Jordan - Petra

On the way to Israel, we decided to take a side trip to Jordan to see the stone-carved temples and tombs of Petra. But as we crossed the border into Jordan, we were encouraged by another traveler to take a detour to spend a night at a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum, a beautiful desert valley. A night in a Bedouin tent in the Jordanian desert? Why not? (David and Jeffrey would find out why not later.)



Several hours later, we were bouncing around in the back of a pickup truck as we crossed the sandy route to a remote Bedouin camp (see photo above). When we arrived in the dark, the desert air was cool, the stars were unusually bright, and the desert was eerily quiet, with dim silhouettes of jagged rock formations breaking up the flat desert landscape. We were ushered into Bedouin tent, probably 20’ x 40’, with every inch of ground covered by Persian carpets. Guided to seats by a fire, we were given a cup of Jordanian tea (very sweet, with a spearmint flavor) as we met the 3 Jordanian brothers who would be our hosts. After they dug up our dinner (meat cooked in a pot surrounded by hot coals in the ground) we feasted on chicken, rice, salad, hummus, and pita bread. After a long day of traveling, we went to our beds on the ground made with several layers of blankets and pillows piled about 8 inches high. It was one of the most comfortable beds I’ve slept on in my travels.

In the morning, I rose before sunrise to see a faint orange glow behind the towering rock formations. The desert was peacefully quiet with the sand and mountains stretching to the horizon without a trace of civilization in sight. We were truly off the grid. I climbed one of the rock formations and enjoyed the serenity of the desert until sunrise.

After hiking back to camp, we had breakfast, spent a few minutes being harassed by a camel, and then went on our way to Petra. It was an unexpected and memorable side trip in our travels… and perhaps the source of some trouble.

Within an hour of leaving the Bedouin camp, Jeffrey began to feel sick. Either from brotherly sympathy or from Bedouin chicken roulette, David quickly followed suit. For the next 2 days, the Conway boys enjoyed the inside of a Petra hotel room as they battled an intestinal bug. I’m not sure how I dodged the bullet, but they soon recovered and we were ready to see Petra.

A big part of the mystique of Petra begins long before you see the work of human hands. To get to the ancient city, you walk 1.2 kilometers through a narrow gorge that in places is only 3-4 meters wide. Beside you, rose-colored sandstone walls tower up to 80 meters (260 feet) above you. It is one of the most beautiful rock formations I’ve ever seen. To walk between the towering rock walls is an awe-inspiring experience. As you round a corner at the end of the narrow gorge, you see Petra's most elaborate structure, Al Khazneh (popularly known as "the Treasury"), carved into a sandstone cliff. It is absolutely stunning.

You may have seen this impressive façade when it was featured in the film “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. Al Khazneh is the best-preserved and most famous of dozens of temples and tombs built by the Nabateans in their capital city around 100 BC. Since they controlled trade routes that linked China, India, and Arabia with Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the Nabateans became very wealthy collecting tolls from traveling merchants. They built a large city which is surrounded by hundreds of stone-carved tombs in the sides of mountains. Petra was probably abandoned around 551 AD when an earthquake destroyed many buildings and crippled the water aqueducts. Petra was unknown to the Western world until 1812, when it was introduced to the West by Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, who paid a Bedouin shepherd to guide him to a rumored lost city
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If you visit Israel or Jordan, it’s definitely worth a side trip to see Petra. Often cited as one of the wonders of the world, the natural gorge and stone-carved structures are unforgettable.

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- Steve

Egypt - Mount Sinai and Red Sea

We flew from Israel the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. We’d heard that Dahab, on the Red Sea, has some of the best scuba diving in the world, with underwater visibility up to 100 feet or more, making it easy to see hundreds of species of tropical fish and beautiful coral formations… plus the infamous “Blue Hole”.

But first we wanted to climb Mount Sinai where, according to the Bible, Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. We opted for a midnight hike that would avoid the brutal desert heat and put us at the top in time to see the sunrise over the rugged mountains of the Sinai desert. We made it to the top at about 4:30 am, about an hour before sunrise. Biggest surprise: The top of Mount Sinai is incredibly cold and windy at night. Good thing for the local Bedouins; they make a killing renting blankets to the freezing tourists. We huddled under our blanket for an hour and were finally rewarded with a sunrise that painted the desolate mountains around us in ever-changing shades of yellow, orange, and purple.

After sunrise we hiked down to Saint Catherine’s monastery, the oldest working Christian monastery in the world, at the site where it is believed that God spoke to Moses at a burning bush. After touching what is supposed to be the same bush (still alive within the center of the monastery) we headed back to Dahab to recover the sleep we missed overnight.



For the next few days, we went snorkeling or scuba diving at several sites in the Red Sea around Dahab. The big highlight was Jeffrey’s first time scuba diving, especially since he got to go with his expert diver brother, David. Even though David is a dive instructor, Egyptian laws required us to use a local instructor. We were fortunate to find Danny Williams (from Western Australia) at a local dive shop. He was a great instructor and one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet. Danny was impressed at how quickly Jeffrey picked up scuba diving… “he’s like a fish in the water!” Jeffrey made two dives of almost an hour each.

Steve was able to complete 5 required dives to complete his Advanced Open Water Diver certification, so he can dive to 30 meters now instead of just 18.

On the final day of diving, we went to the infamous “Blue Hole”, an ocean “pothole” that is about 130 meters (430 feet) deep. There are two ways to enter and exit the vertical hole – a shallow opening at a depth of about 6 meters, and a deep opening at about 52 meters. The Blue Hole and surrounding water has an abundance of coral and reef fish, but it is most notorious for the number of diving deaths that have occurred there, earning it the nickname "Diver's Cemetery".

