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.

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.

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.

Click here for tour details.

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.

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).

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.

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.

Tunisia was amazing. Egypt is astounding. Bahrain boggles the imagination. Libya is off the scale. At the time of writing, none of those 4 revolutions is resolved. And there is also Yemen, Algeria, Morocco, even – staggeringly – Syria. Of a different character, but no less significant in their own way, are protests in Jordan and Oman, government handouts in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and even baby-steps towards parliamentary elections in the UAE. Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine and Israel may be fairly said to have their own concerns right now. That only leaves Qatar. Nuff said.

Anyone who’s been following me on Twitter will know that I’ve been trying to keep on top of the changing situations across the region day by day, which is a full-time job in itself. But this is a tourism blog, not a news digest – and I’ve held off from blogging travel titbits, since just about the only noteworthy tourism issues arising so far from these multiple revolutions have focused on less-than-gripping tales of Western governments’ efforts to repatriate their stranded citizens.

But the role of tourism in all this has increasingly felt rather seedy to me. Throughout the Egyptian revolution, governments and the travel industry kept on maintaining that Sharm and the Red Sea resorts were completely safe and unaffected by the upheavals in Cairo and around the rest of the country. Two British travel writers – who I won’t name, for their sakes – were flown into Sharm during the protests to ‘experience’ a luxury hotel. They did a bit of desert touring, tweeted about how peaceful it all was, and took some vox pops (which, unsurprisingly, were all about wanting to encourage tourists back – and this was before Mubarak had resigned).

That shocked me. It highlighted just how detached Egyptian tourism had become from Egyptian life. While people from all sectors of society, in all parts of the country, were engaging in serious political action – perhaps for the first time in their lives – all some Westerners seemed to care about was their ‘right’ to relax on the beach. The industrialised mass tourism which Sharm (and other places) specialise in filters virtually no money back to the communities which host it: a huge proportion of the cash spent on a typical Sharm holiday remains either outside Egypt altogether, or in the hands of inbound tourism conglomerates controlled by the kind of tycoons Mubarak’s regime favoured. People don’t go to Sharm, or Taba, or Hurghada, or El Gouna, or Marsa Alam, or any of Egypt’s other chiefly purpose-built seaside resorts in order to engage with Egyptian culture, or to enjoy a characteristically Egyptian beachfront scene. Most of these places didn’t even exist before mass tourism anyway; there often *is* no local “scene” other than tourism. People go because it’s sunny, cheap and you can fly there directly.

Is that bad? Well, since you’re asking me, yes it is bad – but some people like that sort of disconnect. What got my goat was that such disconnects enable Mr & Mrs Westerner to lie on sunloungers being served cocktails by Mr Egyptian, even while Mr Egyptian’s country is in flames as society is being completely reshaped by events a few hours’ drive away – and that Mr & Mrs Westerner are able to feel good about it because they are ‘supporting’ a vital plank of Egypt’s economy by not cancelling their holiday. Airlines and holiday firms kept on flying tourists into Egypt throughout the revolution.

That’s wrong. That’s a moral problem. If your tourism doesn’t allow your hosts to retain their dignity, you need to change your tourism. Dignity comes through income, sure. But nobody – in the UK anyway – seemed to relate industry calls for continued tourism to noses in troughs. At no point did the UK government advise its citizens not to go on holiday to Egypt (if it had done, then the rules on insurance reimbursement would have changed, whereupon the travel industry could have pulled out without losing money). I might be naive, but that is a failing of British foreign policy. Equally, the travel industry’s current reliance on Foreign Office travel advice benefits insurers (and reinsurers), not the industry – and certainly not holidaymakers.

Looking ahead, Bahrain and Libya don’t have anything like the same level of tourism – but the last couple of days have seen violent protests in Oman, which has a flourishing and important tourism sector. If the violence there escalates, will we see the same thing – Westerners holed up in luxury hotels, pretending all is normal, while Omanis try to reshape their society around them? It’s hard to tell. One complicating factor is that, unlike in Egypt, in Oman tourism is concentrated in the capital.

Globally, tourism is dangerously close to getting too big for its boots. It seems to enjoy being last out – only halting altogether under extreme duress – and, above all, being first back in, even while the last stones are being placed on fresh graves. That’s topsy-turvy. When people are trying to grasp political power previously denied to them, holidays become unimportant. They should stop. We should stop them.

The reality, though, isn’t quite so rosy. The common visa would only be issued for tourists travelling in groups. Independent travellers – that substantial bloc of price-conscious, culturally aware, potentially high-spending visitors – are being given the cold shoulder yet again.

