Alaska: Day One

Sensible things like buying a car, arranging a mobile phone and getting some camping gear had been put on hold before I even got out of bed.

We were going hiking.

Independence Gold Mine and Hatcher's Pass are about 80 minutes drive from Anchorage. We pass snow capped mountains and cross rapidly running creeks and rivers, presumably charged by snow melt. Green; green grass, brush and trees colours in everything else but a few clouds on a blue sky. It's a perfect day for a walk.

Independence Gold Mine is a run down abandoned mine; something absolutely from another era. This is miles away - thematically and literally - from any of the West Australian craters or tunnels I've visited. Plaques detail the lives of miners and muckers in days gone by. While there are certainly some similarities to my own experiences in these sorts of places, it's impossible to ignore that these were the days where working safely meant working somewhere else entirely. The setting is spectacular and the mine eerie in it's dilapidated and collapsing state. The trails here are very well maintained and easy going, it's day trip fodder. A detour. It's a great appetiser.

View from the mine, looking back down the valley.

Hatcher's Pass begins easily, traversing the length of a valley floor we pass beaver dams interspersed by short rapids coinciding with mild ascents. At the valley's end the trail becomes less clear and ascends the walls through a dozen or so switchbacks, each offering a view slightly more spectacular than the last.

Just one of a million million dollar views.

We make the top which marks the beginning of another valley, complete with more beaver dams between short rapids. The promise of a lake at the end is enticing but we're two hours in, it's beyond six in the pm and fiddle-head ferns are a snack food, not a course of dinner. Not that darkness is any real threat... that's still a month or more away.

Egypt: Valley of the Queen - Temple of Hatshepsut

Largely rebuilt, it's hard to know what to make of the Valley of the Queen. From afar it's impressive. Built into the end of an open valley is a temple that perhaps everyone is vaguely aware of when they think of Egypt, but probably unsure of its purpose or history.

Fully restored. It feels like cheating.

The story behind the temple is pretty great; the Queen had little right to the throne but got there by expelling her stepson (very young and the rightful heir) from Thebes and assuming the role of Queen by telling people her father was Amun-Ra. For reasons that aren't totally clear to me, she then dressed as a man for a few decades until she died and her stepson came back to claim the throne. In doing so, he laid waste to everything and anything she built, except for the obelisks because apparently they're too sacred (unless you're French, but that's a story for Luxor Temple...).

Game of Thrones eat your heart out.

If ever I purchase a house, I want this guy on the letterbox.

Egypt: Karnak Temple

Karnak Temple is reputedly the largest religious complex on the planet, although I'd like to defer to an impartial fact checker before completely endorsing it. A road between it and Luxor Temple was recently discovered and so naturally the Egyptians began bulldozing hotels, houses and shops that had been built over it in the last three thousand years or so. That it is lined with sphinxes is surely enough to quell any would-be Dale Kerrigan led movements.

A lot of Karnak Temple is closed off to the public, be that due to restoration - using cranes for this seems like cheating, no? - or ongoing excavation. The columned room after the first courtyard is imposing; 134 columns, intact and tightly packed give it the feeling of walking through a stone forest. Tourists can disappear in under ten paces... so that's what I did.

Columns!

I doubt Peter will ever understand this, but his guided tour is lackluster. It's basically a rerun of Habu Temple and Valley of the Kings. Is that a fair criticism? If these monuments are built to the same gods for the same purpose, won't each of these have an element of sameness to them anyway?

Peter takes my wandering poorly. He tries to scold me for wasting the group's time as they waited for me (a whole two minutes). I return fire with the hour we spent at a tourist shop that none of us wanted to be at, then the over priced buffet that only two of us ate at but we all went to.

He looks angry.

Is it my fault that he got this group of people? This souvenir averse, streetwise bunch of adventurers? It's an uncomfortable marriage.

After a holy room past some obelisks he gives us some free time - a half hour - I use it to follow a few people on a photography tour (I'm not convinced they know what they're doing; there's a lot of expensive gear and grey hair on show but the questions being asked are... concerning) before throwing my lot in with a few people from our group, Muna from Canada, Devvrat from India and Alejandro from the Dominican Republic.

