Not doing much in Amman

Square de Paris [Enlarge]

When we started out on this trip in late November we knew that we were only just going to keep ahead of the cold weather in Europe. Even as far south as Turkey we were expecting proper winter temperatures. But we did think that once we got to the Middle East it would at least be warm during the day. Surely Jordan is desert, isn't it? You know, blazing sun, mirages, people crawling towards you gasping for water. Not so cold that the papers are reporting people dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from their dodgy heaters; and not so wet that tourists have to be rescued from floods near Petra. Apparently oil prices have risen so much in Jordan that bakers are being put out of business because it costs more for the heating oil to cook a cake than customers are prepared to pay for the finished cake! Our hotel certainly seems mindful of the price of oil when it comes to putting the central heating and hot water on. If we or another guest ask for it to be switched on, they will comply; but otherwise it stays off. We can't blame them—we've been the only guests in a hotel of nearly thirty rooms for most of the time that we we've been here.

Jordan has several world-class archaeological sites, the two main ones being Petra and Jerash. But our enthusiasm is waning for ruins at the moment. Having seen more amazing ancient things in Turkey and Syria than most people see in a lifetime, we are in archaeological overload. So we are not going to see Petra or Jerash on this visit to Jordan. Neither are we going to the Dead Sea, sadly—it's too cold to do the whole floaty thing, and there doesn't seem much point in spending a day travelling there if we don't go into the water.

In fact we were so cultured out when we got here that on our first full day in Amman we were desperate for some anti-culture. So we spent several hours in an internet café, then went to Pizza Hut for dinner (it's exactly the same as any other Pizza Hut except you won't find pork products on the menu). When we got back to the hotel we watched a very bad American movie on TV. It was great! Since then we've just spent the week here hanging out, drinking coffee in cafés and generally doing not very much.

So what have we done? Well, we've done a lot of walking. Amman is quite a large city, located on and around several steep hills. Virtually no part of Amman is flat. To get anywhere you have to either go uphill or downhill, or both. What looks like a short walk of 500 metres on the map could end up being more like two kilometres, with 500 steps down one side of a deep valley, and then another 500 steps back up on the other side.

We've tried and failed to find a guide book for India. Because the four-day Eid celebrations fell over the western New Year this year, a lot of businesses have taken the whole week off. There are not many English-language bookshops in Amman and those ones that have been open for business have stocked guide books for just about every country in the world except India. Yes, if we had been flying from Amman to Stockholm we would have been fine for a guide book, but we were out of luck for the second most populous country on the planet. We will have to try again in Dubai.

We have however managed to get our Indian visas. Luckily one of our bookshop-related wild goose chases led us straight past the Indian Embassy. Serendipity again: we got out the GPS and tagged the location so we could come back later. Buying the visas was a simple matter of filling in a form, saying how long we wanted the visas to last, handing over some local currency, then coming back a few hours later to collect our passports—containing our new six-month, multiple-entry visas.

We've spent time getting our heads round the strange money system, where the Dinar is split into 100 Piastres (sometimes called Qirsh), and a Piastre/Qirsh is further split into 10 Fils. The Jordanians never tell you which unit they are using. So when a shopkeeper in Amman says "Fifty", he probably mean 50 Fils, but he might mean 50 Piastres (500 Fils) or conceivably even 50 Dinars (50,000 Fils)! Assuming he means 50 Fils, you need to give him a coin with a "٥" on it (the Arabic for 5), because the coins only come in Piastres or fractions of Dinars. If he says "Two-sixty", try giving him a "١/٤" and a "١" (a quarter Dinar a 1 Piastre) and hope that you are not insulting him, or alternatively just do as we sometimes did and hold out your hand and let him take what he wants. We were never ripped off.

We embarrassed ourselves the first time we took a taxi in Amman (and our first taxi since we were robbed by a taxi driver in İstanbul). We seemed to be taking a very long way round and when the meter clocked up to "1500" and we were only half way back to the hotel we instinctively thought we were being ripped off to the tune of 15.00 Dinars for a journey that should have cost around 3.00 Dinars. We started complaining loudly to the poor driver (whose grasp of English was thankfully almost non-existent) about taking down his number and reporting him etc etc, when in fact the meter was only reading 1,500 Fils (1.5 Dinars)! Money in Jordan has been a headache, but at least we can now read Arabic numbers fluently.

