Whiskey and gypsies don't mix.

Disclaimer:

A friendly Jordanian informed me that the people described in this story were gypsies not bedouin. Gypsies pretending to be bedouin. I don't want to tarnish bedouin reputation, however I have kept the word bedouin because that's who we believed we were dealing with throughout. Also, this was supposed to be posted a couple of days ago.

I arrived in Jordan alone. There was no one to be seen going into Jordan other than me. Another lone traveller was heading into Israel from where I had just left. It was sunny and Jordan looked amazing and inviting.

The Jordanian police asked me where I was heading and I said Petra. They told me the standard price for a taxi was 55 dinars. (Dinars suck. They're expensive. 10 aus dollars gets only like 6 dinars) This surprised me as I was told by a few travelers who had gone and done what I was about to do that you could get a taxi for 35 dinars. When I got to the taxi, the driver told me the standard fee was 55 but I proceeded to haggle him down to 35. Were the police in on the scam as well? Or did they actually believe it was 55? Either way I entered a little suspicious, despite the friendliness and jokiness of the Jordanians (though I guess if you WERE going to try and trick someone, a genuine smile and a laugh is a pretty conniving yet effective way to succeed).

I arrived at my hostel with a warm welcome from a lovely lady who smiled and laughed more than any arabic woman i've seen thus far. From hostel reviews I was expecting to be greeted by a creepy almost sinister man. Needless to say I was glad to find this wasn't the case. I wandered the streets of the small village of wadi musa and, with my new in-the-game paradigm, entered a nice 'sweet' shop intending to buy. I had a great interaction with the owner and those turkish sweets or whatever they are were SO fresh and delicious.

The hostel put on dinner and it was packed with travelers. I met some people and made plans to join them on their treks the following day. Petra is this huge ancient city with huge temples and tombs and who knows what else all carved out of the stone in the mountain. It's actually really impressive. It goes for miles (literally) and some people spend a whole week there. I couldn't do a week, but it gives you an idea of how big the area is.

My new friends invited me to camp in a cave in a mountain under starry skies beside crackling fires. I had planned to do something similar to this as a day trip with an organized bedouin (kind of like the old inhabitants of the land) camp, but the thought of being with westerners and doing it a little less conventionally appealed to me after my tour experiences so far. I had no camping gear but I figured I could just sleep by the fire or just not sleep at all. (It's freezing up here, which I hadn't expected despite the weather mans warning. Somehow when he said it would be one degree at night and 8 in the day I just thought he must have meant "Yeh, it's cold, but it's sunny so you'll be fine!" Wrong. It's freezing.)

Not sleeping at all is what ended up happening. Though for different reasons than I had expected. I'll give you a quickish summary:

We were camping in an area which a lot of people warned us not to because it was 'dangerous out there.' WHAT was dangerous no one could say and the bedouins - who anyone who has traveled through the middle east speaks of so highly - told us not to listen to them or worry and so long as we were with them we'd be fine.

Despite the not-so-good feeling in my stomach, which I found out later a few from our group had, we headed up towards our 'campsite' as the sun set on the rosy hue of the towering mountains. Our bedouin guide, Khaled, seemed friendly, but our light hearted jokes of feeling he was a little like gollum were said with some concern. Unfortunately it was to be a tale too familiar with that of gollum and the hobbits.

We had planned to just stay by ourselves, (2 aussie guys 2 American guys and 2 german girls) but Khaled insisted on eating with us and inviting his 2 cousins, and we relented as he HAD helped us a good deal. All seemed friendly enough and despite a nice dinner there was a sense of annoyance and irritation that our vision for the peaceful, story telling, song sharing night under the stars was getting spoiled.

We had brought some whiskey to warm us into the night and Khaled again was a little too keen to get involved. Without us fully realizing what was happening, he somehow managed to sneak himself more than his fair share and was sufficiently drunk before any of us had had a chance to stop him. Not good.

Never give a gypsy whiskey.

We had a mandolin and once we had exhausted it's pleasantries, put it away. Khaled thought differently and grabbed it out himself despite our protests that we had had enough. An argument followed and tensions began to rise, then it got ugly. I'm not going to go into specifics here but essentially it escalated to a level where he threatened us with obscenities, burning logs and stones bigger than heads. His cousins tried to stop him and he fought even them. He finally screamed and told us to leave his land! We would have left in a flash, but an hour trek down steep canyons with huge bags in the blackness of midnight didn't really seem like a great option.

After hours of trying not to let it escalate further than it already had, he somehow left with his cousins (who were really nice but were obviously just as afraid of him as we were) at about 3am. Pretty hard to sleep after almost being hit with a fiery log. So we stayed awake warmed by the dying embers until first light when we could make our way out to a place of safety and sleep.

Once it got light we trekked home with heavy backpacks on empty desert highways 10kms from the hostel, hoping for a ride but with no guarantee any would come. It's amazing how much you can endure when you really need to. After a combination of rides we got to a hostel exhausted physically and emotionally yet with a sense of enormous relief that one can only know after being in extreme stress and danger with an uncertainty of when it is going to end.

I'm amazed at just how quickly such strong bonds can be created with people who less than 24 hours ago were complete strangers. This psychotic gypsy had forced us to rely on each other, plot together and comfort each other. The connection we formed was almost instant but it feels as though we have known each other for years and as though we will for years to come. Most likely we won't stay friends forever but the memory and emotion attached to those 24 hours I imagine will last, if not forever, for a long time. Holding and comforting a distraught German girl you barely know is not something that happens each day. But in situations such as these trust needs to be formed without analyzing if you can really trust someone or not, and something is really beautiful about that. Speaking genuine words of admiration and respect to a fellow aussie doesn't often happen after you've only known him for 24 hours, but there's something that feels quite lasting and real about it.

It's hard to know what I think of the whole experience so soon after it happened. Would I wish to do it again? No. Do I regret it? No. But I think you see a lot in yourself that you would never see in a comfortable bed, in a place you know you are safe. Your true colours really show when danger and pressure is upon you. Strengths and beliefs set themselves even firmer just as weaknesses and fears are exposed and show where you are vulnerable. Your sense of safety when in danger gives confidence and a desire for more. Your fear and lack of a sense of safety becomes exposed and pushes you to look for ways that they can be filled with faith and security.

So if the end result is that I'm forced look for answers to questions I never knew existed, and have experienced strong bonds in a way that is different to any other I have had before, then I would say ultimately it will be life giving experience.

Do I mean that I'm going to look for dangerous situations to put myself in? Not unless I lose my mind. But... Has it made me want to cower in a corner and never put myself in a dangerous situation again? No. Not at all. If anything it's given me confidence that if I find myself in danger again, I will respond and react to survive as is so inherent in the human make up. I'll learn things about myself that only danger and intensely stressful situations can show me.

An american guy has a car with spare seats and is heading up the kings highway, which is supposed to be an amazing drive through mountains and seas, and is in the direction I happen to be heading. I'm doing this tomorrow with a few of my new friends from our night of terror in the gypsy caves. I feel so excited and full of anticipation to do a road trip through Jordan with people that I feel so comfortable and close with that 48 hours ago I hadn't even met.
Do I thank the crazed gypsy? I don't think so. But I do feel thankful for my new friends and the new things I have discovered in myself, and the discoveries that are likely to evolve over the coming days and weeks.

The road home looks like a bright one to these eyes