Grand Hotels of Egypt
Just a brief heads-up about a new book due out shortly. Grand Hotels of Egypt looks like an absolute stunner – large format, packed with photos, and written by a genuine expert. Journalist and writer/editor Andrew Humphreys (who, I’m delighted to disclose, has commissioned numerous stories from me for numerous magazine titles over the years) knows his Egypt travel onions: the research will be faultless, the writing impeccable.
I won’t blather on, since Andrew’s already set up a blog devoted to the book, and is posting regularly – lovely stuff. Find it at grandhotelsegypt.com.
It’s published by the American University in Cairo Press and is available in real bookshops as well as Amazon and elsewhere. I’ve already put my name down for a copy.
Power and responsibility
There’s a firestorm over on David Whitley’s industry-leading travel blog Grumpy Traveller, where he savages bloggers involved in the ongoing Visit Jordan social media campaign that’s been running all year (2011).
David’s post is here, but also read the comments – they’re a fascinating glimpse into the travel blogging mindset.
After what I wrote there, Nathan Midgley followed up with this. Then a business journalist writing about the Visit Jordan campaign emailed me for my opinion. I thought I’d lay things out here.
Visit Jordan’s strategy has considerable merit.
Here are some sweeping generalisations for you. Jordan is a difficult destination. It’s hot and dusty, and a bit underdeveloped. It’s in a war zone. Not many people have been there – word of mouth doesn’t yield much info. You have to be tough to get around, and you have to like scrambling over ancient ruins, cuz there isn’t much else. The people are nice enough, but it’s not exactly a Land of Smiles. Women need to watch out. Tread carefully around cultural issues – people are easily offended. And watch your wallet.
Rubbish, isn’t it? But that’s where I think ordinary folk are coming from. They simply don’t know. For years, I’ve been bellyaching about the lack of information out there on Jordan.
So a campaign which delivers a large quantity of first-hand experiences, in text, pictures and video, to an audience already primed & softened up to the delights of travel makes sense. Over a year you could realistically expect mainstream media around the world to run perhaps 30 separate print features on travel to Jordan in total. Maybe 50. That’s a lot of eyeballs, sure, but it’s also a lot of dead ends. Bloggers can deliver hundreds of posts, as well as FB & Twitter coverage, that – I’m guessing – have way more trickle-down impact than MSM. By plugging closely into a SM-savvy market, you could potentially spark the holy grail for every tourist board – Positive Word of Mouth Worldwide – without having to spend millions on Incredible India branding or sumptuous Malaysia Truly Asia ads.
Nayef Al Fayez – former director of the Jordan Tourism Board (i.e. the overseas promotional arm) and now Minister of Tourism – is a smart guy. He travels constantly. He listens to people. He knows how Jordan is seen around the world.
And he knows that whereas half of Jordan’s tourism is package holidays booked through a tour operator, that leaves half which is effectively independent and unmeasurable. For a DMO to be able to talk directly to consumers and be believed has inestimable value.
So, aside from the danger of firehosing the web with Jordan content rather than dripfeeding under controlled conditions, JTB’s strategy is basically sound. The problems come, I’m afraid, from the bloggers.
Much has been made of the fact that blogging shatters the old journalism model, by allowing writers to be their own publishers – Alastair McKenzie, for instance, makes that point here.
That’s power – a lot of it. Blogs which attract tens of thousands of visitors, and bloggers who have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and/or Facebook, are as powerful as publishers. That’s why PRs and DMOs (and advertisers) are wooing them.
But they’re unedited. Unregulated. Untrained. Unqualified. Unaccountable.
That can be positive. They can publish things mainstream media wouldn’t touch – wacky ideas, marginal destinations, tangential encounters. But, let’s face it, they don’t. A handful of notable exceptions aside, travel bloggers just churn out the same old crud. They swan around like wide-eyed first-timers. There’s no insight. There’s no pre-trip research. There’s no post-trip reflection (heaven forbid: publish and move on). There’s no understanding of the economic strategies which brought them to the destination. There’s no sense of perspective. To put it bluntly, there’s no journalism. It’s all just words, words, words. Me, me, me. So we end up with the immortal “Jordan is the Canada of the Middle East“.
As David Whitley so memorably said, the last thing the web needs is more stuff on it.
Because they don’t know any different, bloggers are putty in the hands of the PRs…and it’s a short distance from that to the iambassador marketing programme embraced by Visit Jordan, and queried by Jeremy Head.
JTB’s tactics have let its strategy down. Quantity of material is the driving force, but quality has been underestimated. Quality really matters, if Jordan is to break out of its standard historical/cultural package tourism model and diversify into potentially lucrative niche markets. And, incidentally, those markets go beyond tourism: they have the ability to slowly – but clearly – define Jordan’s uniqueness to the world. This is soft power. It’s absolutely vital to the national interest.
But that won’t come if the country spends money hosting people who can only deliver “Jordan is the Canada of the Middle East”, regardless of how big the audience for that message is.
Bloggers are in a uniquely privileged position. Most of them, though, still view travel as holiday, rather than work, and they view themselves as being in a community rather than as being communicators. That’s not good enough. With power comes responsibility. Responsibility to the destination, sure, but above all to the readership. Show us something new.
Be better.
Disclaimer: In the last 12 months I went twice to Jordan. In the three years before that I was there 7 times. I’ll be there 3 or 4 times in 2012. Sometimes I’m hosted by the tourist board, sometimes I’m not. If you think that means I’m jealous because I wasn’t invited to take part in the 2011 blogger programme (thank heavens), good for you.
Jerusalem in the snow
I had to share this – an extraordinarily evocative image of Jerusalem, from an uncaptioned, uncredited collection here (well worth viewing) that was tweeted today by @IssaEB. Have a look:
It’s one of the most beautiful, poetic images of Jerusalem I think I’ve ever seen.
It shows the Dome of the Rock, half-draped in snow, viewed from Al Aqsa looking northward. (How do I know? This exceptional narrated tour with panoramic photos helped.)
If you’re surprised by snow in the Middle East, Jerusalem stands roughly 750m (2500ft) above sea level – winters can be very cold.
Maybe someone can tell me more about the image. It was taken at some point in the late 19th or early 20th centuries – but when? I wonder which year saw that much snow in Jerusalem. The website publishing the collection says nothing, though it has many more images of snow piled high in the streets of Jerusalem, presumably taken the same winter. Who’s the photographer?
The bearded man standing guard looks like he’s wearing a greatcoat, tied at the waist, and has a fur hat with a point that looks Central Asian to me. His whole costume seems unusual to me, for a guard at the gates of Al Aqsa, but perhaps it was the Ottoman imperial influence at work. Does anyone know more?
But, regardless, the image takes me off somewhere rare and special. I could look at it all day.
Gospel truth
Here’s a story of David and Goliath.
In 2007 and 2008, US outdoor adventure specialist David Landis and Israeli tourism entrepreneur Maoz Inon developed the Jesus Trail, a 65km walking route linking Nazareth – the town where Jesus grew up – to sites of pilgrimage around the Sea of Galilee. David and Maoz, with David’s wife Anna, created the trail from nothing, route-finding between points of interest, building relationships with people in villages along the way, encouraging them to create guesthouses and other support businesses for walkers, and negotiating with the SPNI land authorities to blaze the trail officially.
Nazareth is the largest Palestinian Arab city inside Israel, a focus for the substantial Arab population – both Muslim and Christian – in nearby towns and villages. The Jesus Trail deliberately passes through these, as well as through Jewish-Israeli and Druze communities in the area, on a village-to-village route which links specific New Testament locations with sites of historical interest from different periods and traditions.