As we mentioned, we've bought a laptop. We heard that there was a PC superstore in the Mecca Mall, on the other side of town. We looked at a map and it didn't seem too far, so we decided to walk it. Soon after we started, it began to rain, lightly at first, then heavily. You know that stage you reach where you're so wet that there seems to be no point in doing anything about it? [Like—duh!—get in a nice dry taxi?] We reached that point after a serious amount of walking. Then it got dark and we walked a serious amount further. We constantly thought it must be just up ahead, and we were pretty sure we were on the right road. But eventually we had to admit defeat and give up: we had walked for miles along an endless straight road in the pouring rain without catching site of anything vaguely mall-like. So we stood in a garage forecourt and hailed a passing taxi. The road was a dual carriageway, so the driver had to continue in the direction we had been walking for about half a mile, then do a U-turn. As we were heading back into town we saw it. A huge building with a fittingly huge sign, saying 'Mecca Mall'. It was right next door to the garage forecourt on which we had given up. Nevertheless we decided to quit for the day and come back the next day, this time in a taxi.

Some good did come out of the experience though. Because we were now shopping in the morning rather than late evening, we had time to look at a few laptops at Mecca Mall, then walk over to the huge new French Carrefour hypermarket about a quarter of a mile away to see if they had anything cheaper. Carrefour is in one end of the new City Mall, and the place is still only half built—but the French seem to have given up waiting for the repeatedly delayed project to finish, and have opened for business anyway, in spite of the whole place still being a construction site. Not only is the building not finished, but neither are the paths between the two malls—so we left a long trail of wet mud from the door through the mall, into Carrefour and up the escalator to the PC department. But what a PC department it was! We found a smaller laptop for less money than the one we had settled on at Mecca Mall, and so we bought it there and then.

So that's Amman. We don't particularly recommend visiting in January, but we've enjoyed having a bit of a break here and we may come back some day to see some of the sights of Jordan that we have missed this time. For now, we're just glad to be off somewhere warm at last. Which reminds us: we've got a plane to catch!

Where next?

We have stayed in the Select Hotel for a week, firstly to have our first rest since İstanbul, and secondly because we are at a bit of a dead-end and had to work out where to go next. The only ways out of Jordan are:

• Syria (no, we'd need a new visa, and we've just come from there anyway).
• Israel (no, we can forget about visiting half the muslim countries in the world after that).
• Saudi Arabia (virtually impossible to get a visa).
• Egypt (where we would be in another dead-end, and in any case we want to keep heading east).

To keep to our ideal of not flying if possible, the vague outline in our heads has been to get a coach across Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates. And then from there try to sail to India. The backup plan has been Jordan–Egypt–Sudan–Eritrea–Yemen–Oman, and then sail to India. That was the vague plan. Now we have actually researched it, we've found that both options are going to be near impossible.

Plan A: transit Saudi Arabia

There are four ways to get a visa for Saudi Arabia, acknowledged as being the hardest country in the world to enter apart from possibly North Korea:

• Be a muslim on a pilgrimage (we would need a certificate of conversion from our local imam in our home country, and anyway we've just missed this year's pilgrimage).
• Have a business sponsor in Saudi (difficult when you don't even have a job).
• Book an outrageously expensive 'educational' package holiday (errr… no).
• Get a few-day-long transit visa (you need to have a confirmed coach ticket, a visa for your destination country, and you have to demonstrate that you have absolutely no other options but to transit Saudi. Even then you probably won't get a visa unless you have residency status in the destination country).

Plan B: go into Africa then cross to Yemen

It turns out there are no ferries from Africa to Yemen: the only Red Sea crossings go to Saudi Arabia. Furthermore, according to one source, "it is extremely unlikely that you would be able to persuade a cargo ship to take you." In any case, even if we could somehow get across to Yemen, we would need a pre-arranged Yemeni visa, which would be difficult to get outside our home country.

And after that, what about boats from the Persian Gulf to India?

Again, there aren't any.

In short, we are stuffed.

Our only real option is to fly somewhere, so we have booked two tickets with Emirates to Mumbai (Bombay) in India, leaving tomorrow. Because the flight requires a change in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, we have been able to add a stopover there for a small extra payment. So we're having two nights in a nice hotel in Dubai, reasonably cheaply thanks again to Expedia, and then flying on to Mumbai. Total flying time: just under six hours, during which time we will cover about the same distance as we have done in just over six weeks since starting our journey. It's disappointing, but in truth we always knew we would need to fly at some stage.

Forty days

Today is the fortieth day of our trip! Time has taken on a whole new meaning: in some ways the forty days have absolutely flown by, but in other ways our experiences in places like Budapest feel like they happened months and months ago. So we thought it might be a good idea to have a bit of a review of where we are.

The luggage

A favourite topic of conversation in emails from friends and family at home has been: "Are you still only carrying those two tiny bags? How are you managing to live with so little luggage?" Well actually, we've found it very easy. We chose hi-tech clothes which were quick drying, warm in cold weather and cool in hot weather, and and in most places we have been able to dry them overnight. When this wasn't possible we just had to think ahead a little bit more. In fact that has been the only challenge of living with so little: you just need to plan more than usual. We have only two sets of underwear with us (what we're wearing, and one other set), but we have only had to put them on for a second day once.

