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...