And then, when you think about it, do visa issues actually hinder group tourism in these four countries at the moment? Probably not. Although Jordan’s tourism minister Zeid Goussous is quoted as saying a common visa would encourage more tourists from faraway countries such as Latin America, I’d suggest a far greater disincentive for people in Asia or the Americas contemplating a long-haul holiday in the Middle East might be the perceived threat of violence or terrorism, the unfamiliarity of the destination(s), the high cost of international travel and ground arrangements, and/or the necessity of taking 10-14 days’ holiday at a minimum to justify the long flight. Red tape on the border is rarely an issue for group tourists, who get all their paperwork handled by their tour company.

(By contrast, bureaucracy for independent travellers at Middle Eastern border crossings can be miserable – but independent travellers will not qualify for these common visas. An opportunity missed.)

A key question, unanswered in the news report, is how much the visa would cost. That could make the difference between successful stimulation of a semi-dormant market – and negligible returns on yet more diplomatic hot air.

Separately, I’d also suggest that people coming to the Levant from, specifically, Latin America would very likely want to be visiting the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, Bethlehem and Nazareth rather than lazing in Beirut or ballooning in Cappadocia – but Palestine and Israel are specifically excluded from these visa proposals.

So is this the wrong visa, for the wrong people, at the wrong time? No. Any moves to cut red tape must be welcomed – and it seems to me the whole Latin America thing is a red herring: this is, in truth, focused on tapping growing markets in India, China and East Asia for overseas leisure tourism.

Middle Eastern cooperation, in whatever form, is good. From such initiatives do greater visions take hold. Bring on the common visa.

The researcher and I exchanged emails and had several long chats on the phone – she asking me about the logistics of travel across the Middle East and possible points of interest for a driving show, me bending her ear at length about how wonderful the region is and throwing lots of ideas at her about how and where the trip might run.

I can’t remember whether it was her or me who mentioned the idea of the show following the route of the Three Wise Men, travelling from “the East” to Bethlehem. But it was probably her. Almost certainly her. I mean, let’s face it, it must have been her. Must have been.

Anyway, so there were more emails, and more long phone calls (“I wondered if you would be free for a chat about the Golan Heights?” “Do you know if it’s possible to drive through the West Bank now?”), and I passed on specialist contacts in Jordan, in Palestine, I sent her links for theories of where the Three Wise Men originated – perhaps Iran, perhaps elsewhere – I explained what frankincense and myrrh are, and where they come from… the whole thing. We got on alright, I thought.

Perhaps I was naive in freely sharing knowledge without fixing terms, or without discussing the possibility of being involved in the show (or at least being acknowledged somehow).

Perhaps she thought I was doing it for the love of the Middle East, or because she thought images of Clarkson in the desert would instantly cause a soaring rise in sales of my Rough Guide to Jordan, thereby recompensing me through vastly increased royalty payments at no cost to the licence-fee payer.

Either way, the emails stopped in May, and I heard nothing more.

Then, this appeared: a Top Gear Christmas special, broadcast on 26th December, centred on a trip whereby Clarkson, Hammond and May follow the route of the Three Wise Men, travelling from “the East” (Iraq) to Bethlehem, via Turkey, Syria, Jordan and Israel, with attempted detours via Iran (not possible with a BBC crew), across the Syrian desert, and into the Golan Heights.

Iraqi Kurdistan came off rather well, with lots of epic scenery and enthusiasm about the friendliness of the people. Turkey was portrayed as shabby and dangerous. Syria seemed rather fun. Jordan was dismissed as a basket-case. Israel was glossed over, and Palestine didn’t exist – we saw nothing of Bethlehem. Top Gear’s not my favourite show, and I’m the wrong demographic, but all that burqa-wearing stuff struck me as particularly stupid.

And, of course, I got no credit. Perhaps I’m over-estimating my input, perhaps my info was utterly tangential, but I think that stinks. Sour grapes? Of course it’s sour grapes. I’m wallowing in sour grapes. They chewed me up and spat me out.

I’ll leave you with an email from me to the Top Gear researcher, dated 1st February 2010:

hi again
Struck me over weekend that this might also be of interest:
http://jerashchariots.com
Can just imagine the 3 of them racing, Ben Hur-style, around the Roman hippodrome…

On the right is a still frame, taken from the sequence where the 3 of them race, Ben Hur-style, around the Roman hippodrome at Jerash, Jordan.

Great idea, BBC.

Credit: jewlicious.com

Ahead of a forthcoming trip to Palestine and Israel, a couple of days ago I went to check the weather on my iPhone’s preinstalled Yahoo weather app. Tel Aviv loaded fine, but it was when I did a search for Jerusalem that the oddness began.