A man follows me for a bit, essentially photobombing. Then he gets indignant, grabs my arm and demands money for my taking his photo.

I have trouble with this. Is he some sort of nefarious scumbag or are things here that desperate? I protest and walk away, he spins me around. I cuss. Presumably, he does too. He disappears, with a pound. What else to do in an otherwise fucked situation?

Caption suggestions welcome, I have nothing nice to say.

Karnak Temple is pretty cool though. As to whether or not Ramesses II was responsible for it or not is of little consequence to me. Egyptologists posit that it predates him and he simply came through and wrote his name all over it like some sort of architectural graffiti artist. Well played to him either way. The enjoyment to be found here for me is in the private moments, just wandering and appreciating the place for what it is.

Sadly, those moments are genuinely hard to come by.

Egypt: The Beginning of Monument Fatigue; Valley of the Kings

Luxor - I've been reliably informed by a jealous archaeologist - is considered one of the world's best "open air museums". Within a half hour's drive are the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queen, Valley of the Monkey (I'm not making this up), Valley of the Nobles, Habu Temple, Karnak Temple, Temple of Luxor and the Temple of Catchimitsup, to name a few.

I fiercely ridiculed a friend of mine a few years ago for saying, "oh, it's just more elephants" while on safari in Chobe, Botswana. I'll stop short of making a similar remark, but will say this much, for someone with a passing and reasonably undeveloped interest in the ancient world, Luxor has a lot available to see and explore that is not always discernibly different, save for its relative geography. These temples, ruins and monuments are impressive  but without a knowledgeable guide or a full blown passion for the subject material, travelling from one to the other can feel a little like herding.

Peter - our guide for the West Bank - was probably always going to struggle. In our midst was a Canadian, embittered from years in China and Libya, who took contrarianism and Devil's Advocacy to levels that paint me as positively docile and agreeable. Make no mistake, this is a man made tolerable only by knowing that you never have to see him again.

Heading to the Valley of the Kings first, I passed my 2005-spec-student-ID to the man at the gate, wrapped with enough Egyptian pounds for student entry. He looks at it, then at me, hat and sunglasses poorly masking nine years of time travel, hardly aided by the bushy beard on show.

His eyes narrow as he says, "you help me, I help you."

I give him 10 pound more (somewhere short of $2). He accepts. I can hardly fault his dishonesty given the context of my own. This sets the tone for the rest of the day, the UWA ID works, even after they notice the last sticker was issued in 2010. Apparently, my hostel sells "valid" student ID anyway, but at 100 pounds a go, mine and a bribe works out cheaper.

The more you know.

This is a useful lens to view Egypt through. Ever since every developed country on the planet revised their, "reconsider travel" to "do not travel" warnings, most tourists have paid heed to them. In a town like Luxor whose only serious industry is tourism, when money walks in, competition for it is fierce but not always intuitive. For services, the price seems to race to the bottom, for goods - food especially - menus and prices are shuffled to a tourist price and away from an "Egyptian price", a phrase I've grown to loathe. At attractions, well, the price is a student price plus whatever you can negotiate without causing a scene, typically somewhere in the vicinity of an extra 10-15%.

A ticket into the Valley of the Kings gives you access to any three of a dozen or so tombs with the exception of Tuthmoses and one of the eleven Rameses, these are purchased as standalones. Peter leaves us be, giving little away. Guides aren't allowed here, nor is photography (not that it stopped officials taking pictures for brochures and postcards...). Rameses IV is our first tomb, it's not terribly long or deep but every surface is covered in hieroglyphics, scenes with Horus, Amun Ra, Anubis and Rameses IV. The level of detail and precision is remarkable.

The iconography in Merentpah's tomb is less impressive and colourful but it's deep. Really, really deep. These tombs are prepared in the pharaoh's lifetime (+40 days for the mummification) so I guess it's altogether possible that Merentpah lost out a little in optimising that "audacious digging" against "ornate decoration".

It could happen to anyone, really.

Rameses III nailed it though. A meandering tomb with some seriously impressive depicted scenes on show, besides accidentally gatecrashing an adjacent tomb, this man's slaves got it very right.