While living in Nazareth, round the corner from Maoz’s award-winning Fauzi Azar Inn in the Old City, David and Anna wrote and photographed a Jesus Trail map and guidebook, self-published in the US in 2010. They developed an exemplary website for the trail which includes stage-by-stage route outlines, video and satellite imagery, GPS downloads, links to accommodation providers, even merchandising.
Nobody “owns” the trail: it’s a free, public, non-profit enterprise, feeding visitors – and, therefore, money – directly into rural communities. It’s founded on sustainable ideals, and promotes Leave No Trace principles. Everything is maintained by volunteers.
A pretty creditable effort, you’d've thought. Worthy of an award, perhaps? Or funding? Or maybe incorporation into Israel’s national tourism effort, to help bring more international visitors and so give those villages along the way a bit more of an economic boost?
Er, no. The Israeli government has its own agenda. Fuelled by the green-eyed monster.
Facts on the ground
Jesus Trail at Zippori
Newly announced this week is the “Gospel Trail“, a 63km route linking – yes – Nazareth with the Sea of Galilee, designed by the Ministry of Tourism for Christian visitors to be able to walk where Jesus walked, blah blah.
But the ministry has taken a rather more interventionist approach. Their not-exactly-subtle signage, which includes appropriate passages of scripture hacked into chunks of basalt stone (in case walkers venture out without a bible, presumably), stands propped up as giant cairns beside the path. The cairns are widely spaced just now, but even when the path is ready they’ll be placed only every 500m or so, making it impossible to follow the trail independently.
What’s far more concerning, though, is that the Gospel Trail has been deliberately routed away from Arab communities and sites of Islamic interest or Palestinian cultural relevance – and the official map identifies every other officially blazed path in the region, except the Jesus Trail. There’s an agenda at play.
The Jesus Trail starts at the Basilica of the Annunciation in the heart of Nazareth, leading through the souk and residential districts, heading into open country to pass through the Arab Muslim village of Mashhad (reputed birthplace of Jonah) to end for an overnight stay in the Arab Christian village of Cana (one of the places where Jesus is supposed to have turned water into wine).
By comparison, the Gospel Trail begins on Mt Precipice, a manicured tourist spot – and site of a 2009 papal mass – well outside Nazareth city centre, and proceeds on day one through forest planted by the Jewish National Fund, avoiding villages to end somewhere near Mt Tabor (unspecified). The first 30km of the trail has nowhere to refill water bottles, buy food or sleep.
Further along, after an overnight stop at the orthodox Jewish kibbutz of Lavi, the Jesus Trail visits the Druze holy site of Nabi Shuayb and then heads over Mt Arbel for panoramic views across the Sea of Galilee. The Gospel Trail bypasses Nabi Shuayb and follows existing valley-floor routes.
Perversely, the Gospel Trail even avoids sites of Christian interest: I’m told the first church on the trail comes at Km 59 – out of the 63km total route. The Jesus Trail passes 8 churches on Day One alone.
A land without people
With Israel’s global tourism reach and IGTO‘s marketing budget, the Gospel Trail will probably succeed. But, even before it’s got anywhere, concerns are being raised. Judith Sudilovsky, writing for the Catholic News Service, reports:
…retired Anglican Bishop Riah Abo el-Assal, retired Melkite Catholic Archbishop Pierre Mouallem and Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour said they were glad to see effort spent to improve Christian pilgrimage. They were less enthusiastic about side industries such as bike riding and horseback riding, which they said were not suited for a contemplative pilgrimage experience along the trail.
Even Israel’s tourism minister is already on the defensive. “Israel invests a lot of money in safeguarding the holy places of all religions,” he is quoted as saying (perhaps literally true, though an interesting follow-up question might ask in what proportions that money is allocated between sites from different religions. Anyway.). “Is it problematic,” he continued, “to use the culture and history of the [Nazareth/Galilee] area to promote tourism for the benefit of all nations? I don’t think so.”
I do. How about using the culture and history of the area to promote tourism for the benefit of the people who live there – Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Druze, Israeli and Palestinian? It’s theirs, after all. And in what way are “all nations” benefiting here? Surely “for the benefit of the Israeli government” would be more accurate?
But Mr Minister has bigger fish to fry.
According to Anna Landis, a tourism official has told her: “[The Jesus Trail] is dirty. I don’t want to show the face of Israel as…uh, you know…and I can’t fight the Arab cities to say ‘Listen, don’t throw your garbage outside.’ I’m the government, I don’t have to compete with anyone…but I can’t claim this is the best treatment you should give to pilgrims.”
Walking the walk
Government officials tend not to tread lightly. They know all about big-bus tourism, hosting Christian groups 50- or 100- or 200-strong, but do they know about developing sustainable rural tourism initiatives down at the grassroots? Have they chatted over tea with community leaders along the trail, explaining ideas and listening to concerns? Have they encouraged the growth of village B&Bs and local trail support initiatives? Have they walked similar trails – the Camino de Santiago, St Paul Trail, Abraham’s Path or Nativity Trail, to name only four – to find out how things are done elsewhere?
Or have they just sat in their big city offices and decided to graft their idea of religious tourism onto what they imagine is a blank countryside canvas?
I wonder.
But government officials also don’t think nimbly. Some time ago David, Maoz and Anna quietly bought gospeltrail.com, gospeltrail.co.il, gospeltrail.net and gospeltrail.org – and pointed them all at the Jesus Trail. Ha!
Market that, IGTO.
Disclosure: I first heard about the Jesus Trail in 2009, when I met David and Anna on a walk in southern Israel. I met Maoz soon after. Since then I’ve sat with them, eaten with them, talked with them and walked with them. I like them. They’re nice people, doing good work. Maybe that means this post is a load of biased, jealous, provocative, de-contextualised whingeing. Up to you to decide.
Note: I’m told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz is running an article on the Gospel Trail tomorrow (4 Dec 2011). If it does, I’ll give a link in the comments below.
Green green grass
Pioneering guidebook writers Di Taylor and Tony Howard have done it again.
After their amazing work over almost thirty years in the Wadi Rum deserts of southern Jordan, and their expertise trailfinding long-distance paths in Palestine – and Tony’s record-breaking conquest of the Troll Wall, Europe’s tallest rock face, back in ’65 – plus countless more achievements in destinations from southwestern Morocco to northeastern India, this month sees the publication of their new guide to the Al Ayoun region of northern Jordan.
It’s another groundbreaking effort. No outsider (other than Taylor & Howard themselves, a few years ago) has explored this region in any detail – this is the first guide, in any language, to identify unwaymarked countryside routes known only to local shepherds and farmers.
Printed in Jordan – a nice boost for the local economy – the book is published by Vertebrate in the UK and is full colour throughout: the pictures of Al Ayoun’s amazingly lush, green and fertile countryside are gorgeous. 20 long-distance walking routes are covered in turn-by-turn detail, with GPS and maps. There are full accounts of rock climbing and, perhaps uniquely in Jordan, caving. Local knowledge is, of course, impeccable, with rural legends, archaeological history and deep understanding of Jordanian culture mixed with transport info and practical advice.
It’s a slender book – only 104 pages – but it signposts the way for how sustainable – and sustaining – tourism can develop, not only in Jordan but in any developing economy: not with one-off eco schemes or grand promotions, but by investing time, money and expertise in allowing pre-existing local knowledge to find expression, and by fostering the creation of outlets by which that knowledge can come to a wider audience, thereby stimulating economic (and emotional) investment from visitors.
If you’re even halfway interested in Middle East travel, buy the book.
The noble pursuit of travelling
For a flavour of what it’s like (the book, that is), here is the Dedication which Tony & Di print in full:
“There is much profit to be derived from seeing new lands and new houses, in seeing beautiful gardens and fields, in seeing different faces and coming across different languages and colours, and in witnessing the wonders of different countries.
