Middle East

The Dubai Stopover: A Quick Visit to Dubai and Abu Dhabi

Middle East /

The Dubai Stopover: A Quick Visit to Dubai and Abu Dhabi The Dubai stopover is becoming a travel essential, and I was feeling left out. But then it happened. I went to Dubai to meet my friend Kathy and the others I was going with to Africa. My stopover would be three days, a day alone while I waited, and then day tours of both Dubai and Abu Dhabi before heading to Zambia. How much could I learn about these places that had sprung from the desert in my lifetime? It turns out not a lot, but I left with a better plan for my next stopover, if there is one. Dubai Dubai is a good place to gather, easy to get to. The airport is one of the world’s busiest. And that’s just the beginning of the superlatives – because everything in Dubai and Abu Dhabi intends to be the biggest, the most expensive, the most audacious. The tallest building, the biggest shopping malls, everything super-scale. Luxurious resorts, houses and apartments. Palm-shaped artificial islands. An island map of the world under way in Dubai. Louvre and Guggenheim outposts still trying to get a foothold in Abu Dhabi. Dubai has also become a medical care destination – US travelers will recognize many clinic names. Abu Dhabi has determined to be green, as in foliage, and has large, irrigated green spaces with shady trees. It doesn’t stop. My hope was that I could glimpse another dimension, too. I arrived at midnight, delivered by a pink (women only) taxi to the JW Marriott hotel. It’s the world’s tallest hotel. Had to be. It’s in Dubai. I tried out the Arabic greetings I’d learned in Jordan on people who didn’t speak Arabic. They didn’t need to. All the hotel associates I met were from somewhere else, like most of Dubai’s workforce. Natasha from Italy welcomed me, Yves and Rutendo from Cameroon and Zimbabwe were cheery at breakfast. At every turn, a different nationality. English was lingua franca. Burj Al Arab My plan to discover Dubai’s other dimension got off to a slow start the next morning. Deciding what to eat for breakfast in the seven-cuisine buffet took time. Drinking good coffee couldn’t be rushed. Later, I had a protracted high tea in one of the hotel’s restaurants. When I did venture out, I got into a taxi at the door and was delivered back to the doorstep without knowing what direction I’d been. In Dubai, you can’t simply walk around and enjoy a city. So being at the hotel was something to do. Dubai Mall and Aquarium And when I finally stepped out, it was to a mall, exactly where I intended not to go. It wasn’t enough that hotel staff recommended this as recreation; I’d forgotten my lens hood. It was fate. A Dubai shopping mall. I thought that going to a mall was a form of defeat but it turned out well enough. First things first. It