When the time comes to walk to the next bus or train station, our travelling light strategy pays dividends. We have just the one bag each to carry, and while they are slightly uncomfortable for long walks, they are so much less cumbersome and frankly embarrassing than the enormous backpacks that all of the other travellers seem to have. We have had more than one taxi driver ask us where our luggage was, and several "Why didn't I do that" glances from other travellers.

The most essential item

Without a doubt, the GPS. To sit on a train where there are absolutely no announcements or staff, where you can't communicate at all with any of your fellow passengers, where it's dark outside and the stations have unlit or non-existent name signs, but to be unflustered because you know you're still 50 km from your destination, is priceless. We honestly don't know how we would have coped without it. Our free bonus is that it allows us to tag the location of our photos so we can have a progress map. The only price to pay is that we have to spend half an hour before each journey in an internet café finding the approximate latitude and longitude of our destination city, and if possible, the precise coordinates of our hotel.

What we have missed

There are only three things that we have missed. The first is our iPod. We could have easily fitted it in, but we chose not to because we wanted to have a complete break from our lives at home and we felt that having our entire music collection with us all the time would lead us to plug in to that rather than listening to the sounds of the country we were in. Even on a long coach journey, the trashy music on the radio and the unintelligible conversations of the locals are all part of the experience. However, if we started again, on balance we would take the iPod.

The second thing we wish we had brought is our driving licences. Why we left them at home is a mystery—they would have allowed us to hire a scooter or a car for the day if we wanted to, and fitting two bits of paper into the luggage would hardly have been a problem. We might try to get the licences sent out to us if we are ever in a place for long enough to receive mail. For now it's not a problem.

Finally, we have missed our laptop. We could have backed up our photos to it, connected to the wi-fi networks which seem to be everywhere, and written our emails and blog posts offline when it suited us, rather than having to sit in grubby internet cafés trying to be creative and remember everything that has happened when we really wanted to be outside exploring. Like the iPod, we didn't bring it because we wanted a complete break, but also because we thought it would be far too bulky to carry.

We have a slight confession to make at this point. We found a computer store in Amman the other day and we bought a laptop. It is very small (12-inch screen) and it still fits into the tiny bags with all our other luggage, although we now have to carry our even tinier day-bag separately when travelling between destinations—before, we used to be able to fit it into one of the two main bags. But the freedom the laptop has given us already has made it worthwhile and we don't regret it at all.

What we could have left at home

Nothing really. We have found that our planning was pretty good and we have had most things that we needed, and nothing that we didn't need. We have only used our travel towels once (in Brussels!) because all of the other hostels and hotels have provided towels. But we will undoubtedly need them again at some point.

How we are actually enjoying the experience

We have found the trip to be everything we had hoped it would be. We have got through the first few weeks of repeatedly asking ourselves "Why the hell are we doing this?". We are already much more confident. Our bargaining skills are coming on nicely, and we now think nothing of walking through the dark streets of an unknown city in a strange country not knowing quite where we are going or how we are going to get back. We are comfortable with not knowing where we will be sleeping tomorrow night, too. Something always works out. We are not yet ready to set off to a new city without any booked accommodation, especially if we will be arriving after dark, and we don't know if we will ever be able to do that. Some travellers swear by it—their huge backpacks mean that they have warm clothing options, sleeping bags and maybe even tents, so they automatically have a bigger safety margin than we do. Nevertheless they have our complete respect, especially the solo ones.

We thought we would have a lot of time to think about the future. We were wrong. We are considerably more busy than we ever were at home, and we seem to have had no spare time at all. We plan to stop somewhere soon where it's cheap and warm, probably Goa in India, and take a break. Hard as it may be for people at home to understand that we need a break, believe us: travelling like this is an amazing experience, but it's hard work and at times stressful. We need a holiday.

Crossing into Jordan

Amman mosque [Enlarge]

By now we were old hands at long distance bus rides, and pretty experienced at border crossing, but we were still on edge for the crossing from Syria to Jordan because there's so much that can go wrong. If the Jordanian border guards decided they didn't want us, we wouldn't be guaranteed re-entry into Syria as our Syrian visa was only valid for one entry. In theory we could be stuck in no-man's-land, refused entry into either country. We wondered what actually happens when that situation arises.

We had chosen to travel with Damascus bus station's most luxurious bus company, Challenge, but when Glenn tried to wedge his six foot frame into the allotted seat space we realised that even they were an economy brand. When the woman in front sat down and immediately tried to recline her seat he was nearly crippled for life and at the first stop we swapped seats so that he could stretch out into the aisle. An overnight on this bus would have done serious skeletal damage! Luckily it was only a couple of hours to the border and another hour from there to Amman, Jordan.