The peace that one finds under the shade of large trees is unparalleled. Eating in the mosques, drinking from streams, and sleeping wherever one finds a place when night comes, these all instil affability and humbleness in a person. The traveller befriends all those whom he loves for God’s sake and he has no reason to flatter or to be artificial.
Add to these benefits all of the happiness that the traveller’s heart feels when he reaches his destination, and the thrill he experiences after having overcome all of the obstacles that were on his way.
If those who are averse to leaving their homelands knew all of this, they would learn that all of the individual pleasures of the world are combined in the noble pursuit of travelling. There is nothing more enjoyable to a traveller than the beautiful sights and the wonderful activities that are part of travelling through God’s wide earth.
And the non-traveller is deprived of all this.”
From ‘The Noble Scholar of Hadith’ by Ramhumuzi
Source: Don’t Be Sad, by Sheikh ‘Aaidh ibn Abdullah Al Qarni (2003)
Warning: rant follows
Now, pin back your ears for a rant – perhaps only of interest to those involved with Jordan. Feel free to stop reading now…
The book came about through Tony Howard & Di Taylor’s association with the Abraham’s Path Initiative (API), who have been working in Al Ayoun for several years to help local communities develop the Al Ayoun Trail (better coverage here), part of the wider Abraham’s Path running from Turkey and Syria through Jordan into Palestine.
API, Al Ayoun and all of these similar organisations or individuals are operating on shoestring budgets. I cannot imagine how much of their own time and resources Tony & Di have ploughed into Jordanian tourism over the decades – not the flashy promotional stuff, but solid, hardcore, tough work down at the grassroots, making connections, building bridges, raising consciousness, offering support, developing ideas. And yet, they told me, for want of a pittance they still struggled to get this book published.
It would not have appeared at all, so I understand, without the sponsorship of Jordanian entrepreneur Fadi Ghandour, founder of Amman-based global logistics firm Aramex. Tony mentioned to me that, after Fadi agreed to help, he demanded a unique form of payback: he asked Tony and Di to lead him on one – only one – walk through Al Ayoun, because he wanted to see the most beautiful parts of his own country – and there was no information, no map and no specialist guide able to take him out into the wilds.
That’s a special kind of sponsor. Fadi is to be congratulated for having the vision to back such a valuable project for Jordan.
His involvement puts to shame the entities and organisations further up the food chain who will benefit from this book, but who didn’t see fit to back it.
World first for Martin Randall?
Hebron
In what (to my knowledge) is a world first, luxury tour operator Martin Randall Travel – known for running fully escorted cultural and historical tours on highbrow themes, chiefly to destinations in Europe – has announced a tour for March 2012 focused exclusively on Palestine.
The eight-day tour’s key selling-point is that it remains inside Palestinian territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem for its entire duration, bar the one-hour road journey to and from Tel Aviv airport. In the world of mainstream package travel, this is pretty much unique.
Many outbound tour operators in Britain and around the world offer Palestine add-ons to an Israel-based itinerary – usually dipping into Bethlehem and out again without staying overnight, sometimes also with a couple of hours in Jericho – and there are also politically-minded ‘alternative’ tours which visit West Bank hotspots to show and explain issues surrounding the conflict.
But I don’t know of any other fully bonded, accredited, mass-market tour company in Britain – or, come to that, the world – which treats Palestine as a destination of cultural and historical interest on its own merits, deserving of a complete one-country itinerary, without reference to Israel.
(If you do, please tell me in the comment section below – and give a link if you can.)
Well-judged
In keeping with the Martin Randall style, the tour stays in upscale luxury hotels throughout: four nights at the wonderful Bethlehem InterContinental Jacir Palace, two nights at the Jericho InterContinental and one night at the new Mövenpick Ramallah. Nothing left to chance! Similarly, the accompanying ‘expert lecturer’ is eminent Middle East historian and archaeologist Dr Felicity Cobbing.
But it’s the itinerary which stands out. It’s unusually well-judged, and remarkable for consistently delaying typical package-tour tickbox gratification.
Clients are in-country for a full 48 hours, sampling little-visited sites in open countryside and rugged desert, and seeing the suffering of Hebron at first hand, before finally being allowed to tour Palestine’s number one attraction, the always-crowded Church of the Nativity in central Bethlehem, late on Day 3. By then, they’ll feel like insiders amid the wide-eyed newcomers.
For Middle East tourism-watchers Day 4 is a landmark, going stubbornly against the near-universal flow by daytripping to Jerusalem from an overnight base in Bethlehem – again, special insight, special exclusivity.
Day 7 covers ground right across the West Bank, from Jericho (desert) to Sebastia (countryside) to Nablus (heritage city) to Ramallah (business capital) – ancient history mixed with a first-hand view of how contemporary politics is shaping the land and society. The local guide – if s/he’s worth his salt – will be working overtime here.
And Day 8 looks like it covers experiences about which very few other package tourists to Jerusalem have even the first inkling – the drive from Ramallah via the notorious Qalandia crossing to spend most of a day in East Jerusalem, without once setting foot over the Green Line.
I don’t often say this about package tour firms, but here goes – this is bold, intelligent, thoughtfully crafted and genuinely ground-breaking travel.
Local
And, at long last, there’s no pussy-footing around. The guides will be Palestinian. The transport will be Palestinian. The food, lodging, ambience and outlook will be Palestinian. A good chunk of money (and prestige) will remain within Palestine. The tour simply enters through Israel (since Palestine has no airport), but spends no time there – it’s like flying Ryanair to Vienna, where the plane happens to lands in Slovakia but the Austrian capital is only an hour’s drive away.
In short, it will be just like a historical/cultural tour to any other country in the world. Local.
Israel has hosted such tours for decades. Israeli tourism infrastructure is superb, Israeli tourist attractions world-class. But why refer to one country when you’re running a tour to another? Israel’s neighbour is emerging to stand alone, in its own spotlight, on its own terms. Martin Randall’s tour, Bradt’s guidebook, switched-on ground agents such as ATG and Siraj – who’ve created, for instance, Walk Palestine, Bike Palestine and JerusalemWilderness.com – as well as a growing grassroots infrastructure and eye-catching private-sector promotion all signal new confidence in Palestinian tourism.
Unaware
But Martin Randall haven’t exactly been shouting about their tour. I haven’t seen a press release – and you can’t even access details of the tour from the usual search facilities on the company’s own website, since (irony of ironies) Palestine is not listed as a destination country – and the “Israel & Palestine” option points at a different tour. You have to choose History or Archaeology from the Tour Theme menu to find it.
I wonder why. Do they not have the courage of their convictions?
Even the Palestinian tourism minister, when I mentioned this tour to her at the WTM travel trade fair in London recently, wasn’t aware of it.
I hope everyone knows now.
Disclosure: Although this post looks like one long advertorial, it isn’t. Martin Randall haven’t paid me a penny to write it; nobody has. I wrote it off my own bat, without reference to any third party, and I have no stake – financial or otherwise – in whether this tour succeeds or fails. The fact it exists at all is what interests me.
Room at the inn
Suraida Nasser & her grandfather
A word of congratulation for the wonderful Fauzi Azar Inn, a guesthouse in the Old City of Nazareth, in northern Israel.
Already lauded by every guidebook out there (Lonely Planet author pick: “One of the highlights of a stay in the region.” Bradt: “By far the best midrange option in town.” Jesus Trail: “The perfect base…Best budget accommodation in the region.” Frommers: “Lots of atmosphere…friendly and personal” etc etc) – this week the Fauzi added a major new award to its trophy cabinet.
It was named global winner of the ‘Best Accommodation for Local Communities’ at the Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards 2011, held during the annual World Travel Market trade event in London.
Can’t tell you how delighted I am for Suraida Nasser, Maoz Inon and everyone associated with the Fauzi. I’ve been there twice, most recently only a few weeks ago, researching a story for Britain’s Wanderlust magazine. It’s a truly inspiring place to stay.
