{"id":559,"date":"2014-05-26T09:29:47","date_gmt":"2014-05-26T09:29:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cornflaketraveller.com\/?page_id=559"},"modified":"2022-05-22T21:02:05","modified_gmt":"2022-05-22T21:02:05","slug":"middle-east-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.cornflaketraveller.com\/?page_id=559","title":{"rendered":"The West Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The West Middle East<\/strong><\/span><\/h1>\n

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My reasons for choosing to visit this hotly contested corner of the globe were that it was pretty much the only place I could travel that would be hot enough to allow me to camp during the winter months and would also fit within the limited budget I had.<\/div>

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Jordan<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

I flew into Amman and spent a week exploring the city and acclimatizing to the country, which included a couple of day-long road-trips to visit the north east of Jordan close to the Golan Heights area and a dolmen field not far from the border with Israel. I stayed in a hostel downtown and enjoyed mixing with salt of the earth people and trying all the food on offer, such as lambs brain and falafel. The city is interestingly built on 7 hills which allows you to get great views of a heavily built up area covered in mosques with layers and layers of history demonstrated by the Roman ruins and Ottoman palaces. On the Friday in the city there was a huge call to prayer and the streets were cleared, flattened cardboard boxes were given out as prayer mats and there was a massive communal pledge to Allah. Right after the prayer there was a demonstration about Israel\u2019s presence in Palestine so I followed and watched as people chanted and shouted angrily. <\/div>

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The main mosque in town<\/p>\n

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The hilly downtown area<\/p>\n<\/div>

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The Roman Colosseum<\/p>\n

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The big communal prayer on friday<\/p>\n

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A dolmen with a door\/window<\/p>\n

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Posing with the Golan heights behind us <\/div>

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The 2 day trips were very different; one was with a professor from a university in the city who agreed to help me in a film making project for the Modern Explorers<\/a> and the other road trip was with 3 other backpackers who were also bored in Amman. The dolmen had really cool little doorways and were really photogenic and it was great fun driving around the Jordan valley in the back of a clapped out BMW, click for more about the Dolmen Field<\/a>. The trip around the north east was great as we saw Roman ruins, the community spirit of the people (2 men stopped and fixed our back wheel), some hotly contested land on the border and we also touched the Jordan river where Jesus was supposed to have been baptized.<\/div>

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From Amman I travelled south to Wadi Musa to visit Petra and volunteer in a hotel that I had arranged though Workaway<\/a> – 5 hours work a day in exchange for bed and board, which really helped due to the surprisingly high prices in Jordan. While in Wadi Musa I visited Little Petra (a baby version of the main site about 12km away) and mingled with fellow travellers while working on reception in the hotel. I spent 4 days visiting the amazing ruins of Petra but you could spend months here exploring the temples and chambers carved into the rock. My friend Oddfrid visited from Norway and we filmed as much as we could in the 4 days with the intention of making a film for the Modern Explorers<\/a>. We met with a local author who had some alternative explanations for the building of this magnificent site which is spread over a huge area in the desert and he showed us some of the strange standing stones and markings on the ground. \u2013 You can see footage of what I\u2019m talking about in Corn Flakes in Jordan (There’s a link if you scroll down).
\nPlease click for a blog post about Mikey and his experience volunteering in Africa<\/a><\/div>

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The view over Wadi Musa<\/p>\n

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The main temple at Little Petra <\/div>

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The largest of the temples<\/div>

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The pretty sedimentary rock<\/div>

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Some of the many caverns<\/div>

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Oddfrid and a friend we made <\/div>

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Flakes above the famous Treasury<\/div>

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An ancient clock<\/div>

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