The Hashemite Kingdom is waiting for you if you’re tired of old resorts, and do not know where to fo, but do not want to be disappointed
Milena Dimitrova
Pictures: author
I fell inlove with Jordan, because every day unforgettable things happened to me. I felt in a completely different emotions. I floated in two seas, roamed around resorts with visibility to four countries, conquered deserts, fortresses, oriental markets. Everywhere I felt calm and peaceful. I stocked up on spices and musk – a orange piece with timeless aroma, which can’t be found on global markets for perfumes. I enjoyed the seven days in Jordan because I came back as reborn, empowered to do my usual duties. If I gained strength from energy facilities.
The first day – Petra To get to Petra, I rode a horse to the entrance of the reserve. Just like in an Indiana Jones movie!
Then I walked about an hour away in a narrow crevice in the rocks, until I saw the famous Treasury – carved into the rock throne room of the nabatinyan kings, then turned into their cemetery. I then hiked another two hours along the rocks and the villages, churches, temples, facades dug in them. And I hired a donkey – to climb to the monastery, which took about one hour on goat paths. It became unthinkable to go back by nightfall, and s I had to ride a camel on the way back for around an hour. In Petra from the time before Christ to the XIV century lived the nabatinyans, when most ancient Arab tribe was absorbed by the next civilizations. The rocks are made of a colorful and fragile sandstone, which is easily burrowed through. Wonderful arches frame the holes in the walls and architectural monuments – churches, tombs, obelisks. Triangular niches above the entrances to the cave dwellings are a sign of the greek influence. In other places they’re surrounded by carved rectangular stairs. And they are of the Assyrian civilization – when they believed that the dead climb up the stairs in the sky. 
The second day – Promised Land Right here, on top of Mount Nebo after the 40-year wanderings of the Jewish people, the leader Moses saw the Promised Land. The place where stuck his rod, is marked by a huge metal sculpture, donated by Pope John Paul II during his visit in 2000. Infront of you is the Moabit stone, the grave of Moses and a wonderful view of Israel and Canaan. Moreover, in many places in Jordan you feel like like you’re wandering through the Old Testament. 
The third day – Jerrash Jerash is a town twinned with Sliven. Walid Aleytun was also well known in football before being elected in 1999 for mayor. He explains how Lechkov came into Jerrash and how he then returned the visit. A world-renowned music festival happens once a year in Jerash. In the stone amphitheater that is located in the archaeological reserve. Among the ruins of a giant fortress, which preserved traces of the first nabatinyans, then of the Romans, then the Byzantines, then ten centuries the Sultanate, and just in Jerash the ancient roman road Card Maximus (north-south) and intersects the Dokio Manus ( east-west). One leads from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the other – from Petra to Babylon. 
The stone slabs in the area are carved from the wheels of caravans that stayed in the fortress. It’s an unrepeatable pleasure to be right in the middle of the crossroads, where all past human civilizations have travelled! On the way to the amphitheater you go through the Oval Square – 40 columns in the Hellenistic style, to the left are the ruins of the temple of Zeus. Next is a Byzantine church built by two local doctors in honor of Cosmas and Damian with preserved amazing mosaic, after that – the churches of John the Baptist and St. George, then the sanctuary of Artemis, the Nymphaeum and the ruins of a stone cathedral. On one of the plates there’s carved cross with alpha and omega. Immediately I thought of that verse “I am Alpha and Omega” and I felt happy. The amphitheater is vast, all day without rest retired military musicians are alternating, and sound is wonderful. Impressive is how on the synagogue were built Roman columns, then on their place was raised a Byzantine church and just above that, they considered it necessary to build an othodox church which was destroyed in an orderly fashion to become a mosque. And yet the stone as a sign defeated time. 
The fourth day – Dead Sea You can go in the Dead Sea undisturbed – no shellfish, no waves, nor any fish or breathing creature that can overcome the over-concentration of salt. Its coasts are so inanimate and without any life that I remembered the Salt Desert in Nevada. Just the other side of the earth the from the dried up Salt Lake (on the way from Salt Lake City to West Wendover) remained miles of white salt desert, with no flower or crawling creature. An inch below the surface of the Dead Sea, however, there’s a massive layer of slime – the famous black mud treatment. I smeared myself from head to toe along with the other tourists in the lunar landscape around. We were warned to keep it away from oureyes – it’s so salty and mire, that drops from the sea seem to burn the eye. You can not endure the black suit more than fifteen minutes – the skin hardens and dries out. But as you wash the mud away your skin becomes velvety soft and tender. The hotel Myovenpik has employees who obligingly smear you everywhare with curative intent, and when you give them a signal, they spra you with a hose and a strong jet of fresh water. 
The fifth day – Wadi Rum Desert We set off at 8 am from the camp, and I – just like each cheesy product of civilization – thought that there was just a trip to a desert hill ahead. 
