mom's recipe in hopes that mom uses less salt for dinner.

Turns out Mom is consistant and they like to make their soup that way! The folks tried a bunch of other veggie items and they all turned out great. The soup was okay with rice, so I made a daal chaawal out of it. It was a win win for the group!

My BIL had planned a surprise cake cutting for my co-sister and Zaid and Ala arranged it nicely. It was a happy moment for the entire group on what was an otherwise long and tiring day. 

Also Jordan was expected to by much colder, but it was pleasant in the evening! 

A video highlights of our first day in Petra..

We made it back to our hotel and for once we had to be at the breakfast area only at 7AM and start sightseeing at 8AM.

That made our day! Finally a night of rest and sleep!