And the story of how the inn came into being is a model example of how this kind of carefully thought-through, low-key, grassroots, community-focused tourism initiative can transform an entire city – not just shape the image of a place, but actually inject money into the local economy, refocus businesses citywide, drive growth and create jobs far beyond the limits of its own four walls.
As for responsible tourism, well, just take a look.
There’s a couple of other reasons to visit Nazareth, true – but the Fauzi brings it all together. Book well ahead to make sure you get a room at this particular inn.
Disclosure: nobody has paid me a penny to write this post. All from the heart.
UPDATE: Soon after posting, I found this nice little short video made by vlogger Daniel Baylis during his stay at the Fauzi in September (2011). Credit to him. Enjoy:
Tracks of my tears
I couldn’t resist the headline, sorry – even though I’m not crying and it means I’ve had two consecutive posts headlined with ‘tears’.
Thrilled and delighted this weekend to have another piece on BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondent, after ones earlier this year on Saudi Arabia and Cairo. This time I’m talking about Jerusalem’s new Light Rail.
Article transcript is here.
Audio is here.
And there’s a bit of background about how From Our Own Correspondent is put together here (8min audio).
Tears of a stranger
She was shaking. I thought she was cold.
It was less than half an hour before sunset. I’d already snapped a picture or two of the group of girls mooching about the old Roman theatre at Sebastia. The incomparably knowledgeable and insightful George Rishmawi had been guiding non-stop since breakfast time at the other end of Palestine. I didn’t want to drop the pace. I was desperate to put my eyes in the way of Sebastia before the light went altogether.
The girls clocked us, the guide and the camera-toting tourist. “No, no! No pictures!”
I pointed at the wall, showing I wasn’t photographing them. It was a lie. I’ve lied like this many times. As if my photographs matter.
They hopped down off the old stones. I was listening to George as they stalked past. No photos.
They sauntered up the hill. I was listening to George as they picked flowers. No photos.
The last metre-and-a-half of the sunset caught them laughing against a golden olive tree, with a column drum beside and the hills beyond. I chewed my lip. George invited me to declaim “To be” at the old stones.
As we walked up the hill – Can we talk to them? I asked.
The girls were young enough to be interested, old enough to radiate contempt. George said hello, then, leaning back against a flaming sunset panorama, spent ten minutes in rapid-fire simultaneous translation. (A guide makes or breaks. George made.)
Why should anyone come here? asked the English journalist.
“Palestine is an Arab Islamic country,” offered one.
“And Christian,” said another.
“Nablus is a very ancient area. There are many historic places to see.”
“We have three religions in Palestine.”
But then, from a girl hanging back, with the face of a widow: “This is our country and we are proud of it.” The others had pre-teen body language. She was tenser.
I asked her how she would tell someone in England about Palestine. I don’t remember exactly, but I think she stamped the ground.
That’s when I realised she was shaking.
She turned and stormed away, then stormed back, her friends caught like little children in her whirlwind.
She raged at me. “You don’t understand what occupation is like.” Raged. Furious. Almost spitting, she was. “Palestinians are under occupation and we want you to help us.” She hated me. It was hate at first sight. Half turning, she untied any connection, eyes down as a raging underling but with fists jabbing by her sides. She was shouting. “You have no idea.”
I don’t, I said, wondering what on earth had happened to her. People in England have no idea, I said. That’s why I came, I said, to help try and show them – I was talking like an excuse, defending my self-proclaimed role as a puny reporter in a land of pain.
Fists still jabbing. Tears now, too. “You don’t understand.” She turned towards me, full face. “An Israeli can come here, right now, and shoot us.” I think she stamped the ground again.
Then her friend took her away. She was rigid, like a matriarch. They were not floods of tears. There was no submission.
I talked to the other girls, but they didn’t say much. I took some photos – and realised she had marched back to lead them away. I asked her name. She told me twice. She was 13, she said.
13.
Could I write it in my notebook? Yes. Could I take her picture? OK – and she wiped her cheeks with her palms.
Get on the bus
News via Alternative Egypt of an interesting little tourism start-up on Egypt’s south Sinai coast – the Bedouin Bus, run by a small group of community entrepreneurs who’ve clearly put their heads together, done some thinking and are ready to fulfil a need among their existing clients (both tourists and, intriguingly, locals) for decent, reliable transport on a route where no public transport currently exists. Good for them – all the details are on their website and their Twitter feed. They’ve got a bunch of interesting sponsors, all deeply involved in independent, sustainable, community-focused tourism in the area. I hope they succeed.
Which makes me wonder why this doesn’t happen more around the Middle East. There was this idea for the Falafel Bus, running on a regular hop-on-hop-off route between points of touristic interest in Israel, Jordan and Egypt – but, as I heard from a hostel owner in Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago, it’s already folded after less than three months. I’m not surprised. Awful, awful name, transparently attempting to raise a smile by defining what unites Israel and its neighbours – which is a very Israeli mindset, incidentally: you don’t find Jordanians or Egyptians hunting for warm and fuzzy points of cultural commonality with Israel. Funny that.
But the idea itself was all wrong – too big, too complicated, too expensive – and if the accuracy of the truly execrable map is anything to go by, completely unreliable to boot.
But that’s not to say smaller-style initiatives couldn’t work. I was just in Palestine. A tourist bus route that went from Bethlehem checkpoint to Bethlehem, Jericho, Taybeh, Ramallah and back to Qalandia could potentially draw independent travellers out of Jerusalem to see more of the West Bank. It would save on taxis, for sure.
There was talk in Nazareth of a private-sector initiative emerging to encourage tourists to visit Jenin, perhaps as part of a joint hotel package in both cities. But that would be expensive. Independent travel, with community-run buses reliably linking either side of the Jalameh checkpoint, perhaps also serving the superb ancient site of Sebastia nearby, would be more attractive to more people.
And Jordan is, frankly, crying out for something like this. A friend I know recently made enquiries about starting a tourist bus circuit around Jordan to entice independent travellers arriving by easyJet – to no avail: the quantity of paperwork and capital funds required to obtain a commercial permit put him off.
The only example I’m aware of is run by entrepreneur Charl Al-Twal, owner of the (excellent) 3-star Mariam Hotel in Madaba. For some years now he’s offered a private bus for tourists between Madaba and Petra along the scenic King’s Highway – a long, slow route avoided by normal buses, which all follow the quicker but duller Desert Highway further east.
But public transport around Jordan to sites of tourist interest is virtually non-existent – major UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as Umm Ar-Rasas, Quseir Amra and Wadi Rum, are effectively impossible to reach unless you’re on a tour or have private transport.
The trouble is Jordanians – and most tourists to Jordan, who come from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries – aren’t interested in visiting Quseir Amra. Or Wadi Rum. And nobody is willing to go out on a limb to start a round-Jordan bus service anyway, in the hope that vivid marketing and a bit of PR will create a demand. So Amra (and others) remain desperately under-visited, Jordanian tourism remains stuck in a rut of seven-day package tours visiting all the same places, and innovation of Jordan’s national tourism product remains largely elusive. Someone, somewhere has to bite the bullet.
Looks like they’re trying in post-revolutionary South Sinai.
A minor gem
The lobby
I was in Jeddah recently, and enjoyed a repeat stay at the Red Sea Palace Hotel.
Built in 1959, and last renovated almost thirty years ago, this was for ages the only luxury hotel in the city (perhaps the whole country? The Khozama in Riyadh didn’t appear until 1978). No longer five stars – and of course overtaken by more luxurious properties – it’s still an atmospheric and upmarket place to stay, with an enticingly home-grown air of old-fashioned glamour. Nobody would call it pretty, and the little lagoon it overlooks is flat and a bit stagnant, but therein lies the charm. Unstudied, you could call it.