The deception made me open my eyes for the limited way in which humanity entertains itself. That day I saw not one but dozens of sites for which my eyes had previously been blind, and traveled over 25 kilometers along the sands and rocks! Quite a feat given the woman’s barbaric bonds between the house, work and children, and they are usually locked in a very narrow perimeter without any rest and for the soul. At 5.30 pm, even as we were walking in the sands in full circle to the promised tents, sleeping bags, i realized how my body switched from normal speed to another rhythm. 
And that rhythm spoke of all civilizations, who have everfaced the desert. Wadi Rum, I felt it with all my senses, is an extraordinary power center. If sleep overnight outdoors in Wadi Rum, you have the chance to live to a hundred years, was written in the Russian guide. And what awaits me if fall asleep for three nights under the stars? What about Bedouins, is that why they are immortal? It was a pure 
advertising, but just as miths and legends, there is some truth in the ad. In Wadi Rum I felt such a feeling – for eternity, entering the body in the harmony of nature. I envied the brave that brought their sleeping bags on the rocks near the Bedouin fire and slept under the stars. Prudently I went inside the tent But I woke up in time to go to welcome the sunrise. 
The sixth day – the Red Sea Aqaba is a classic seaside resort from which you can see four states. On the other side of the bay of the Red Sea is the Israeli city of Eilat. I knew there lived Michael Chorny. Below, the eye comes to a piece of Egypt, to the south is the border with Saudi Arabia. Aqaba was already a resort in the tenth century BC. The Bible says that right here King Solomon built his ships. Consistently the Byzantines, and Arabs and Crusaders, and knights and Mamluks and Turks in the Ottoman Empire. And the famous Englishman Sir Lawrence of Arabia fought in 1916-1917, during the Great Arab Revolution with the Turkish garrisons of Aqaba, as is clear from the wonderful film with Peter O `Tul. Since 2001, Aqaba is a free economic zone and is a wonderful place for shopping. I envied the divers, who against small amounts of money doned aqualung and immersed themselvesselves in coral reefs and the exotic fish soup. I liked everything around me so much that in my head woke up the entire volume of the “Persian motifs”, the most delicate love poetry of Sergei Esenin inspired precisely by this land. I had never had an occasion to remember those high school love poems, but it was as if they came aliveword for word.
The seventh day – Amman and oriental markets I buried myself in an attractive white shop for spices. I stopped to ask from curiosity about what the large porcelain jars with an electric cord were for. Pink and green, you can’t see such jars anywhere, except in the orient. I noticed that the garment of the vendor was unusually clean and white. Order reigned as if i was in a pharmacy with ten types of nuts in large jars. In the air mingled far more pleasant fragrances. The man did not complain of the lack of customers, but was kind enough to explain from a to z for whatever I asked. He was selling herbs, nuts and dried limons, but he also had a cream with crushed rhino horn, which is known to harden male potency. A complete collection of fragrances for the house, a dozen jars of curative mud, soaps and sakaz-gum per kilogram completed the other cabinets. I had time to waste and started with the purple spice sumak – crushed powder from a purple fruit. Once in Istanbul when I was very hungry, i spiced with it with the grilled lamb and the tallow breath disappeared. It goes well on toast too. I had exhausted my inventory, so I gathered a considerable quantity again. Got a great mint, mixed with sesame. I shopped a Bedouin tea with cinnamon and cardamom. Suffice to say, I filled a saddlebag with spices and joked that there was nothing that I missed. 
There is, stroked his beard the seller. 
The most expensive thing I can offer you is musk. And he reverently took several packages from under some packages, which looked like orange peels, the size of postage stamps. A great smell of that extreme male fragrance, from which your knees melt, and you’re ready to fulfill all his desires filled the room. The musk, said the Jordanian trader, is derived from the stomach of a deer, but not every animal has it. The smallest plate that I had the courage to buy, was worth the wicked five dinars, ie for about 2 square centimeters I spared ten dollars. But it was worth it! Musk perfume is eternal, it will serve you until the end of your life and do not be saddened that it will outlive you!
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Connoisseur
When Bill Allen, chief editor of National Geographic retired after 35 years of service, he wrote in the March issue of the journal a short farewell note to readers. He thanked them that they were together only points aout three moments of breathtaking emotion. The birth of a volcano, the discovery of the Titanic on the ocean floor and a trip with Bedouins to the stone city of Petra. Hey, this man knew what he was doing! After seeing the capital of the vanished nabatian kingdom, sculpted in the rocks, even “the eighth wonder of the world” seems to be pale and banal as a definition. ____________________________________________________________________________
Pleasures 
Hammam, everybody knows, is a steam bath. Or Turkish, as they call it because it is not hot, nor so dry as the Finnish sauna. In the Orient washed under a flowing spout, and you pass into the next dimension – with clouds of steam so thick, that there’s no visibility. Swelling like boiled dumplings, there’s no need to scrub yourelves with brushes, as the Russians do. Then the massagist literally tears a few of your skins off. Dead cells peel off like noodles, and the soap is velvet. Then comes the soft part of the massage, but with soap instead of fragrant oils. Then you’re wrapped in towels and lie down on some couches. You’re served sweet karkade tea and fruit,while you “get back down to earth” and you fee like doing miracles.