I started by typing “Jerus” – waiting for Yahoo’s database to find the most obvious entry. It came up with “Jerusalem, Ohio” top of the list. Bizarre. So I carried on typing, till “Jerusalem” sat in the search bar. Pause for search. Top of the list now? “West Jerusalem, Yerushalayim“. ['Yerushalayim' is the Hebrew name for Jerusalem.] Huh? There was no weather forecast for the city of Jerusalem, only for West Jerusalem. Even in the mad world of Middle East politics, that made no sense.

So I sighed and loaded the weather page for West Jerusalem, then tried to find the weather for the half of the city that I’m going to visit. There was nothing under “Jerusalem”. After failing with “Quds”, “Palestine” and various combinations thereof, I finally found it. “East Jerusale” brought up Gangtok in India (huh again?), but if you add that final M you get “East Jerusalem, West Bank“. Extraordinary.

So I loaded both. Incidentally, they’re identical.

Conclusions? On the one hand, if you type “Jerusalem” you only get West Jerusalem. On the other hand, it’s now possible to have the weather solely for East Jerusalem on your iPhone if you persevere.

The Israeli and Jewish blogospheres are, understandably, up in arms. This is one example – and this Israeli news site reports today (June 6th) that Israel’s ambassador in Washington has send a letter of protest to both Yahoo and Apple.

But the Arab, Muslim and/or Palestinian blogospheres? I can’t find a single word of comment.

This (right) is one of the approaches to Qalandia.

Pictured below is a section of the ‘separation barrier‘ at Qalandia, decorated with murals.

This (below) is what you see on the road from Jerusalem into Ramallah, having passed through Qalandia. The painted sign says “No entry to Israelis” in Hebrew (Israeli citizens are forbidden from entering Ramallah, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority).

Traffic trying to cross Qalandia from Ramallah into Jerusalem is often heavy.

Having left Ramallah, buses arrive at the entrance to Qalandia, where everybody has to get off with their bags, walk across a parking area and into this shed (below), to pass into a narrow barred passageway, wide enough for one person at a time.

Passengers from the bus are then corralled together in this holding pen (below). The barred turnstile at the far end is controlled by the Israeli army staff, who sit in a secure office just beyond: they allow one person at a time through the turnstile for checks. The rest must stand and wait. On the day I was there, I waited in this area for about 15 minutes, shuffling forward slowly one person at a time. People were courteous but quiet. Fortunately it was a cool day: there is no air-conditioning there.

This (below) is the notice on the other side of that turnstile: each person allowed through must pass their ID card (or, in my case, passport) through a transfer window for checking by the Israeli army staff.

I could not take photos of the ID check, but on that particular day, that particular office was staffed by four people – three women and one man – all in army uniform and all, in my estimation, in their late teens or early twenties. One was seated at the window, running computer checks on the ID of the people passing through the turnstile; as she worked, she also leaned back, smiling and chatting with her colleagues, who were lounging behind – one woman was reclining in an office chair with her boots up on the desk, while the man was seated on a desk nearby, his feet on a chair, chatting and laughing.

After I passed in front of the window, there was a sudden shouted command which came out of a speaker on the wall. I turned, the person who was coming just behind me shrank back, and the shout came again. The soldier at the window merely wanted me to show my passport again – but it was (how can I put this?) disconcerting, in that context, to have a disembodied voice suddenly issuing shouted commands at me through a crackly speaker.

After the ID check you walk on. Pictured below is the sign which hangs above this passageway; it says “Israel” in Hebrew and Arabic.

Turning right at the sign, as instructed, this is the view (below) – another turnstile.

Through that turnstile, you effectively enter Israel proper. This is the scene (below) – another watchtower, with more people and traffic waiting to pass into Ramallah.

Everybody reboarded the bus, which continued on its way into East Jerusalem.

For them, it was routine: they presumably do the same thing twice (or more) a day, every day. Perhaps, since the crossing only took about 20 minutes and nobody was singled out for body or property searches, it was a good trip.

It was the most shocking bus journey I’ve ever taken. Qalandia is a disgrace: it feels, looks and smells like a prison. The casual behaviour and jokey attitude of the Israeli soldiers running ID checks was disgusting. (Then again, perhaps it fits: imagine soldiers making eye-contact with everyone and smiling, saying please, thank you and have a nice day. It’s almost worse than the honest reality of treating people like cattle.)

And Qalandia is only one of dozens of similar military checkpoints, set up in and around the West Bank in order for Israel to control the movement of Palestinians.