I chatted to some of the staff. The night manager told me he virtually grew up in the hotel: he remembers playing in the lobby as a boy, while his dad was working on reception.
It also knocks Jeddah’s phalanx of super-luxe hotels into a cocked hat for its location, plumb on the edge of the old quarter, perhaps ten minutes’ walk from one of the biggest and most absorbing souks in Arabia.
But while I was there I learnt the end was nigh. The Red Sea Palace was about to be taken over by IHG to become a Holiday Inn (even though HI already have a property nearby). The staff were unsure what the future held.
If IHG have got any sense, they’ll keep the corporate branding to a minimum, give the rooms a bit of a spruce (rewiring might be good) but otherwise leave well alone. People who simply want a faceless business hotel have plenty of choice in Jeddah. Charm, old-fashioned service and a sense of history are in desperately short supply. But, as you can imagine, no one’s holding their breath. So much for heritage.
Jeddah, though, still grabs you. Taxi drivers in other cities put their feet up on a break; here, they put their feet up while working.
And then there’s the spiritual element: there aren’t many cities in the world where buying a temporary SIM card amounts to an act of worship.
Jeddah is also home to the legendary fried chicken restaurant chain Al-Baik, with a gut-busting 31 outlets across the city. (By comparison, Birmingham – a similarly sized city –has a mere 24 KFCs.)
But you’re not in Kansas anymore. People want Al-Baik chicken. They really want it. This (below) is what happens in the thirty seconds after opening time – and it’s not a one-off: I’ve seen the same thing myself. Short YouTube video:
Buying fried chicken as authentic cultural travel experience. It’s good, too – hot, crispy, tender – but most of the satisfaction comes down to fight or flight. You have to go into caveman-hunter mode, jostling in line amid the sweat and the grunts, waving your arms, pushing to the front, eyes on the prize, emerging triumphant with your paper bag, then skulking away to tear lumps of steaming meat off the bone with your teeth. Rooooargh.
I love my job.
News from the edge
Rwanduz, Iraqi Kurdistan
A mini-roundup of some interesting news from the fringes of Middle East tourism.
Iraq
An interesting story by Gulf News mentions more than a million visitors a year to the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, with the authorities targeting a Dubai-style five million by 2015.
My favourite line? “The recent surge in arrivals is a direct result of the international media promoting the area’s tourism potential.” So says the local tourism PR chief anyway. Finally there’s a place where travel writers are truly valued. Mind you, I’ve pitched Iraqi Kurdistan to several different editors here in Britain. All I get is tutting and tooth-sucking. Maybe it’s me.
Adding to the good news: Marriott is opening in Kurdistan, as is Hilton. There are signs of sustainable community-based nature tourism as well – and UK operator Undiscovered Destinations launches a new tour there next month.
Palestine
Talking of sustainable community-based tourism, take a look at this new website showcasing guesthouses in Palestine.
It’s interesting stuff, inevitably with a political tinge, but also comprising a bunch of good ideas for how to travel independently through the country. There’s an article about it here. The site is compiled by Bradt guide author Sarah Irving – for more on her, see below.
Bradt Guides
Speaking of which, props to Bradt. They are the only publisher in the world I can think of to have one guidebook to Israel, and another separate guidebook to Palestine (and may the mealy-mouthed ‘Palestinian Territories‘ henceforth be banished to history).
The new Bradt guide to Israel is written by Samantha Wilson. Despite a bit of leakage in the Jerusalem chapter and around Qumran, and (regrettably) a chapter on the Golan Heights, this is remarkable for sticking to its subject. Bethlehem is not covered. The book is a bit light on political perspectives, and the country map on page 2 is frankly bizarre (“Palestinian controlled territory”? “Area of Israeli settlement”?), but it’s a sound effort.
The Bradt guide to Palestine, by Sarah Irving, is classier still. The Israel book is 312 pages; Palestine – though a fraction of the size and with a fraction of the infrastructure – gets 326pp. I’ve seen pre-publication proofs; not the final book. Irving knows her stuff, and has covered the ground intimately. It is refreshing (inspiring? simply bloody wonderful?) to have the Green Line respected in a guidebook. After decades of one-way traffic in terms of travel priorities, travel narratives and travel coverage, Irving reverses the flow. Jerusalem coverage is East Jerusalem coverage. People are front-centre, with homestays featuring prominently and sustainable tourism emphasised. Irving gives informative first-hand accounts of places that not only don’t appear in other guidebooks, but which most other specialist writers (this one included) have never even heard of. I showed her account of Bethlehem to a friend who lives there: after one paragraph he was saying “I never knew that”.
What’s even more interesting is that the last chapter – titled “Palestinian Communities in Israel / Palestinians of 1948″ – includes coverage of Nazareth, the Golan (fascinating to compare the two books’ approach), Haifa and elsewhere. This is as much a guide to Palestinians as to Palestine. But it dodges the romantic, armchair-traveller feel of, say, Palestine: A Guide, thanks to an informed journalistic style which is partial but not tub-thumping, and a wealth of practical info on independent travel. It’s a breath of fresh air.
(The only guide on a par is Daniel Jacobs’ outstanding Rough Guide to Jerusalem, which has 300 pages on the city alone, scrupulously balanced, infinitely knowledgeable, quirkily readable. Add in Jacobs’ coverage of Tel Aviv, Bethlehem, Hebron, Masada, the Dead Sea and Jericho, and his book should be much better known than it is.)
Footnote: I haven’t seen Bradt Palestine’s colour maps yet.
Another footnote: Bradt have Lebanon on the way and their Eastern Turkey is already out. How soon before Iraqi Kurdistan?
Qatar
Not exactly tourism, but in case you thought everything in the Gulf was new – or commercialised – take a look at the fascinating oral history project Swalif. Click on some of the links to hear stories about life in Qatar before oil, before glitz, before malls, before countless luxury hotels. Arabic audio with English text.
Oman
A campaign late last year to push domestic tourism in Oman continues, with starry-eyed op-ed press articles still appearing. It’s all good. Local people travelling for pleasure within their own countries – such as in Lebanon, Israel or Saudi Arabia – fuels rural hospitality, helps diversify tourism economies, improves infrastructure and fosters innovation in non-commercial and/or nature-based attractions. The others in the region should look and learn.
Small country, big mistake?
Eco mayhem. A while ago we had Tanzania proposing to build a major highway straight through the Serengeti. That idea was quashed. Then we had Egypt proposing to build a hotel in a pristine wilderness. That might still happen.
Now, up steps Jordan – a poor country with few natural resources and a faltering economy. 85% of it is arid. Its once-thick forests were nearly all chopped down a hundred years ago to build the Hejaz Railway – which is now, itself, defunct. Today only 1% of Jordan’s land remains forested, mostly in the north around the highland market town of Ajloun (pictured here).
Ajloun is one of Jordan’s poorest regions, and has been the focus of rural development efforts for a decade. There are signs of success. A nature reserve, established on a remote hilltop, has proved popular, and has sparked the growth of village handicraft projects and community-led rural tourism. Nearby, campaigns by the environmental lobby managed to alter plans for a sprawling hotel complex in the midst of the forest.
Now, the government has announced plans to uproot hundreds of trees across a 300-acre site in the middle of Bergesh Forest in order to build a military academy. This represents a climb-down after the outcry at their initial plans to uproot thousands.
But the policy nonetheless appears to be illegal – and the nature lobby (no hippies: these are respected scientists and sober policy-makers with the ear of ministers) have consequently withdrawn their participation in an environmental assessment, which seems set to be a whitewash before it begins.
What’s going on? With vast expanses of empty land on which to build, why is Jordan so keen to fell its tiny acreage of surviving trees? Without wishing to be simplistic – and presuming, of course, that there is no element of corruption involved – could it be because the directors of planning are city people, who feel a bit lost when confronted by blank space on a map?
