The Final Party

"What's the etymology of hangover?" asked Edd as we ate another large breakfast.  We headed to the beach for a reviving float in the sea, and another mud pack. There had been a sand storm the night before, and everything was covered in a layer of dust. It was a chillier than Thursday, and the water was quite choppy. The lifeguards were very concerned that we shouldn't go more than five metres out to sea. The Israel/ Palestinian authorities are not particularly keen apparently on people floating over the sea and turning up without a passport. There was another mud pack session. This didn't really improve energy levels much so we all retired to the spa for an afternoon of drifting around a jacuzzi with a book, and trying to catch up with writing this blog.

The evening arrived and it was time for the final party. All the previous parties had been hosted by the brides family, but the last one was held by the grooms, in order to welcome Nikita into the family. The party began with a formal ceremony where  Dolly, Dev's mother welcomed the bride and groom, placed rice on them, blessed them and finally fed them.

The meal began with a large amount of Lebanese food, which everyone tucked into enthusiastically. Once everyone had filled up on the Lebanese food we made the disastrous discovery that this was only the starter, and large vats of curry appeared, with rice. Most of the food had been in buffet form and really good. However, these curries were undoubtably the best of the week, and it was very sad to be too full to eat them (I realise this is an extremely tragic first world problem...)  The curries were followed by pudding and cake. Edd and some of our new found friends found some cigars, and we spent the last few hours of the wedding happily sitting and chatting to our new found friends before Edd tried to steal the 'bridal' golf cart (which had been done up in Indian style with orange canopies and pom-poms.) With a last cherry wave to a distressed looking hotel porter we headed off to bed ready for the early flight first thing on Sunday. I've never been to four weddings in four days, but I imagine this is what it feels like.

The Wedding!

The wedding day dawned, and it was hot and sunny. I received a text message summoning all unmarried girls to Nikita's room to help the bride get ready. This casual invitation led to a full on hour and a half of Hindu blessings from the priest, before we each took turns to paste the bride with turmeric and rose water. She was looking a very bright yellow by the time she was finished, and was taken away to be cleaned up. Meanwhile the next ceremony was prepared. Long lines of bangles were soaked in rose water, and then covered with table napkins so that the bride could not see them.

Nikita reappeared having been de-yellowed. She was seated on a thrown, and her younger cousin covered her eyes. The bangles were then placed on her arms without her being able to see them. These would have originally been ivory, but fortunately these days they are plastic. The napkins were then tied around her wrists so she couldn't see the bangles, as seeing them before your wedding is considered bad luck.

The next bit of audience participation was that every unmarried woman had to tie a golden pendant to her bangles. By the time we were finished this must have weighed a ton. Everyone tied them super tight as there was some tradition that Dev had to untie them, and if he took too long at doing this tradition held that she would be the most dominant one in the marriage.
Then began the Indian equivalent of throwing the bouquet. Each unmarried girl had to kneel in front of Nikita, whilst she banged her bangles above our heads. Should one of the pendants break and fall on us then it meant that we would get married yet. Giving pendants unwillingness to fall on anyone no one is set to get married soon, although Nikita did improvise and start throwing the pendants at people.

It was then time to get into a sari and head to a wedding. The large amount of very good food I have eaten recently definitely contributed to sari being quite tight, but I found three very helpful aunties to help me tie it.

The wedding ceremony was held outside in a modern amphitheatre overlooking the Dead Sea, with the mountains of Palestine in the background. Dev arrived on a horse that didn't look particularly comfortable with the portable loud speaker that moved along next to it. However, it's lack of comfort was nothing compared to Dev, who looked totally terrified, and got paler every time the horse moved. Nikita had a more relaxed arrival, greeted her husband to be, and walked to sit under the brightly coloured wedding canopy with her parents, Dev and the Hindu priest.

"This wedding has been shortened from the traditional one," the Indian lady to the left of me explained. "It'll only be two hours, they used to go on for three or four, fortunately we have a supper to get to this evening." Unfortunately the ceremony wasn't amplified so we didn't really know what was going on. The audience soon began to talk amongst themselves and then go and fetch tea and biscuits from the back of the open-air theatre.

After what felt like a very long time the crowd suddenly cheered, and Nikita began to lead Dev around the scared fire, which symbolised they had been married. Their scarves had been knotted together and they walked seven times around he fire. Nikita got to lead for four of the circuits and Dev the last three.

By this point the sun had set and many pictures of the happy couple were taken, perched on pink stools under the bright orange wedding canopy. We then rushed back to the room for a quick change before heading in black tie to the ball room for the evening party. This was much more recognisable with speeches from the best man, maid of honour, father of the bride and the groom. We then headed onto the dance floor for a bit more dancing. Sadly for Edd there was no pool to finish the evening in...