took a while to orient myself in this place with its 1,200 stores and almost 6 million square feet of interior space. Lessons from scouting came in handy. Where was north? Where was the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building? At last, using mall maps and dead reckoning, I found a photo store, but it was only after being sent elsewhere twice that I found the right size lens hood. And it never did work quite right. Burj Khalifa Mission accomplished and now invested in the mall trip, why leave? It was cool inside the mall and I was short on ideas for other things to do. The Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo is conveniently within the mall, so I bought one of the ticket options without studying what it included. There are 300 species in the aquarium and even so the best part of the visit was that it turned out my ticket included 15 minutes behind the scenes where a guide talked about the science supporting the exhibits. You should buy that ticket, too. As you enter the aquarium, a man shoots the usual souvenir pictures in front of a green screen. I bought one of them when I left, of me standing in the wraparound aquarium “tunnel” surrounded by sharks. I think it’s rather cute – I had on lipstick and looked rested. That was to change. Dubai’s Oldest Building After the aquarium, I talked to the concessionaire but didn’t buy a ticket to the top of the Burj Khalifa – world’s tallest building, world’s highest office floor, fastest elevator, most windows, etc., etc. I walked outside, crossed the artificial lagoon and admired the tower. Back inside the mall, I was lured by a familiar sound – and yes, it was a Zamboni resurfacing the mall’s ice rink. I was tempted but didn’t skate. Instead, I wandered around people-watching. This is where to see real Emiratis, a man had told me. Shopping. Strolling. I observed carefully. Finally, a Lebanese lunch at the mall’s huge food court and then back to the hotel. As I waited there for the others, I had high tea and mused about Day 1 over cakes and sparkling wine. I concluded that there are many amusements at hotels and you actually can go to shopping malls for recreation. I didn’t learn much about life in Dubai, though. Dubai Museum Old Dubai and the Souks What was here before the cities started gobbling up the desert? (Goodbye, wonder gecko.) The place to go for this is the Dubai Museum in the Al Fahidi historic district where low-rise restored buildings with their wind towers line streets leading to the museum, housed in a 1787 fort, the oldest building in Dubai. There’s also a great camel burger at a restaurant along the street, but now I was on a day tour and didn’t have a chance to try it. There are models of local boats outside the museum, and inside, dioramas in the dark, small galleries depict Dubai’s past

