26 April 2012: KING'S HIGHWAY, Jordan

 

The King’s Highway is mentioned in the Old Testament: Moses was refused permission to travel on it by the king of Edom, and later the Nabateans, from their power base in Petra, used it to trade luxury goods between Arabia and Syria. When the Romans annexed the Nabatean kingdom, Emperor Trajan renovated the ancient road to facilitate travel and communications between his regional capital at Bosra, now in southern Syria, and Aqaba on the Red Sea coast. Early Christian pilgrims visited a number of sites on and off the road around Madaba, whose beautiful Byzantine mosaics still merit a pilgrimage today. The Crusaders used the highway as the linchpin of their Kingdom of Oultrejourdain, fortifying positions along the road at Karak and Shobak – where extensive remains of castles survive – and also at Petra and Aqaba.

However, with the development by the Ottomans of the faster and more direct Darb al-Hajj (Pilgrimage Route), from Damascus to Medina and Mecca through the desert further east – and the subsequent construction of both the Hejaz Railway and the modern Desert Highway along the same route – the King’s Highway faded in importance. It was only asphalted along its entire length in the 1950s and 1960s.

We had decided to follow this route, rather than the modern Desert Highway, to Petra because it would be slower but far more scenic. There was spectacular scenery BUT we seriously under-estimated quite how slow the journey would be. Even though we decided to save time and miss out Madaba and the mosaics at Mount Nebo,  the clock ticked as we passed through a myriad of villages and small towns, all of them with traffic queues, bustling markets and food stalls on every main street.
It wasn't all urban, though ....

Wadi Mujib:
We were headed for the Crusader castle at Karak, but first something we hadn't planned on seeing. We drove through the dramatic canyon of Wadi Mujib, dubbed 'Jordan's Grand Canyon',  with stunning viewpoints on either rim over a vast gash in the barren landscape, cutting through 1200m. of altitude from the desert plateau in the east down to the Dead Sea in the west.

Karak:
http://www.visitjordan.com/default.aspx?tabid=163
Despite  some tantalising views of the castle in the distance .........

 it was 4 in the afternoon before we reached the town of Karak and it was blisteringly hot. Some food and water were essential, and after a quick look around the streets adjoining the cafe ........

we found the half-built museum that gave a vantage point of the castle ........

......and the surrounding countryside ....

 we regretfully realised it would take 2 or 3 hours to do justice to the castle so had to decide to press-on with the drive without visiting the castle if we were ever to reach our hotel before nightfall.

Wadi Musa:
You have to allocate a few days visiting Petra to do it justice so, if you are coming from Amman,  the only convenient place you can stay is Wadi Musa. It's not a pretty  town but we didn't altogether agree with the guide book's assessment of it as 'a badly run, seedy little place'. 
We stayed at the Al-Anbat Hotel. It was clean and comfortable, which was all we were looking for at the price we had paid.

We had a stroll around town for somewhere to eat and soon discovered that there had been quite a change-over in restaurants since our guide-book had been published, but luckily the Bukhara was still open for business and the food  was tasty, plentiful and excellent value, with nicely- placed pavement seating.