Henna and Sangeet party

"I'm going to get a Henna moustache, I think I'd suit a nice big curly one."

The wedding is now fully underway with a lunch party to prepare to bride. It was a relief to be greeted by fruit juice and not alcohol after the previous evenings cocktails. The women (and Edd) queue up to have intricate patterns of Henna tattooed onto their hands. The Indian DJs put on some Bangra and a group of enthusiastic  uncles and aunties dragged Nikita and Dev onto the dance floor.

We had fit in a lot that morning starting with a swim before breakfast. Swimming with one hand proved a little tricky, but we had the pool pretty much to ourselves. The only other swimmer turned out to be a hand surgeon, who was very curious about my hand.

After a large breakfast we headed down the Dead Sea. The water is almost like syrup and you float. It was an interesting experience, but surprisingly tricky to manoeuvre in the water. Edd compared my technique rather unfavourably to a beached wale. We then smothered ourselves in mud and baked dry in the sun, before waddling awkwardly back into the water to try and wash it off. Having managed to get the water in my eyes in this process I can testify to the high level of salinity in the water, and scrambled back out of the water, trying and failing to walk straight into anyone on the way to the shower.

Edd wimped out of the moustache idea in the end, and was rather offended when the henna ladies refused to draw anything on him. In the evening we had another party to contend with, this time by the pool. The reappearance of alcohol helped fill the dance floor, but only after various family members had performed choreographed Bollywood dances together.  Dev and Nikita's faces had been photoshopped onto various Bollywood film posters, and these flashed up on the screen behind the dancers. There was a slightly terrifying moment when The bride and grooms friends were called onto the stage. Not really knowing how to dance Edd, me and a couple of wonderful antiquarian booksellers we had met improvised and did the Macarena.

It was a really fun evening, but by midnight we were both exhausted and ready for bed.

"Time to go home I asked?"

"Just wait one second there's something I've got to do" replied Edd. At which point in stripped down to his boxers and dived into the pool. The bored looking Hotel workers suddenly became very animated, and insisted he get out. He remerged to a round of applause looking much too pleased with himself.

The next morning someone greeted him in the lift as - "You're the streaker from last night."

I begged them not to give him anymore ideas...

Onto Amman...

After the best night sleep I have had in a long time, I woke to a surprisingly loud dawn chorus from some small birds in the desert. It was at this point I realised that we'd planned the itinerary wrong. We needed to be back in Amman for 7pm, clean, shiny and ready for a cocktail party.
Currently I was dusty, dirty, and stank of wood smoke from the fire. Operation find and occupy shower began. Fortunately we were heading to one of the large tourist camps for breakfast. On arrival we were both relieved to find a shower block. I turned on the hot tap in a rather hopeful gesture, unsurprisingly no water came out. A hot shower in the desert seemed a bit much to hope for so I persevered with the cold. I arrived at breakfast to find a happy and rather smug Edd. His shower had had a working hot tap, as did the one next to mine.

It turns out that one of the greatest treat camels can receive is a piece of pitta bread. They were fed the left over pieces from breakfast on the edge of the camp, even the naughty camel who had removed his head collar and wondered off received some pitta.

We then began the long drive back to Amman. We drove up the desert highway, which rather did what it said on the tin. Our previous route south had been pretty, with small villages and spectacular mountain passes. The landscape on the drive back was flat and empty, it even looked like it was going to rain at one point.

Driving into Amman was chaotic, we hit rush hour at the souk with three lanes of traffic on a road only designed for the two. The driving style was best described as 'bargy'. When we finally found somewhere to park we began the hunt for food, specifically a recommended shawarma
Shop on Rainbow street. The shop was proving tricky to locate, and in a moment of particularly low blood sugar levels I reverted to a toddler and demanded food now. We ended up eating an amazingly good 'arrabbiata' pizza before proceeding to find the shawarma shop and having a second course of lamb/camel wraps.

We headed to a hotel to drop off the hire car and sneak into the loos to change for the cocktail party. We then hopped into a taxi and headed off Nikita's parents. The hotels taxi driver was also the man we dropped the hire car off with. He was quite a character, and spent a long time praising the English style of government, whilst moaning about Libyans and Italians. He then proceeded to tell us his biggest excitement of the week.

"There is a big English wedding happening at Crowne Plaza Dead Sea this week. Hundreds of lords and ladies are flying in from all over the world to it.."