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The Petra by Night Experience

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The Petra by Night Experience I’ve seen so many online comments about Petra by Night – love it or hate it, I guess. But I thought it was a special experience – just keep in mind that it’s a show, and not a nocturnal tour of Petra. You have to wonder what some people expect. A walk in the dark with luminarias and cell phones to light the way I was enjoying the drive from Mount Nebo toward Wadi Musa, the hilly town outside Petra. It came along sooner than I wanted it to. I hadn’t yet seen my hotel when my driver and guide Ahmad parked in front of two men sitting in plastic chairs by an open door. “What we are doing?” I asked. “Getting your tickets.” I couldn’t see a sign that said “tickets.” I handed over the cash. It looked pretty casual, but the tickets for Petra by Night and tomorrow in the daytime looked glossy and official, and my hotel just around the corner (the Mövenpick) was very nice. Ahmad went off until the next afternoon and I was alone at Petra. Petra, a UNESCO World Heritage Center, one of the treasures of the world. A treasure to Hollywood as well. You might have seen some sights of Petra in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. But don’t believe the movies about what’s behind the façades, because there’s actually not much at all. Petra by Night I chose to go to the Petra by Night experience at the strong recommendation of a friend who had lived several years in Jordan. If you are thinking about Petra by Night, it’s useful to keep in mind that it’s not a night tour of Petra. It’s a show. It’s theater. You sit on the sand in front of the shadowy great Treasury, Al Khazneh. There is a host/storyteller and there are performers. If by some unlikely chance you could see only Petra by Night or Petra in daytime, you would not have any trouble choosing day. But I think Petra by Night is worth doing. My hotel was only steps away from the entrance to Petra’s plaza of souvenir shops and refreshment stands, closed by the time I walked among them. I joined people already gathering formlessly near the ticket gate. Eventually we’d queue up and start as a group. The sky turned deep indigo. Lights appeared on the hillsides. It was refreshing now with the temperature ready to dip into double digits after another 100-degree day. Then the crowd began to form into a line near the turnstile. It was dark at last, and we were off. Petra luminarias The entrance to Petra is through a mile-long slot canyon, the Siq, reached by a longish, sloping gravel carriageway. The length of the carriageway and Siq was lined with luminarias, those paper bags weighted with sand and holding candles that scout troops sell around Christmas in the U.S. It was quiet except for intermittent talking and the crunch of the stony carriageway under all those feet. As we entered the Siq, the sound changed from crunch to echo. So my first impression of Petra was aural – not much was visible in the luminaria light (and the inevitable cell phone or flashlight). I’d read the guidebook and studied the Petra map. I knew the way. The long walk in the Siq was dark, mysterious and evocative of why the city was hidden for centuries. But I was beginning to wonder whether Petra by Night going to be mostly a long walk. Then suddenly around a corner the Siq gave into an open canyon in front of the Treasury, Al Khazneh, recognizable in the shadows, high as a 10-story building. Al Khazneh is what most people want to see, and it’s the perfect background for theater because it’s almost all façade. The rooms behind all that red sandstone grandeur are small and inconsequential. Here we were at last. The large group somehow got seated on rugs arranged in rows delineated by luminarias. A legion of fast walking people served us sweet tea. A cat walked by and sat near me, a silhouette against the glowing bags. In English, the host asked for quiet but the chatter continued especially among a large group that didn’t seem to speak English, much less Arabic. Or they didn’t care. And instead of just the luminarias, I was surrounded by 200 ongoing pinpricks of light as people took pictures of the darkness. A man recorded every step of a curly-haired blonde, aiming his phone at me. I had to shield my eyes from that one. In the midst of this, the show started with a supposed-to-be hidden Bedouin playing the flute (a shabbaba?). He was constantly illuminated by flashes. As the show progressed, a man sitting among the crowd played a rababa and sang a Bedouin song. He too was flashed upon. Rababa means “a bowed instrument.” It is probably the oldest stringed instrument existing. It’s good to give it a thoughtful listen, especially in its natural home, and closing my eyes helped me focus. Music done, Al Khazneh was illuminated and the host invited us to walk around and take photos. The powerful lights made harsh shadows and robbed Al Khazneh of color, but one after another families and groups gathered in the beams for photos. I managed a selfie and a few inadequate pictures of Al Khazneh. But photography wasn’t why I came at night. I was looking for some of the mystery. And then it was done. We took our long walk back through the Siq. By then I had lost some new friends from Mexico. (We found each other the next day.) When I exited the shopping plaza, a forlorn dog limped under the mercury-colored lights. Taxis waited a cul-de-sac and there was a chorus of “Taxi! Taxi!” from the drivers. But the Mövenpick was across the cul-de-sac, and it was nice to have only those few steps between

