Making my way south via Dead Sea and Karak

The hostel in Amman was cold and quiet with only a couple other independently traveling Germans staying there that night.

Through my next 9 days of traveling through Jordan I met several more Germans and they by far were the most prominent group of backpackers I encountered. Almost all of them flew Ryanair, the budget European airlines. Some made the international flight into Jordan through the coastal city of Aqaba for an insanely low fare of just 80-90 Euros.

Eastern shore of the Dead Sea

The theory I’ve heard is that the airport of Aqaba is in a special economic zone and there’s significant tax breaks for airlines but its still hard to fathom fares less than 100 Euros.

Whatever the case, more power to them for making international travel more affordable.

Floating in the Dead Sea water

The following day the two Germans were headed to Wadi Rum and offered me a ride down south in their rental car. I wasn’t going to Wadi Rum until the back end of my journey through Jordan so I would only ride with them for part of the journey.

Mud bath

However, the fact that they would be leaving early in the morning and I’d be avoiding the long local bus rides was appealing enough to sign up. It was a bonus that they were headed via the Dead Sea Highway.

Town of Karak from the castle

One of the castles' chamber

Now, going North to South from Amman is fairly straightforward with basically 3 highways channeling the traffic. The westernmost is the Dead Sea highway which is fast and passes along the Dead Sea (a large lake technically), the easternmost one is called the Desert Highway and although modern and in good condition its devoid of character.

The oldest and slowest is the one that snakes through the hilltop towns and villages. Although slow and tortuous this highway has been used since antiquity so there is a charm associated with traversing the same path as the ancients.

Since I only had about 10 days in Jordan, my initially plans excluded the Dead Sea…there is always the case where you can’t see everything and must make hard decisions. For most visitors to Jordan, the Dead Sea would be top of the list along with Petra. It would have been for me as well had I not already experienced the buoyancy effect of floating on dense salty water in Djibouti in 2011. As things turned out, I was going to get lucky and experience it one more time.

Access to the Dead Sea is regulated to the benefit of resorts who charge a hefty fee for access to the beach. But backpackers if nothing are an ingenious lot. They have figured out a spot with free access to the beach and posted the coordinates online. One of the Germans had downloaded the coordinates and brought us to a spot right beside the highway and a 5-minute walk through an opening in the fence.

Panoramic view from Karak Castle

Terrace view of Dana village

Wadi Dana in the background as the clouds loomed

The key with a pleasant experience of bathing in these hypersaline lakes is nearby access to fresh water since the crusty and oily feeling left by the minerals needs to be washed off before it dries on the skin. Not doing so would be a very uncomfortable rest of the day. The spot where we waded into the sea had a small hot water spring right beside, complete with a mud pool so we could try the famous Dead Sea mud bath experience.

Dana Tower Hotel

Although the buoyancy feeling was like Lake Assal in Djibouti, there was sufficient uniqueness in the whole experience of the Dead Sea that made it absolutely worthwhile to have stopped by. Sometimes an experience finds you rather than you finding one.

Dana Village

No sooner had we dried ourselves with the warm spring water and gotten back to the car, a police vehicle came flashing by and told us that it was prohibited to swim there. Poor chaps didn’t know we had just done exactly that so we nodded at them in agreement and hastily got out knowing how fortunate we were to have just missed them.

On the roof of a Dana house

Next stop was the crusader era castle at Karak, a couple hours further south and climbing out of the Jordan valley and into the mountains. The castle although imposing with a 360-degree view across all the surrounding hills is a massive stone and mortar structure from an age gone by. It must have been quite a sight in its heyday and certainty a formidable place to breach.

From Karak we took the King's Highway all the way to the village of Dana where I was dropped off and the two Germans continued their way to Wadi Rum.

View of Wadi Dana from the Dana village

The picturesque village of Dana sits on the edge of Jordan’s premier ecotourism site, the Dana Biosphere Reserve.  This 500-year-old village of stone houses overlooks Wadi Dana (wadi means seasonally dry valley in Arabic). Today, Dana is more catered towards hikers and tourists but not too long ago it used to be a living example of quaint Jordanian village life and gives a fascinating window into the past century.

When I arrived in Dana, it was cloudy with a sprinkling of rain and this made for extremely cold & windy night. I was supposed to stay in a tent but the hotel upgraded me into their stone house for which I was very thankful. For the next few days I was going to hike through several of these wadis and was hoping the rains wouldn’t result in flash flood which would make the hike challenging and ever dangerous per the locals.