We finally found Nikita's parents house, which was absolutely covered in multicoloured flashing fairy lights. We were handed exceptionally strong gin and tonics, and spent a fun evening getting to know the other guests over plenty of cocktails and curry.

The journey back to the hotel was in a large bus, with one particularly enthusiastic uncle singing karaoke the whole way home.  

"Well its not quite cheddar gorge is it?"

"How did you break your finger?" The Bedouin guide Abdullah asked. I explained about the horse incident. He laughed heartily "you should stick to camels," he replied. "As a child we had a story about how a camel gets its own way." Pausing only to turn over the chicken he was barbecuing he continued. "Once there was a camel, who misbehaved, and his owner beat him. Now the camel wanted revenge, so he hatched a plan. He went and lay in his masters bed and rolled over it and messed it up. The problem was his master had spotted him slowly making his way to it and slept elsewhere. The camel was very frustrated, then he suddenly realised how he could really annoy his master, and promptly died. His master was annoyed!"
Abdullah laughed again, he had met us at lunchtime in Wadi Rum village and driven us out into the desert. We had an afternoon to fill so we're taken around the 'sights' of Wadi Rum. The tour had begun with a stop at Laurence of Arabia's spring, which was a fairly modern looking water trough. Abdullah pointed half way up the rock behind it.

"If you climb up there you get good view." So we climbed, up a very steep boulder field to find the view. We found a herd of very friendly goats eating dried leaves at the top that really liked Edd.

The next stop was sand dune, again this involved a long climb to the top, this time there were no goats, but we did get to 'sand board' back to the bottom, which was fun if rather slow descent. Edd fell over 'avoiding a rock' I managed not to.

The 4x4 continued onto the next stop
 "Is this where Laurence went for a poo?" Asked Edd a bit too loudly in my left ear as we entered a gorge in the side of a rock. I'm pretty sure Abdullah heard, but he didn't seem to mind, in fact it turned out later he (and the Bedouin) really disliked TE Lawrence, and that his (rather large) inclusion in the tour was all for the benefit of the tourists.

"This is where the caravans sheltered from the wind" continued Abdullah. They carved Arabic into the walls, and here you can see the Nabatean writing."

A series of hieroglyphics were carved into the rock.  They included a small pair of feet.

"This here"said Abdoullah pointing at the feet, "this means there is a path upwards and it is possible to climb the rock." This was by far the most interesting this we saw on the tour, which also included a couple of rock bridges (quite fun to climb up onto albeit a little tricky with only one hand.)

As the sun was setting we arrived at where we would camp for the night. A two foot high wall encircled a small patch of ground  under the cliff of one of the rocks that towered over the desert sand. The rock had been warmed by the sun all day and sitting leaning against it was like leaning against a warm heater. Abdoullah fed us an enormous supper of chicken barbecued black, and a range of salads and bread. All washed  down with a bright orange drink, which Edd sneakily topped up with some of the gin we had kept from the aeroplane. Feeling happy and full we curled up under a pile of blankets and watched the moon rise.

"You do know it's only half past 8." I had been asleep under a pile of blankets, Edd was lost to the world of game of thrones. The Bedouin guy laughed, "what have you been doing today? I brought some Bedouin music from the camp for you. But you're already asleep." Abdoullah's uncle appeared with another Bedouin carrying a musical instrument.

The problem was we had both got out of bed at 5.15am that morning (shortly after the call to prayer) in order to see Petra in the daylight. It had been a very busy morning, I wanted to ride a horse, Edd was less keen. In the end we ended up riding two ponies into Petra. Mine was called Leila, she was a lively (and well looked after) chestnut with a white stripe. I showed her a picture of Cobbles, she was unimpressed when I suggested they might be related. It turns out she was only 2 and a half. Edd was on another horse, unimaginably also called Leila.

The ruins were spectacular, set in a landscape of pink rock gorges. We went on a long hike around them, eating a breakfast of fig rolls, with Edd muttering every now and again. "It's not quite cheddar gorge though is it?"

After a four hour hike we then jumped back into the car and headed south onto Wadi Rum. Our organisational skills were somewhat lacking in the food department and we arrived just in time for the Wadi Dum tour having only eaten fig rolls all day. The Bedouin took pity on us and fed us large plates of rice with chicken stew (Edd was unimpressed by the consistency- apparently a bit like school dinners.)

Abdoullah and his uncle began to sing, it was somehow all quite soporific. The warm cliff hid us from the light of the full moon, which lit the mountains in the distance. Eventually the Bedouin left to check his sheep, and we immediately fell asleep.