It brutalises – but I wonder if it isn’t brutalising Israelis even more than Palestinians.

While I was waiting in that holding pen, it struck me that when Palestinians are one day governing themselves in a fully autonomous State of Palestine, Israelis will still be living with the insidious, corrupting mental and social consequences of having maintained such an occupation for so long.

I’m absolutely certain that the Palestinians can survive the occupation, however long it continues. They seem to have the kind of inner strength and collective resolve that no army can touch.

What I’m less sure about is whether the Israelis can.

A mammoth undertaking

It’s a mammoth undertaking. Although the terrain – and the long distances – suit train travel perfectly, there are only a few scattered lines currently in operation.

Saudi Arabia runs a passenger service between Dammam and Riyadh. Syria has a good network, which links – through the tenuous connection of the Toros Express – to Turkey. Israel also has a decent system, but for political reasons it is completely isolated from its neighbours: trains once ran from Cairo all the way along the eastern Mediterranean coast to Beirut, but the lines were cut in 1948.

Flying the Arab Revolt flag

And the old Hejaz Railway, built by the Ottomans to take haj pilgrims from Damascus to Mecca, blown up by Faisal and Lawrence of Arabia during the ‘Arab Revolt’ – and which, in its latter years, hosted passengers trains between Damascus and Amman in Jordan – is also no more. Jordan resurrected it as a novelty this month, running ‘Ramadan Specials’ between Amman and the nearby city of Zarqa, but hardly anybody took notice. As this article pointed out, Jordan has no culture of rail.

Big plans

Yet big plans are afoot. Jordan is planning a new national network, incorporating a commuter light-rail line between Amman and Zarqa along the route of the old Hejaz track. The intention is to link up with Syrian railways, and idealists envision that – once there is sufficient political will – Jordan might also link up with the Israeli network. Relaxing one day aboard the Galilee Flyer from Haifa to Irbid, or the Umayyad Express from Damascus to Jerusalem? We can only hope.

But the biggest plans are on the Arabian Peninsula. Saudi Arabia’s rail expansion includes a Landbridge project to extend the Dammam-Riyadh line as far as Jeddah, thus linking the Gulf with the Red Sea for the first time. The Haramain high-speed rail line from Jeddah to the Holy Cities of Medina and Mecca will be partly ready for next year’s haj, and a driverless monorail is planned within Mecca to ease the traffic problems caused by 3 million pilgrims a year. The intention is for the Saudi network – specifically a new north-south line running from Riyadh to Ha’il – to continue to the Jordanian border, forming a connection with Jordan’s domestic railways.

Then the six GCC countries are well advanced on plans for an international railway along the Gulf coast from Kuwait to Oman, which would link to domestic rail networks planned throughout this region. The Friendship Causeway, a massive engineering project to build a road link across 40km of sea between Bahrain and Qatar – thus reducing the journey time between Doha and Manama from almost 5 hours to 30 minutes, when it opens in 2015 – was hastily redesigned at the last minute to include space for a rail line. Both countries are designing railways and urban metros within their own, small territories.

And the UAE is planning a national railway, linking Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah and crossing to the east coast to Fujairah. In addition, a triangle of high-speed lines will connect Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Al Ain. Lines will extend into Oman to the capital, Muscat.

Finally, the GCC line would join with the Saudi network, by then itself linked with Jordan, Syria and Turkey. Syria and Iraq are already connected. Trains could, in theory, run the whole distance from Istanbul to Muscat, across half a dozen countries or more, making the prospect of travelling by train from Europe to the Gulf a real possibility.

Social cohesion

The potential for change is very exciting. Railways – or, more specifically, opportunities to travel easily and cheaply – make healthy societies: they foster social cohesion. Railways are progress. British policymakers forgot this in the 1960s and 1970s, cut lines and denied the railways decent investment. This contributed to the isolating, individualistic, London-centric reshaping of society which continued through the 1980s and which we are still grappling with today.

Mecca monorail?

In the UAE, where 80% of the population are from elsewhere, Emiratis are very unlikely to use their new mass transit systems – at least for another generation, until the individualism (and subsidised petrol) which ties people to their cars is abandoned. Consequently, building railways seems to me to be a rare, tacit acknowledgement by the UAE governments of the contribution made by outsiders, in particular by South Asian expats. It is – momentously, for these fragmented societies – a step towards integration.

Rail buffs in the West may get misty-eyed about all this, dreaming of historic lines converted for a new age, trains as harbingers of peace, new networks in virgin territory – and, of course, the romance of all those ancient cities of Arabia linked by gleaming new high-speed expresses.