For divers who stick to standard recreational diving rules (no more than 40 meters depth), the Blue Hole is no more dangerous than any other Red Sea dive site. However, the deep opening to the sea has proved irresistible for many. Accidents are often caused when divers attempt to find the tunnel through the reef (known as "The Arch") connecting the Blue Hole and open water at about 52m depth. This is beyond the PADI recreational diving limit (40 meters) and nitrogen narcosis begins to have an influence. Divers who miss the tunnel sometimes continue descending hoping to find the tunnel farther down and become increasingly disoriented. Egyptian authorities claim that 40 divers have died at this site since records began; however, many local dive guides believe that at least twice as many have died here.

Rest assured, we stayed above 35 meters to enjoy our dive and continue life above water.
- Steve

Himalaya Trek in Sikkim, India

After spending so much time in big cities – Delhi, Calcutta, and Varanasi – we had mountain fever. We decided that we wanted to see the tallest mountain range in the world, the Himalayas!



David’s 12 year-old brother Jeffrey is still with us, so the three of us checked a map to choose our next destination. We were planning to go to Nepal, but then heard about Sikkim, a little-known region of Northern India on the border of Nepal and Tibet nestled in the Himalayas. After checking around, we heard that Sikkim is similar to Nepal – lofty Himalayan mountains, beautiful scenery, enchanting Buddhist monasteries, and great trekking – but that it’s a lot cleaner, with friendlier people, and a lot fewer tourists.



Eager to leave the tourists behind to visit what is reputedly the last “Shangri-La”, we decided to head to the mystical kingdom of Sikkim. That’s right, Sikkim was an independent kingdom until 1975 (when its people voted to become a state of India). Even today, you need a special permit just to visit (to get your permit stamped at the border, just walk past the stern-looking soldier with the machine gun pointed at you from behind the sand bags).



After taking a series of “shared Jeeps” (SUVs designed to cram 10 passengers where only 6 should fit) up winding mountain roads, we arrived in Yuksom, at the foot of the Himalayas. Jeffrey has two big memories of that trip:
- He started the day with an upset stomach, so those winding roads did him in and he left his breakfast on the side of the road (and fortunately not in the car) somewhere on the way to Yuksom.
- There’s nothing like seeing an oncoming car in your lane when your driver is on the wrong side of the road passing another car with just inches separating you from a drop-off of several hundred feet down a ravine. Fortunately, these mountain drivers know what they’re doing… I think.



We found a trekking company to guide us on a 4-day, 40 kilometer trek to 4,000 meters (about 13,000 feet) to get a close-up view of Mount Kangchenjunga. At 28,169 feet, Kangchenjunga is the third highest mountain in the world (after Mount Everest and K2). If I were writing this in 1851 (when the Internet was a lot slower), I’d be saying that we saw the highest mountain in the world. Until 1852, Kangchenjunga was thought to be the highest until calculations by the British Great Trigonometric Survey concluded that Everest and K2 were higher.



Question: How many Sikkimese does it take to accompany 3 American tourists on a 4-day, 40 km trek to 4,000 meters?
Answer: Eight (if you count the animals). One guide, one cook, two porters, one yak herder, and three yaks. The porters and yaks carried all the food, cooking gear, sleeping bags, pads, blankets, and anything else we would need for our trek. I still don’t know how the cook did it, but our meals were fantastic: French toast, chow mein, pancakes, onion soup, curried potatoes, ginger chicken, combination fried rice. We were spoiled. Though they only make a few dollars a day, the trekking crews in Sikkim make it easy for tourists to hike in the Himalayas. All we had to carry was a light backpack with water, snacks, a raincoat, and jacket. (It was a tad bit easier than when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to climb Mount Everest).



For two days, we hiked up mountain passes on our way to Kangchenjunga. As we went from 2,000 to 4,000 meters, our breathing got harder and our steps got shorter. But it always seemed that Jeffrey had energy to spare. He would often run up the trail, jumping from rock to rock (just like he does on ski jumps at Tahoe). He never seemed to tire.



Near the end of the second day, a light rain became light hail and then finally turned to snow as we got to higher elevations. As we finished the second day, we were at 4,000 meters with a light dusting of snow around our camp. With clouds all around us, we couldn’t see anything above us.

With the temperature below freezing, we got in our sleeping bags and got the best surprise of the trip when our guide brought each of us an old-fashioned rubber hot water bladder. Let me tell you, there’s no better feeling than a hot water bladder warming your feet in a sleeping bag when you’re in freezing temperatures in the Himalayas. In Jeffrey’s words, “This is Heaven”.

At 4:30 am on the third day we rose for hot tea and our last ascent to get our best view of Kangchenjunga at sunrise. The sky was crystal clear and, at 5:15, we arrived at Zhongri, the vista where we got our best view of Kangchenjunga and the surrounding peaks.



We certainly hadn’t climbed Everest, but there is still something mystical about having a 360-degree view of snow-covered Himalayan peaks with colorful Buddhist prayer flags flapping beside you in the wind. The panorama was spectacular and we felt a real sense of accomplishment. The two days of strenuous hiking had been worth it.



After spending time at the top of the world (or at least as close as we would get), we started back. Though the return trek is normally a two-day hike, we decided to hike back in one day. Ten laborious hours later, after going up and down at least four mountain passes, we arrived in Yuksom with very tired legs. (Little did we know how much they would ache for the next two days.) We were exhausted but we had a peaceful feeling of contentment knowing that we had earned a view that most people will only see in photos.
- Steve