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Amman to Petra: A stop at Mount Nebo, “Memorial of Moses”

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Amman to Petra: A Stop at Mount Nebo, “Memorial of Moses” Ahmad, my driver and guide, was taking me from Amman, Jordan to Wadi Musa and Petra. It isn’t a long trip. We had several stops built in, including two grand spending opportunities (whatever the product or artifact was, “it’s cheaper here than at [fill in name of next stop]”), and Madaba, where I saw the ancient mosaic map of the Middle East in the Greek Orthodox church of St. George. I hired a guide at Madaba, a young Jordanian with a Dutch surname thanks to his Dutch grandfather. Next was Mount Nebo, where Moses stopped to look out to the Promised Land he would never reach. A Stop on the Way As we got close Mount Nebo, Ahmad asked if I minded him stopping for cigarettes and a coffee. He always asked (and he never smoked in the car). We stopped at a small shop on a sloping street of sand-colored cubical houses. Some parked cars along the street were draped with rugs instead of foil sunshades. Outside the store, under a sun shelter of long canes on a frame, there were Coca-Colas, plastic-wrapped cases of water bottles, beach balls, soccer balls, pretty decorative mats, straw sun hats, charcoal for grilling, plastic drink glasses, potted plants, Arabic dallahs (coffee pots) and a lot more. I didn’t always follow Ahmad into shops but I did here at the Panorama Mount Nebo. Three men were talking with Ahmad. They greeted me, and one offered us a taste of cloudy, straw-colored honey fresh from his garden. It was mild and good. Then they offered us Arabic coffee in china cups – I had a refill, too. But for the next round Ahmad got us Turkish coffee, cup type unrecorded. So there at the small store with the purple plastic table out front, the Jordan valley before us, haze concealing Jerusalem, I got my first taste of roadside Turkish coffee. From then on, I got Turkish coffee at every stop, no matter how hot the weather, no matter how many coffees I’d already had. Panorama Mt. Nebo Long after I’d eaten the honey at Panorama Mount Nebo, I remembered that two Jordanian physicians I’d met on the flight to Amman told me that I must eat only cooked food. They were emphatic. My gut wasn’t used to local foods, they said. But neither the honey nor tea I drank later from a family’s common cup made me ill. Mount Nebo I found the reference to Mount Nebo in Deuteronomy. Moses is instructed to climb and look, and there his days will end. As always Ahmad told me to take my time visiting. He would wait near the parking lot. I bought a ticket and headed up. I didn’t hire a guide this time because I’d read enough, I thought. It was over 100 degrees. A sad, blond street dog was inert in light shade. Ahead of me a man wearing sandals, a straw sun hat and a thigh-length garment that looked like a nightshirt walked with his guide. (He had nice legs. Showing off?) I was wearing long black pants, a black and white mosaic pattern tee shirt and large black and white scarf wrapped tight around my neck and shoulders. We both were clearly outsiders. Construction at the chapel on Mount Nebo cut me off from the ancient mosaics and elements of the Byzantine church that was once there. It also blocked my way to Giovanni Fantoni’s strange serpentine cross. Nothing seemed to be going on in the church at the moment though, so I slipped under the yellow tape to get a look inside and a better view of the cross. Instead I got a scolding from the nightshirt man’s guide. I didn’t really catch what he said, but it worked, and I abandoned my quest. Nearby I stopped at an olive tree planted by Pope John Paul II. All the Popes come here – Ahmad may have said that, or maybe I just thought it. Memorial of Moses In the end, unlike Moses, I didn’t see much of the Promised Land because of haze and blowing sand. My pictures are dusty looking. Selfies of me with the hazy valley behind, an inadvertent video which amused me and I kept, the sad dog, a tiny black plastic automatic weapon in the gutter. And the church was closed. So my visit to the Memorial of Moses was brief, but I am conscious that it was someplace of note. There are reasons Jordan calls itself “the other Holy Land.” Abandoned Ottoman Valley Town After Mount Nebo, dry grassy stretches, dry grassless stretches, Bedouin grazing sheep and goats on stubble and dry grass and watering them with tanker trucks. Ahmad said that since I was interested, he’d show me something. So we turned uphill on a back road where he presented me with an abandoned Ottoman valley town that still looked solid enough from where we stood. We drove further up the ridge to the amalgamated ruins, additions and reconstructions of Qal’at ash-Shawbak. Shawbak was a crusader castle built around 1100. It lasted only 75 years before it was taken by Saladin (Salah al-Din). It’s still impressive on its ridge but we didn’t look in. Ahmad promised me a better castle later. That was at Ajloun, and it was spectacular. Trip date: June 2015 Old Ottoman village