This is where the tour gets frustrating, the place we go to next is a "traditional alabaster carving house", the purpose of which is for us to learn how the pots were made in ancient times. I call bullshit first, saying to Peter that it sounds like a souvenir shop and I wasn't interested. He stiffens at the accusation... then the Canadian savages him bluntly and tactlessly. He's a surgeon with a sledgehammer. It's incredible and tragic in equal measure. Peter breaks down and confesses he's on commission. We go to the traditional alabaster carving house. It even has eftpos.

We sit there for an hour, doing nothing. People talk at us, trying to sell things. No one budges. We can't leave. All so that Peter can get his five percent commission...

... but five percent of nothing is still nothing.

It's a tough thing to be witness to, you can see that there was a very large tourist industry here and everyone involved with it are fighting over the unpalatable dregs that ignore travel warnings in the pursuit of adventure. We were never predisposed to souvenir based tourism and were it not for those that are now conspicuously absent in the Egyptian travel-scape, probably wouldn't have been subjected to this. Instead, everyone wins an uncomfortable marriage of opposing agendas for the day.

Jordan: Kharak, Azraq and Amra

To the east of Jordan are a collection of buildings referred to broadly as "the desert castles". As these were things I was meant to see with Mikie the day prior, I could hardly enlist his services for exactly the same thing two days in a row without presumably having to answer some awkward questions from Farajat about time management. To work around this, I went to a different hostel and arranged it through them as a walk in...

... for considerably less.

That said, I was pretty sure that this would be all that is on the label and not a smidgeon more. Certainly no unanticipated overland adventures to somewhere else entirely.

Kharak isn't a castle. It's a squat, blocky building on a hill that is believed to be an ancient inn. I'm there with only my driver and a security guard. The guard follows me around, dropping an occasional english word like "stable", "window" and "old hotel".

Kharak: A medieval Holiday Inn.

It's a little eerie being followed by a guy in some dark ruins as he chain smokes and fiddles with his holster, but whatever, the broken English and offer of a durrie won me over.

Amra is a world heritage site and also not a castle. It is however in a desert. 1/2 is enough to earn the tag, I guess. Amra used to be a middle eastern hunting lodge/holiday house and probably had something to do with the extinction of the oryx. Undergoing some pretty hefty repair work and restoration, the murals inside were covered with plastic sheeting and scaffolding but from what I could see in the uncovered areas, it looked OK and probably would have excited historians/archaeologists a lot. The rounded roof and surrounding desert (plus oppressing heat) does give it a very Tatooine-like feel.

Mill and well, adjacent to the lodge at Amra

Azraq is probably Jordan's biggest natural disaster. A former oasis, water through the 20th century was pumped to a growing Amman, effectively depressing the water table at the oasis. Farmers in the region, running scarce of water due to this, sunk more wells illegally, something that further assisted its depletion, ultimately drying up the oasis. Plants died, birds and other animals left and the ecosystem was effectively broken. Worse still, when the Jordaninans realised the problem, their first solution was to just stop pumping water out but otherwise do little, thinking that nature would sort itself out (perhaps they subscribe to Dr Malcolm's belief that "life finds a way"?).

As the water table rebounded, salinity became a problem.

Now, in what seems like a remarkable and cruel irony, Amman - an already water strapped city in the middle of a desert - pumps freshwater to Azraq as well as aids re-vegetative efforts. This would all be great, were it not for the now larger number of illegally sunk wells in the area.

Oh yes, there is actually a castle here too.

Unlike the sand castles that are Kharak and Amra, Azraq is exotic and black, owing to its bricks being basaltic. It's a ruin. There's not much to it really... and while it's certainly cool, it's just not Petra or Jerash.

Castle? It seems to just be a really big yard with walls...

Jordan: Wadi Rum

Being draped over and in between seven hills, Amman is understandably pretty good at redirecting and funneling water due to all this natural relief.  After 18 hours of reasonably heavy rain, the valleys between these hills – notably where I was staying – succumbed to flash flooding. Sewers burst, roads impersonated white water rivers, cars stood still.

I was going nowhere.

Many hours after the rain stopped and two thirds the way up one of the hills... there is still a torrent of water.

