King’s Highway via Wadi Mujib
Wadi Mujib, Jordan
November 1, 2008
Wadi Mujib, Jordan
November 1, 2008
There are three roads running the length of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from the capital, Amman, to the Red Sea port of Aqaba. The Desert Highway is evocatively named but turns out to be the modern and monotonous four-lane black-top that zips the majority of traffic across the country. The alternative desert road to the East detours towards the border with Iraq and Saudi Arabia and therefore siphons off the long-distance trucks and not much else. By far the most interesting route is the ancient King’s Highway that originally formed part of the caravan link from Heliopolis in Egypt, across the Sinai, through Petra and the Moab in Jordan, on through Bosra, Damascus and the desert oasis of Palmyra before ending in Resafa on the Euphrates in the Eastern desert of modern-day Syria.
The route I followed through Jordan began in the friendly town of Madaba, passed through the fantastic, barren scenery of Wadi Mujib (pictured above) and the ancient region of Moab under the walls of the Crusader castle in Al-Karak and eventually arrived in the rather less spectacular town of Wadi Musa (entry point to Petra). I made the journey in a shared taxi with a friendly Belgian couple on holiday who were on their way to a few days hiking in the Dana Nature Reserve. The castle at Karak is historically interesting but having been spoiled by the great Crusader castles of Syria I didn’t feel the need to linger long. Far more memorable were the winding roads down and back out of Wadi Mujib. Jordan’s ‘Grand Canyon’ is a 250 km expanse that leads to the Dead Sea and forms the lowest nature reserve in the world. It’s unique geology provides a haven for an apparently fascinating bio-diversity that’s still being explored. In addition to an impressive variety of birdlife and flora, the remoter regions are said to be inhabited by herds of ibex and packs of hyenas and wolves. Promisingly, the entire region is now under the auspices of the Royal Society for Conservation of Nature (RSCN) who are presumably dedicated to it’s ecological preservation – no doubt funded in part by developing it’s eco-tourism potential.