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Incomparable Petra

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Incomparable Petra Jordan! Petra! At last! It was time for my day in Petra. I had returned to my hotel from last night’s Petra by Night experience hot, sandy and flushed. It was late but the shower was good, the room comfortable and sleep sound. I got up early to pack – it was off to Wadi Rum after Petra – eat, and be at the turnstile as soon as the gates opened. Down in the Mövenpick hotel’s large, cool breakfast room I ate well to fortify for another 100-degree day wandering around outside, and made a few careful selections to take along for snacks. By this time I had learned how fast my chocolate and peanut butter granola bars melted in this heat. User error. I didn’t appreciate exactly how hot it would be when I packed my favorite flavor back home. Dusty tail end of history So here was Petra. I had the most part of a day to spend there. I had read guides and had a map. I had seen the pretty pictures. I had marked places on my map that I wanted to see. I wouldn’t have time on the ground to see everything I wanted to. That would take endless visits, certainly more than one. But I had the time to get a sense of the place. In the end, that sense was of stepping in at the dusty tail end of history. Vast and empty, with the remains of a powerful past all around me. The Nabateans had built their great city hidden in a rift valley along trading routes, sculpting the environment to suit their needs. Grand red sandstone façades were carved, rooms hollowed out. Other structures were built. Watercourses and fountains served the entire city. The city covered 102 square miles and yet it was hidden, entered only through its narrow slot canyon or by traveling over desert and mountains – if you knew it was there to find. The city thrived on its control of trade. Business was good. Socially, women were equal to men and played important roles in business and politics. But trade routes changed. The Romans eventually appeared around 106 AD. Part of Petra’s valley As Romans would, they added their buildings to the mix and although Petra remained important for a while, its decline had begun. In the 12th century European Crusaders came from Jerusalem to establish a defensive outpost but withdrew. Saladin (Salah al-Din) took over the Crusaders’ abandoned fortification, and the western world lost awareness of Petra until Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig (or Jean Louis) Burckhardt came on the sly in 1812. Picking sights miles apart doesn’t work 102 square miles. Reading the history, looking at pictures, picking out what I wanted to see. That was the easy part. I was ready. But it turned out I could not come close to fulfilling my plan. I had picked some sights that were miles apart, so I reset goals and stayed within the city center, walking as far as I could, and seeing everything on the map along the way. I also took time to slow down and rest, wander around, poke into places and follow trails I thought would lead to interesting things but often didn’t. It was tough underfoot, sand and stones, only a stretch of Roman pavement to make it easier. I read that it takes only an hour to reach my farthest point. That depends on what you do along the way. By the time I emerged, I had spent five hours inside Petra. Petra facades Going through the Siq Going through the Siq that early morning, I wasn’t alone but there were no crowds. It was already heating up. Along the carriageway I fended off opportunities to ride horses the few hundred yards to the Siq. You don’t have to refuse, but I did. Finally at the Siq, it wasn’t cool but at least shadowy. The first thing you see when you come to the end of the Siq is Al Khazneh, the Treasury. This is probably Petra’s most famous sight. This was it. I was here – in daylight now. People come from all over the world to see this. I actually saw some people enter from the Siq, look at Al Khazneh and turn back into the Siq. Maybe it’s all they cared about, or they’d been before. Maybe they didn’t know you have to exit that small canyon and keep walking. Camels lazed around waiting for tourists but no one approached me (yet) to sell me a ride. On beyond Al Khazneh, the main road’s eroded façades seemed to be melting away. But I hadn’t seen anything yet. Around another turn – and there the valley spread out. This is when I knew I wasn’t going to finish my plan. You can find the Qasr al-Bint on a map. It’s as far as I got. That’s where I read you can walk to in an hour but with all my detours, it took me much longer. Al Khazneh, Petra Forlorn, arid, beautiful. The city was beautiful in a forlorn way, arid, with its enormous eroded façades, decorated with veins of tan, brown and mauve rock, some fantastically. Oleanders bloomed in pink. A pistachio tree said to be over 450 years old grew by a wall. I kept the vision of a sizeable city of around 20,000 people with watercourses and fountains, beautiful buildings, gardens and lively commerce. City life more or less the way we know it. I went by all of the noted monuments, past the Roman amphitheater, the famous façades, the Great Temple that Brown University in the U.S. is excavating. It was hot and hard going underfoot. At mid-day, I rested and had my snacks in shade that I shared with a few local tourists and some goats. But the day passed and I failed at one place I really wanted to reach, the High Place of Sacrifice. Half way to sacrifice There

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Petra to Wadi Rum and Bait Ali Camp