You can’t get around, much less change weather like this. Taking it in my stride, I went out for breakfast that turned into lunch; my vantage point from the first story of a café afforded views of pedestrians getting sprayed by cars driving past. I wasn’t about to give up entertainment quite as good as that in a hurry. Without much of a second thought given to how long I might be able to sustain myself on Turkish coffee and felafel, the meals came and went while I alternately wrote, read and eavesdropped. I’d lost a day. It wasn’t a disaster but it was certainly undesirable. That morning I’d intended to head to Wadi Rum for two days before moving on to Egypt. Being 300km away down some rather treacherous roads, this as far as a plan went had to be totally abandoned now, which was truly a shame.

Wadi Rum was basically the place that sold me on Jordan. Petra is brilliant – make no mistake – but travelling this far for one reason was never going to be enough. Wadi Rum supplied that second reason in abundance. Famed for being Lawrence of Arabia’s refuge during his involvement in WWI, it is an expansive series of canyons inhabited by the Bedouin and recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage site for both its cultural and natural value. The prospect of camping out under the stars after riding a horse around for a day was pretty exciting.

The following day after the streets cleared up and Amman got moving again I was held up getting out the hostel by Mikie also having to take two Danes to the airport at midday. This was a nuisance as I’d essentially paid for his time for the day and already lost half of it. The plan became dropping them off before then heading east to visit some desert castles; Kharak, Azra and Amra. As we’re leaving the airport he turns to me and says, “You like the deserts, not the oceans or the ruins. I can see it in you. I’m taking you to Wadi Rum.”

At this point it’s about half past twelve and that’s tantamount to suggesting, “let’s go to the Dongara Bakery for afternoon tea,” except that the roads are a minefield of pot holes and the drivers suicidal. Naturally, I indicated that this was more than OK by me.

The three hour drive passes almost without event. At Ma’an there are APCs and tanks stationed along the highway due to two fighting tribes in the area. This is the only interruption to otherwise sandy and slightly undulating desert… it’s hardly blow-your-socks-off awesome.

Out of nowhere we come to the edge of the desert – all along a plateau, apparently – and descend into a canyon with mesas dotted around it showing two very different packages of sedimentary rocks. It’s beautiful… and we’re not even there yet.

Rum village (find me a better name for a town) is situated in a tributary canyon to Wadi Rum. It’s about a twenty five minute drive off the now impressive highway. All the way there the mesas and canyon walls encroach on the canyon floor and road, not enough to leave anyone claustrophobic but it lets you know just how small you are.

It’s great.

It’s 4pm. At the gates to Wadi Rum, Mikie does something heroic/dodgy; he name drops a higher up at Rum and then bluffs making to call that person. The guy at the gate panics. Entry fees are waived and we get a private tour for a relatively nominal amount.

Mikie (left) and our driver.

 The driver takes us into Wadi Rum with a tray back 4x4. The tray has been re-purposed with bench seats and a precarious looking canopy. I sit on a cushion and bounce around. Only the Bedouin can drive in Wadi Rum and only 600 4wds are licensed for Wadi Rum each year, supposedly to minimise environmental impact. The licensing criteria for vehicles doesn’t appear to be terribly exacting… and in truth, nor does it seem too demanding on standards of driving. A point to consider might involve establishing some sort of rules for driving in Wadi Rum, particularly around speed or track use… but this is a start, I suppose.

Why bother with just one track?

 

We initially go to a spring where TE Lawrence bathed, then to a Siq, a dune behind a small mesa and then finally an ancient Bedouin carving depicting the area. I suppose these things are cool to historians and archaeologists (and sure, they are interesting) but in all honesty, just two hours of driving around and simply looking was going to leave me more than happy.

To be fair  to Mr Lawrence, this is not a bad bathtub view.

 

Where Hiba gets a five time daily hit of happiness through prayer, this and the memory of it is going to do me quite fine for a while yet.

There’s a story of a man who recently got lost hiking in Wadi Rum. The Jordanian and Saudi armies were dispatched in search of him, as well as Bedouin guides and trackers. They found him – healthy and in good spirits – days later in Saudi Arabia. If he is anything like me, he wasn’t lost at all, he just didn’t want to go home.

Yes, it's pretty enough.