Sunglasses and a camel

My last sunglasses were snapped beyond resuscitation in an unfortunate, but fairly mundane, incident where I failed to look where I was sitting. This meant at 2pm on our first day in Jordan I was scanning the shelves of a bric-a-brac shop in one of the many shapeless Jordanian towns we had driven through. This shop had everything you never knew you needed, stationary, bug spray, car seats, and a vast selection of children's toys.

Just as I find what I'm looking for Edd appears from outside, brandishing a plastic sword, which he proceeds to pretend to stab me with. The shop keeper finds this rather funny,
"Daesh," he shouts laughing and repeats "Daesh."
I've always preferred the name daesh to Isis, its fails to perjure an Oxford river, and most importantly Islamic state hate it, as it is a pun in Arabic meaning trodden underfoot.
"Where you from asks the shopkeeper."
"Somerset" Edd replies, shopkeeper looks confused
"London, I add"
"Ah English- I love the English. I'm Haman I'm a history teacher. English much better than the Americans, the Americans snip snip your empire."
At this point he summoned two of his children, Edd tried to play with them (with sword) they quite rightly looked terrified. 
I asked how much the sunglasses were.
"For you friends they are free, please join me for coffee." Despite much pleading he wouldn't let me pay for them, and instead we ended up having a cup of coffee with him, whilst his daughter who was shy but spoke very good English recited the English alphabet.

It had been a day of surprising encounters. It was wonderful waking up at dawn to the sound of the call for prayer in Madaba, before driving  to mount nebo. This was a church on top of a mountain surrounded by olive groves, where God had shown Moses the holy land, and Moses had eventually died. We then began the long drive to Petra. There was great excitement when we spotted a donkey being ridden along the side of the road, but this paled into insignificance compared to when we spotted a camel. Edd even deigned to slow down the car so that I could take a picture. At this point the boy riding the camel signalled for us to stop. We hopped out of the car, and we were both allowed to ride the camel. Luckily the doctor who saw my finger last week only said I shouldn't ride horses...

We then drove along the dead sea, spotting the hotel where the wedding will be held later in the week. We picked up a local hitchhiker, and his bag of rice,  which turned out to be quite helpful driving through the mountains, as he ensured we didn't get lost. Turns out Leila was right, I shouldn't have been to rude about her getting me lost all the time, the app maps.me is very tricky to operate. The hitchhiker invited us to his house for lunch, but sadly our response that we would love to got lost in translation. 

It was then onwards to the sunglasses shop before finally arriving in Petra late in the afternoon. Supper was fairly inedible, and eaten whilst watching cars play chicken at a busy junction in Petra city. We finished the day by going to see Petra at night.  This involved a very long candlelit walk through a gorge into Petra, the moon was almost full and lit up the carvings in the rock. We walked out of the gorge in front of the treasury, which was lit up with lots of candles. It was beautiful, and they played some traditional Jordanian music on a flute and string instrument, whilst feeding us very sweet tea. It would have been very romantic, apart from the hundreds of other people, and the strange quasi religious speech a man gave at the end. The treasury was then lit up with multicoloured light, and we were free to trudge back up hill to the hotel.

The adventure begins...

Who needs an alam clock when you can wake up to "Do you know why it's an exciting day today? Today I get to ride Mouse. Mousey is the bestest horsey in the whole wide world."

And so began the Jordan adventure with a brisk trot around some misty Somerset lanes, with Edd kindly expanding on the virtues of Mouse, and Ruby the Huntsman's horse taking on the riding for the disabled mantle, and putting up with my broken finger.

7 hours later (after a slight disagreement about whether its best to spend your time in the airport worrying about catching your flight at the gate, or browsing a watch shop) we drove out of Amman airport in a tinny Citroen car and hit the first unmarked speed bump at full speed. Apparently "nothing likes a speed bump like a hire car." I'm not an expert, but car did not sound that happy.

We got to meet the locals rather more quickly than anticipated. Blue flashing lights pulled us over into a police check point.
A smartly dressed policeman appeared at the drivers window
"Speak English?"
"Your papers"
We handed over our papers, and his colleague shouted something at him in Arabic, and another face appeared at the window.
"Speak English?"
Getting a bit nervous we replied yes, and we're from London. This was met by
"Wales"
"Michael Owen"
And "Manchester United"
We replied
"London"
"Arsenal"
"Chelsea"
The police officer beamed, and handed back the papers.
"Enjoy your stay in Jordan" and we were free to drive on to Madaba.

Even though it was a effectively 11.30pm on a Monday night (due to how the Arab week is structured) we managed to find some supper. We devoured chicken shwarma, dripping with garlic mayonnaise, and eaten (much to the confusion of the hotel receptionist) whilst perched on the hotel steps watching the world go by.