Jordan has a history of this. In 1985, when a new highway was being built east out of Amman, the planners were faced by virtually limitless open desert. Yet they plotted a dot-to-dot route which linked two ancient sites – just about the only two ancient sites out there. Why? Presumably because, well, there was nothing else on the map. And maybe because they were following ancient pre-existing tracks between desert wells. But lorries don’t need to stop for water every 50km.
The result is that these two magnificent 8th-century ‘desert castles’ – Qasr Harraneh and Qasr Amra, the latter a UNESCO World Heritage Site – now have a major highway rumbling directly past their walls, along with lines of pylons and other service infrastructure, effectively eliminating any sense of history or traditional heritage. Calls to rebuild the highway a mile or two away, with feeder roads to the ancient sites, have so far fallen on deaf ears.
Now we have the same kind of thinking again. If you’re Russia, Germany, Nicaragua or Thailand, perhaps chopping down a small forest to build a military base could be justified. If you’re Jordan, and you’re proposing to chop down virtually the only forest you’ve got left in the entire country simply because, well, there it is, it makes no sense whatsoever. Not economically, not militarily, not socially, and certainly not environmentally.
Who is advising the government – that is, His Majesty the King – to go ahead with this?
Is Jordan’s terrible blight – short-term expedience causing long-term degradation – about to recur at Bergesh?
Jordan off-off the beaten track
Here’s a conceited bit of blogging for you.
I just saw this post at WorldNomads.com, written by Megan Czisz, about going “off the beaten path” (or track!) in Jordan. Megan defines this as Amman, roast chicken, the King’s Highway, Dana, Petra and Wadi Rum. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is kinda remarkable how the beaten track can magically become off the beaten track in the fervid world of travel blogging.
Greater travel bloggers than I might now branch off into a thoughtful disquisition on themes of familiarity and exoticism in travel and travel writing. Me? I’m going to force you to watch my holiday snaps instead, in the vain – yet, truthfully, altruistic – hope that people doing a search for “Off The Beaten Track in Jordan” don’t come up with Petra and falafel sandwiches and think that’s it.
There’s not much rhyme or reason to these pics. I’ve compressed them a lot (so forgive the pixellation, but please don’t steal them anyway) and I’m not cramming links in either. For more info on Jordan, go and buy a decent guidebook.
Amman isn’t off the beaten track, but its beauty isn’t widely appreciated. This (above) is a snap which says nothing much about anything, but which has got a whiff of atmosphere to it, at least.
As does this.
And this (above) is one of the city’s loveliest cafés, but I’m not going to tell you its name. Since we were mentioning street food, this guy (below) is most definitely ON the beaten track, and he knows it too…
Moving on, there aren’t many places where this happens…
That (above) is Irbid – visual proof that a kindly old fluffy-bearded man in the sky really does beam down on Jordan.
A gentle scene – except those hills behind are the Golan Heights, Syrian territory annexed by Israel. Here’s another view, from above…
That’s the Sea of Galilee behind the bougainvillea. To get to (or from) that terrace, you drive on one of my favourite roads…
It’s pretty quiet. Here’s another place that’s pretty quiet:
That’s the River Jordan. Yes, the River Jordan. It’s no Amazon. When she stands up, the water reaches her knees. The other bank, by the way, is Palestine – the middle of the river is the international border. While we’re on a biblical theme…
Up there, on top, is where Salome danced the dance of the seven veils for old King Herod, and where John the Baptist was separated from his head. Hardly anyone goes there now.
Just a couple of nice landscapes, both from northern Jordan, the sort of place where a boy can sit in a wheelbarrow, pick his nose and call it a good day’s work.
Thinking of curves, how did those 7th-century architects down in the desert get bricks to curve like this?
Silhouettes do nice things sometimes. Amazing how Jordan seems to inspire scenic nose-picking though.
That pic (above) is in Aqaba on the Red Sea coast, a place which is now trying desperately to get on the beaten track, after years off it. Lots of fancy hotels and upmarket construction. But still a touch of atmosphere…
Balls.
Of handmade olive-oil soap, that is.
At the end of a hard day, there’s always the sunset…
It’s not bad looking this way either.
And even better from this side.
Given a choice, dromedaries (below) always make their own beaten tracks…
And as for whether Jordan is safe to visit or not, best do what the guy says, OK?
Syria: the only way is up
Talisman Hotel, Damascus
Journalist Tom Gara recently wrote this article (registration required) for FT Tilt – a short piece which takes info from a blog post by Syria analyst Joshua Landis, which in turn digests 2008 figures from the Syrian Central Bureau of Statistics. In summary:
• Syria’s entire hotel industry employs just 11,224 people.
This represents 0.05% of the Syrian population of 22.5 million. Even if you generously infer that each employee is a breadwinner in a family of six, and thus that hotel employment supports 66,000 people, that means hotel wages support 0.3% of Syrians. Compare that to Jordan, where tourism (as a whole) supports perhaps 7% of Jordanians (160,000 families, totalling roughly half a million people out of a national population under 7 million).
• Total salaries paid to hotel employees are just under two billion Syrian pounds.
Landis notes that this averages out to roughly £185/US$300 a month per employee. He also notes that living costs for an average Syrian family in an urban area are almost US$700 a month.
• Hotels in Syria have a combined revenue of $279 million – split as five-star hotels $154m, all others $125m.
Landis compares this to one single five-star hotel in Beirut, the Phoenicia, which had revenues of $88 million last year. You could also – very unfairly – compare to Qatar, where the five-star sector took as much in one quarter as Syria’s five-star sector took in a year. What these figures hide, incidentally, is Syria’s growing strength in small “boutique” heritage hotels, many converted from historic mansions in Damascus and Aleppo – these count as luxury for guests (and are priced accordingly) but I believe don’t qualify as five-star properties.
The main point? As is self-evident to anyone who’s travelled there, Syria’s tourism infrastructure is virtually non-existent.
Travel is good
Two conclusions to draw. First, the obvious one: tourism puts millions of dollars into government coffers (which, in Syria, means the pockets of Assad’s family and friends). That can be hard to swallow. The figures quoted above are from 2008, when Syria was starting to making novelty appearances on newspaper-inspired travel wish-lists as a trending destination, and when journalists were visiting and writing enthusiastically.
Some people refuse to visit countries which have governments they deem oppressive – China, Israel, Zimbabwe, say – specifically because they don’t want their money to support tyrants. Others visit anyway in (hopefully) full knowledge of the situation, writing off the financial aspect in favour of the idea that one-to-one contacts can benefit both hosts and guests, often intangibly. I’m in the latter camp.
Governments, by necessity, work with mainstream players in the tourism industry. The least harmful way of spending money on travel in a place with unpleasant rulers can often be by travelling independently, or using small companies. But, sometimes, even that is not possible. Going to a place to see it with your own eyes can, on occasion, trump wider political considerations. I’d say bankroll a tyrant, if you can then use your experience to positive effect. Travel is good.
Shrink-wrapped
Mosaic, Maarat al-Numan
The second conclusion is only a bit of dreaming about how tourism could work wonders for a democratic Syria. The kinds of problems Egypt and Tunisia are now facing, having to correct decades of endemic corruption in their tourism industries, wouldn’t exist. That’s not to say Syrian corruption isn’t equally bad – it is – but as the figures above show, there’s been virtually no tourism industry to corrupt. The slate wouldn’t be so much clean as still shrink-wrapped.
Syria also wouldn’t have to invest billions to try and implant a concept of tourism, as Qatar and the UAE have done. The concept is already in place. This is a worldly, cosmopolitan society. People understand travel. People also understand entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency, having struggled under authoritarian top-down incompetence for years. With a bit of encouragement, Syria could be a model of development in grassroots, community-led tourism.