It seemed like the bus driver was in as much of a hurry to get to Amman as we were. He drove well over the speed limit all the way and we were soon at the Syrian border. Exit customs was a formality again. The steward got a log book stamped at a check point and we drove on to passport control. Again this was a large, imposing building and again there was no queue. In fact, at the foreigners window there was no official and we were sent to the desk for 'diplomats'. The official took our blue forms and filled in a few details on his computer. Then he scribbled an Arabic number in Biro in the front of each of our passports, stamped them and sent us on our way. To be honest we were annoyed at the defacing of our passports, especially on the page about 'Her Britannic Majesty requesting and requiring etc.' It just seemed wrong, and we wondered what Her Majesty would do if she knew about it.

It transpired that our driver was an Iraqi (we saw his passport), but in spite of what is happening to his country he didn't hold it against us. Very usefully, he was also fluent in English. We made sure that he knew that we needed a Jordanian visa before we, and his bus, could successfully cross the border. At Jordanian customs we were given the same kind of search as we had had entering Turkey: everyone off, bags open on a bench and a bloke walks past and peers at them. A token gesture rather than a whole-hearted attempt to counteract smuggling. Presumably they figure that with luggage as pitiful as ours, we couldn't possibly be smuggling anything worthwhile.

Back on the bus and on to Jordanian passport control. The bus steward led us to a money changer who swapped our last remaining Syrian pounds for slightly more than the 20 Jordanian Dinars we needed for two visas. With the cash in our pocket and accompanied by the steward, a 20-ish year old Jordanian Chelsea FC football fan, we went into the main building and up to the window labelled 'Visas'. [Note to selves: we must learn some stuff about the strange game called football (US: soccer), where 22 grown men run around in a field either kissing members of their own team, or falling over crying when approached by members of the opposite team. The game seems to be a standard ice-breaker the world over.] There was another passenger on our bus who needed a visa too and we stood together waiting. There was no one at the visas window, but we made our presence known to some official looking staff in the office next door. One of them wandered off, we assumed to find the visa seller, but still no one came.

After a while the bus driver came over to find out how we were getting on. He made some enquiries and told us we shouldn't be standing at the visa window anyway. Apparently we needed to queue up at the passport stamping desk to get our passports checked, then go back to the visa window and buy a visa, then queue up at the original desk again to get it stamped. Crazy, especially when the two queues are about 50 metres apart at opposite ends of the concourse. Anyway, we went to the 'foreigners' desk as required, but there was no one there either. After another ten minutes we were shepherded across the room to the 'diplomats and journalists' desk. Our passport was examined and we were sent back to the 'visa' window where an official had miraculously appeared. He opened our passports at a random page and stuck in a sticker (upside down in Glenn's case), stamped an official stamp over the top and scribbled a few things over that. Then it was back again to the 'diplomats and journalists' desk for that all-important immigration stamp and we were done.

We are getting a bit annoyed that every border official seems to think he needs to start a whole new page in our passports for his stamp. Because lots of countries require a full blank page for their bloated visa stickers, at this rate we're going to have to come home for new passports before we get half way into our trip. Maybe we will be able to replace them at a British embassy en route. Who knows.

We walked back to the coach and waited for the other guy who had required a visa, who was now having difficulty with his final passport check. Seemingly either his Canadian or Iraqi lineage was giving the Jordanian authorities cause for concern. We hoped he wouldn't be turned back, but we were glad not to have been the ones to keep the rest of the coach waiting. He rejoined us eventually, and we carried on towards Amman.

The bus finally reached Abdali bus station at 20:20. Amman didn't feel any warmer than anywhere else on our journey had so far: a little above freezing, but not much. The first person we encountered as we got off the bus was a friendly taxi driver. We had read about friendly Amman taxi drivers—a common ruse is to tell you that your hotel is full, or has burned down in a freak lightning strike or something, then offer to take you to a good hotel, where 'good' refers to the commission they receive, not necessarily the quality of the hotel. We knew that our chosen hotel was only 100 metres from the bus station, but we humoured him to see what would happen.

"Wanna taxi?"

"Maybe, how much?"

"Which hotel?"

"The Select Hotel."

"No, Select Hotel closed for cleaning. I take you to nice hotel."

"We have a reservation at the Select Hotel, we phoned them last night."

"Oh, Ok—I take you there."

"I don't think so."

Unfortunately the last laugh was on the taxi driver because we got lost trying to find the hotel! It turned out that the bus had dropped us a bit further down the road than he should have, so we missed the turning that would have taken us straight to the hotel. Eventually we found the place, and discovered that not only did we have a TV in the room, but one of the three channels with watchable reception was the Jordan Movie Channel, showing non-stop English language movies! Just what we needed. We went to bed and watched Hilary and Jackie, which made Isla cry.

Day 039
Damascus to Amman

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.