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Petra to Wadi Rum and Bait Ali camp Leaving Petra, knowing I might not be back, was a life moment. (See my Petra post here.) Ahmad and I headed off on the Kings Highway, winding around hillsides to our first rest stop, a souvenir shop with no tourists, where Ahmad got a coffee and had a couple of smokes, and I used the bathroom. The three-story shop was high on an escarpment. The view from the wall of windows in the women’s bathroom was spectacular. I hope the men had a good view, too. In the small dusty garden, there was a Blessed Mother and Christ Child statue, painted eyes, red lips, and gold trim on their garments. The only other people I saw there were the woman who made coffee and two men upstairs, talking and pacing when we came and lounging on pallets when we left. Before we took the turn-off to Wadi Rum, we stopped again. Ahmad wanted cigarettes but didn’t want that to be the only thing he bought, so he came back with a pack of cookies, too. I ate only one. Jordan has few natural resources. No oil, no minerals to speak of. But phosphates – that is one resource they do have. We crossed the phosphate train tracks to get to Bait Ali camp. An undated online slide deck says that the Aqaba Railway Corporation transports phosphates from the mines to the port. We stopped on the tracks and Ahmad took a photo in the direction of Aqaba. Before sunrise the next day, I heard a train. I do all the tourist things and am proud of it I’ve read reviews of Bait Ali camp and a just few are a little sniffy because it’s not really a Bedouin camp, and you’re not really sleeping in the desert. And the camel rides are short. I can understand if people want to sleep in the desert with Bedouin hosts, but the camp suited me well. My halfway house to the real thing, maybe. I had a tent with an electric light bulb but no water, and just a little latch on the door. Tent # 67 was my first tent since Girl Scouts. When Ahmad and I arrived the camp seemed empty except for Youssef in the unlit reception. He was behind his desk, cooled by an electric fan, working at the camp’s only computer. I asked rhetorically whether I was the only person here. Ahmad took that to heart and said if I were uncomfortable staying here he could take me to another place, which at that point, would have to be Aqaba. But I wasn’t planning to leave. I handed over most of my cash, part to Youssef, because the camp is cash only, and the rest to Ahmad, who left to arrange for my Jeep tour of Wadi Rum and a camel ride. Ahmad returned with the details and added that the Jeep driver was a nice young man. Then he left for Aqaba, telling me to email him when I got back to camp from riding the Jeep and camel. Home at Bait Ali A tourist in the desert Jeep tours and camel rides are desert staples. I’ve seen the pictures of Jeeps flying over dunes. And a Jeep tour meant a Jeep to me. I drive a Jeep and walked out of the camp gate looking for one. But I found out that a “jeep” is anything that runs, and it can be an old stick-shift Toyota pick-up like my guide drove. The truck did the job. Parts of the interior were decorated with a shaggy lilac fabric that also wrapped the gear shift. The center console had lost its top, and a carefully sized and sanded plywood top had been put in its place. My guide wore a dark dishdasha and red and white kaffiyeh. A well-used Koran with gold script on the spine lay on the dash. He was a Bedouin, one of the indigenous people of the desert. He spoke pretty good English, and he told me his father also spoke English. On our way to the desert, we drove in the sand alongside a paved road. “What kind of bones are they?” I asked when I saw a scattering. “Camel bones,” he said. This was the moment when I felt weird. It was so unfamiliar. There were dried bones lying around. I didn’t know where I was going. Ahmad was gone. When would he start to worry if I didn’t email? But we will see where this goes, how it turns out. It’s why I’m here, and this young man – whose name I never learned – earns a living taking tourists to the desert. Later he told me that his older brother does the same thing. (I read that most people in the wadi now make their living from tourism.) He told me he played oud (a stringed instrument) and his father plays rababa (mentioned in my Petra by Night post). Later I drank tea with him and his father, on mats under their olive trees, while the family’s camel grazed alongside. His father was a slender handsome man with good English. I also met a younger brother, but not his mother. We drove to the tourist places in the desert, saw where T.E. Lawrence had hidden out. We went up and over the edges of precipitous dunes for an exhilarating ride down, just like the pictures. We stopped at a Bedouin tent opposite a butte with a slide of sand, a sort of sand avalanche, at its base. My guide invited me in to drink tea with him and the young man in the tent. There were some souvenirs on tables but no one tried to sell me anything. My guide and host sat on facing benches talking and studying their cell phones. Video? Sports? Who knows. My seat was about 15 feet away. Another truck pulled up and the driver unleashed

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