Jordanian tourism has had a thirty-year jump start on Syria. But once the Syrian people get the government they deserve, it’s not hard to see Syria taking a generation or less to leapfrog its neighbour. The country is vast, with historical and cultural interest to keep a visitor occupied for weeks or months. Traditions of hospitality are ingrained. Topography is diverse. Flying times from Europe and the Gulf are short. It’s not pie in the sky to imagine Syrian holidays as popular as Turkish or Moroccan.
Syria could even copy Egypt (perhaps Portugal or Cyprus are more equitable models), and use its Mediterranean coastline – remote, underdeveloped, west-facing – to corral sun-seeking northern Europeans, flying them direct to the beach and out again. Damascus could be a Barcelona. Palmyra could be an Pompeii.
Dream over. That’s going to take a revolution.
Wadi Rum gains World Heritage status
On 25 June, UNESCO announced that Wadi Rum, a protected area of desert in southern Jordan, had been added to the list of World Heritage Sites for both its natural drama and cultural significance.
For Rum background, click here, here, here and here.
Few outsiders know Wadi Rum as well as British climbers Tony Howard and Di Taylor. Since their first visit 27 years ago, Tony and Di have been exploring trekking paths and climbing routes all across these rugged landscapes in partnership with the Bedouin, bringing local knowledge to a global audience with unique sensitivity and insight. Several books have resulted, notably Treks and Climbs in Wadi Rum and its partner volume Jordan: Walks, Treks, Caves, Climbs and Canyons. Tony remains an authority on sustainable adventure tourism to Jordan and many other destinations – his publications list takes in Norway, Oman, England and Palestine. His most recent book, Troll Wall, describes his pioneering 1965 ascent of Europe’s tallest rock face. Tony returns to Wadi Rum every year, staying for weeks at a time with the Bedouin.
When the news of Rum’s UNESCO listing broke, I asked Tony if he would like to contribute an article for this website. I’m delighted he said yes. This is what he wrote:
Wadi Rum’s UNESCO World Heritage status has been a long time coming. Some may say it’s not come soon enough; others wonder if it should have happened at all. But Lawrence‘s “Rum the magnificent” is more than deserving – its natural and archaeological wonders are outstanding and both the Old Testament and the Holy Koran are believed to make reference to its culture.
Why then any concern? For many, the main worry is can the area and its people – the Bedouin – cope with the huge increase in tourism that the designation of World Heritage Site will bring? Despite the best efforts of Jordan’s RSCN to protect the core area, it already shows signs of overuse: one must accept that Rum village has grown out of all proportion – when we first arrived in 1984, only Bedouin tents and half a dozen houses surrounded Rum’s fort – but the valley-wide proliferation of vehicle tracks that now head south from the village to the tourism hotspots can hardly be described as welcome. Nor can the ever-increasing number of ‘tourist camps’ which already dot most of the valleys. It is, of course, good that as always the local people are taking the initiative, but while some of these camps are discreet and well managed, others are incongruous – and some are not even owned by Bedouin.
One wonders what type of accommodation the new Rum will have, and where, and how that new accommodation will impact on the site and the ongoing success of the existing Bedouin-run tourist camps.
At peak periods in Rum there are already too many tourists. What then, when the numbers double (as they could)? What effect will that have on the ambience of Rum, its quiet valleys and those people still trying to live their lives peaceably, in the desert? Will outsiders with no knowledge of Rum, its wild places, its culture, its tourism be drafted in as guides and drivers? What new rules and regulations will appear? Will the almost year-round mainstay of Rum’s sustainable tourism – the environmentally aware adventure tourists, trekkers and climbers enjoying what’s been dubbed the world’s best desert climbing area – be faced, as they are in Petra, with ill-considered and impossible demands to hire guides, when in truth guides are not needed by those with sufficient experience? Already Rum has insufficient guides for those visitors who do require them.
And will any of this benefit the area – and more importantly its people? If the evidence of the Wadi Rum Visitor Centre is anything to go by, the answer is probably not. Prior to its construction in 2004, the Bedouin of Rum could wait in their houses until it was their turn in the rota to drive tourists into the desert. Now all the drivers must go 7km to the Visitor Centre and sit around all day waiting for business. No shelter is provided for them. All these cars doing miles of pointless driving pumps unnecessary pollutants into the valley air every day.
So if Rum’s new World Heritage status is to protect the area and benefit its people, its culture and its visitors (both adventure tourists and mainstream tourists), a lot of work has to be done – and quickly. Let us hope that those who undertake this task will work fully with the local people to understand their needs – and the needs of all types of tourists.
Article is © Tony Howard, 27/06/2011. Author contact here.
Dignity departs
Rant time, I’m afraid.
A few months ago in Tunisia, hundreds of people died and thousands more were injured during a popular revolution against a hated dictator. Now, it seems, the Tunisia tourism authorities regard all that as a subject for (literally) naked commercial exploitation.
The image in that BBC story shocks me, and makes me deeply angry. Have these people no ethics at all? Do they really think the brutality of a police state is worthy of a joke on a billboard?
They also apparently feel comfortable relating messages of torture and death to images of female nudity – and all in a bid simply to encourage Londoners to spend money feeling good.
It’s sick – and, in commercial terms, bone-headed. For the Tunisian tourist board to publicly allude to the fact that, barely six months ago, state security was trying to suppress popular demonstrations with beatings and killings (during and just before which, I might add, they willingly overlooked the country’s politics, as did everyone in tourism) only perpetuates the idea that there’s an undercurrent of violence.
But I’m fed up analysing puerile, ignorant, insensitive and counter-productive messages in travel advertising.
What the hell is wrong with this industry? Tourism matters to Tunisia, yes – but why, when tourism arrives, does dignity depart?
The ad exec quoted in the BBC story laughs off 23 years of state-sponsored torture and killing as “unfair”. Is she still in a job?
Her knuckle-headed “provocation” must have been approved at the highest levels – presumably by the director of the Tunisian National Tourist Office in the UK, perhaps also in Tunis (where tourism is part of the Ministry of Trade). Yet the minister was yesterday quoted as saying the country wants to use this year to diversify its tourism product away from package beach holidays. So why the stupid London ads?
Reaction on Twitter last night was swift – and negative. Creative director and copywriter Derek Payne said the ad agency “shouldn’t have recommended the ads in the first place“. Abi Dare, a British travel writer, said it was “a huge leap [too far]“. Jordanian economist Hazem Zureiqat was lost for words.
I’d be interested to know what ordinary Tunisians think.
Still not a correspondent
Rosa damascena trigintipetala
If I was chuffed a fortnight ago to have my radio piece from Cairo aired on From Our Own Correspondent on BBC World Service, I’m even more chuffed today to have a follow-up piece aired so soon – and this time on the BBC’s domestic Radio 4 network as well.
For my schizophrenic tale from Saudi Arabia – half about the rose industry of Taif, half about a very unusual encounter – click here for audio (my bit begins at 0:18:15) and/or click here for the article transcript. The latter includes some very odd rewriting of pounds, pints, litres and dollars to suit the BBC’s internal guidelines on weights & measures: don’t blame me!
Incidentally, I changed key details in the airport meeting story to protect the (unknown) identity of the person involved. For the record, I did not meet him in an airport – not Taif airport and not any other airport – he did not say he was an accountant (he told me a different job title), he did not say he was from “a small town in the north” (he told me somewhere else) and he did not say he was returning home from a company meeting (he told me something else). Otherwise, in every respect the encounter was as I described it.
And I still don’t really know why he did what he did. The conversation was interesting but unremarkable until he showed me the crucifix. That was a pointlessly risky thing to do – unless he wanted to make a statement. Was that statement simply self-aggrandisement? I didn’t think so at the time. It rang true to me: in a few short minutes together he chose to reveal to me depths of emotional and personal complexity in his life that most people would never normally dream of sharing with strangers. Partly by telling, partly by implication, he exposed to me his relationships, his aspirations, his frustrations, his failures, his hopes – and his courage. For what? So that I should think worse of his country? So that I should think better of him? I don’t know.
And what prompted it? Was it the political upheavals elsewhere that were passing his country by? Was it something in our personal chemistry together that made him feel he wanted to confide in me? (I didn’t feel the same: I wouldn’t have dreamed of confiding such stuff in him…) Or was it just the anonymity, that he felt he could get something off his chest with impunity by speaking to a foreigner, someone who he may have figured was just passing through on business? Again, I don’t know.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime encounter. In 20-odd years travelling around the Middle East and the world I’ve never had anything remotely similar happen.
It makes me want to write a book.
Some Riyadh visuals
Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, is famous (among other things) for two skyscrapers.
The best-known is the Kingdom Tower, also known as the Potato Peeler – or the Vest – for, well, obvious visual reasons. It holds offices, malls, apartments, a hotel and a fancy restaurant at the top. People like to use it as a symbol of the glitziness and contemporary zip of Riyadh.
But Riyadh is not glitzy. It has precious little contemporary zip. In truth, the Kingdom Tower looks like a giant alien spaceship, plopped down in an ordinary city as if from some other planet.
The other skyscraper is the Faisaliah Centre, just down the street. It, too, holds offices, malls, apartments, a hotel and a fancy restaurant at the top, housed within a giant golden sphere which is ringed by a high-level viewing gallery.
For some visitors that’s pretty much all they see of Riyadh’s public spaces. Not their fault. I found this an incredibly difficult city to penetrate – blank, dour, unused to outsiders, reserved, wary. The street running alongside those skyscrapers is Olaya Street, famed as the ritziest address in Riyadh. I didn’t think it was ritzy at all. This is what it looks like – and that’s pretty much the extent of Riyadh’s public transport, too.
I took several walks through the poorer downtown commercial areas. These are short one-minute clips of what the streets looked and sounded like, shot on my phone.
This next video is the same sort of thing, starting from the Bab Al-Thumairi gateway, which used to look like this. The new arch across the street, where the video begins, caught my eye for its calligraphy – my pic below shows “There is no God but God” in Arabic.
Still life with office chair.
As across Saudi Arabia, everything stops at prayer time (roughly dawn, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset and dusk). During business hours, that means shops close for 15 or 20 minutes after each call to prayer: staff bring the shutters down. In the souk, shopkeepers simply hook a length of cloth around the front of their shop – see video below.
Then, after the sunset prayer, people – well, some people – head to the malls. This is a walk into the Faisaliah mall, within that big skyscraper I talked about at the top of this post.
Riyadh’s a hot, dry, bleak, desert city, right? Well, in parts. This girl was enjoying the greenery at one of the public parks in the south of Riyadh, alongside the Wadi Hanifa, one weekend afternoon.
Back to the world of tourism. Riyadh’s National Museum is outstanding, perhaps the finest museum in the entire Middle East. I spent hours there. This rather ghostly scene is the museum’s haj gallery, housing a model of Mecca, explanations about what the haj means and a history of the pilgrimage. I loved it.
I could wobble on about Riyadh’s history, about the politics of the place, the deprivation, the economic divisions, the beauty, the architecture, the velvety dry heat, the sustainable development, the unsustainable development… but I’m not going to. This is just a bit of travel blogging. Eye-candy.
Tell me what you think of it.
From (Not) Our Own Correspondent
Very chuffed today to have a piece from Cairo’s Tahrir Square on the BBC World Service radio programme From Our Own Correspondent – click on this link to hear it.
The piece as aired was edited slightly and cut down to fit the running time. Here’s the original, as submitted.
My favourite Cairo graffito of the moment, spotted this week on an underpass in the leafy residential quarter of Zamalek, is ‘Il-Tahrir fee Midan il-Tahrir’, or “Liberation in Liberation Square”. But it’s when you go walking in the square that it becomes increasingly clear different people have different ideas of what liberation might mean.
Tahrir is less of a square than a ramble of grassy islets flanking a roundabout that is normally marooned in a sea of honking traffic. Now, though, traffic is barred. In its place, gaggles of men (and it is mostly men) gather at points around the square to debate the revolution, in a high-octane, high-stakes version of Speakers’ Corner in London.
“I was here!” shouts one muscle-bound character in a plaid shirt, leaning forward and beating his chest in a declaration of revolutionary authenticity. “I was here on January 25th [which was the day the anti-Mubarak protests began]. But these people here now” – he points over to the ragtaggle groups of protesters on the Tahrir roundabout, bedecked in banners – “they’re all just druggies.”
The little crowd which has gathered around him shifts and mutters. And then, in an expert piece of rhetoric which throws a spotlight onto every enemy lurking in the minds of his audience, the speaker delivers his coup-de-grace.
“These junkies,” he says, “They’re all on Twitter and Facebook, dealing drugs. Al Jazeera says that THAT” – and he gestures at the roundabout again – “is our revolution. No! Those people are the counter-revolution! The army must take charge!”
Beside me, protester and social media activist Amr El Beleidy laughs. Psychological warfare, he calls it, before telling me how 100 Egyptian pounds – roughly ten pounds sterling – can buy the services of a rabble-rouser for a day to poison hearts and minds on Tahrir Square.
Well over six foot, with a clump of fair curly hair and a grin wider than his ears, Amr cuts an unlikely figure, strolling amiably across the square as if on a country ramble. With an engineering degree from University College London, and a masters from Imperial College, Amr straddles two worlds. I met him first on Twitter, months before shaking his hand in real life.
Even now, as we walk, he is snapping photos on his phone for later upload. But, in the uncertainty of post-revolutionary Cairo, informants and counter-revolutionary spooks have free rein. A mustachioed character steps in front of us, holding up a phone as if videoing our faces. I duck away, and Amr challenges him.
“What are you doing?”
The man scowls, and mutters, “I’m doing what you’re doing. Taking pictures.”
I later discovered that Amr posted an image of the man’s face onto Twitter, to warn other protesters.
Yet, as so often happens in Egypt, Tahrir also overturns prejudices. When a shabby-looking man with a limp blocked our path and held up a newspaper, I thought “Here we go again”, expecting an argument.
He asked us what the headline was. Amr read it aloud. The man nodded thoughtfully, then jabbed his finger at another headline. Then another.
He couldn’t read. But he wanted to be part of the revolution. So, rather than rely on rumour and street gossip, this man had come to Tahrir to find out for himself what the media were really saying. The newspaper was the privately-owned daily Al Masry Al Youm, the opposition’s favourite read.
Blocking access to reliable information is the first weapon in any autocrat’s arsenal. But that rubs both ways. Amr brought up the fear – among Westerners in particular – of the rise of Islamist parties in Egypt – particularly the Salafis, who advocate a return to an older, stricter form of Islam.
“But these Salafis are like the BNP in Britain,” he said. “You remember all that fuss about inviting the BNP onto Question Time? But it just showed everybody how irrelevant the BNP were. It’s the same here. Mubarak tried to crush the Salafis, but he just drove them underground. He gave them power. Now Mubarak has gone, so they are speaking – but most people aren’t listening. They don’t want them.”
Out on the square, gangs of boys are jostling to gurn into TV cameras, while fifty yards away shouts rise as an argument spills over into shoving. Teenage lads buzz to and fro on gleaming motorbikes, weaving dangerously between pedestrians, apparently just showing off to each other.
Control of Tahrir Square has become a cipher, indicating control of the nation’s political future. But, as one Egyptian journalist tweeted this week, the revolution is more than Tahrir. The story of Egypt’s liberation has a way to go yet.