But for the people in the region, the plans for rail are far more meaningful than that. Never mind all those skyscrapers and multibillion-dollar megaprojects; railway construction represents the most tangible, realistic move towards nation-building yet seen in the region. For the first time, virtually unlimited public funds are being married with level-headed, long-term planning policies. Two generations on from the biggest lottery win in history – the discovery of oil – the Gulf countries are starting to find their feet again.

Railways really matter.

UPDATE 7/9/09: A specialist rail writer friend advises me that the Hejaz line was in fact built by the Germans, under Ottoman direction, and also points out that it might be misleading to compare Syria’s network with Israel’s; the latter is far more advanced. Also check out this great video (5mins), posted today, of a journey aboard one of the ‘Ramadan Special’ train services along the old Hejaz line in Jordan – atmospheric visuals, “slumdog” scenery, but no toilet paper! Commentary is in Arabic, but the footage and music speak for themselves.

I had high hopes: it’s a nice idea, and Humble is a good choice. There were some great sequences – camel-jumping in Yemen (where young bloods try to leap over a row of dromedaries, Evel Knievel-style: see pic), a bit of imperial nostalgia in Aden, discussing capital punishment with the chief of the religious police in Riyadh’s “Chop-Chop Square”, and so on.

But what a wasted opportunity in Oman! As the source of frankincense, and the anchor of the whole trip, Oman was treated surprisingly shoddily – a scant five or ten minutes, focused entirely around Kate Humble fooling around on camelback like a package tourist at the Pyramids. Nothing of Dhofari culture, nothing of the amazing frankincense souk in Salalah, nothing of the extraordinarily evocative ruins of Sumharam at Khor Rori, nothing of Salalah’s state-of-the-art Museum of the Frankincense Lands… Oman was reduced to swarthy tribesmen dancing and shouting at camels a lot while blonde foreigner looks on in bemused hilarity. If I was part of the Omani team who fixed that particular shoot, or in the promotions unit of the Omani Ministry of Tourism, I would not be very happy today…

Then we got perhaps the most positive half-hour of prime-time TV coverage Yemen has had in years – genuinely interesting sequences of travel, well described, well shot and with good Q&A cultural insight between Humble and her Yemeni fixer – including a baby-blessing ceremony in a tower-house in Shibam, a wadi walk approaching Shabwa on the ancient frankincense route, some nice sequences in Sanaa, and more.

Because the Yemeni-Saudi border is closed, Kate then diverted onto a three-hour flight to Riyadh to continue the story. But why Riyadh? It has nothing to do with frankincense, and is miles off the route. Why not Jeddah – which is at least in the right direction – or, better still, a connecting flight back to Najran or Jizan, on the Saudi side of the border, to pick up the proper trail again?

My guess – and forgive my cynicism here (I’m not normally a conspiracy theorist) –is because this series came about not because of a desire to enlighten the world about frankincense – but, rather, because someone, somewhere, gained permission to film a travel documentary inside Saudi Arabia, perhaps after years of asking. Lots is changing inside KSA, and there is a strong desire there to gain screentime in the West that is both positive and focused well away from news. From the trailers, it looks like episode two sees Kate hosted by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for a high-life tour of Saudi in limos, supercars, private jets etc etc. So much for frankincense. I suspect that, having secured permission to film, the successful negotiator went away and developed a pitch which justified screening an hour of amazing scenery and memorable adventures inside KSA without it looking like a PR whitewash. Weaving KSA into a story about ancient trade routes is a brainwave. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Saudi promoted onscreen as a viable tourism destination.

It might work well: we’ve only had the first 15 minutes so far, at the end of episode one (of four) – though arrival in Riyadh was tragically, and brainlessly, heralded with the immortal voiceover from Kate Humble: “Saudi Arabia is a kingdom of contrasts”. Doh! Fire the scriptwriter!

And then, after dwelling on just how scarily different Kate thinks Saudi will be, with her tears flowing after trying on niqab in Sanaa (yes, it made her cry) and her nervousness about doing something wrong in Riyadh, when she finally arrived and was taken to a mall, all she could say – while looking around at Dunkin Donuts and shops selling, yes, skirts and T-shirts – was “It’s all so depressingly familiar”. Doh again! That felt like a microcosm of how Europeans have approached Arabia for generations: first it’s all thrillingly exotic, then the exoticism starts to feel threatening, then finally it’s not exotic enough. It’s the same mindset which results in Dubai tour operators laying on Ukrainian hoofers to stage a pastiche of Egyptian bellydance for groups on desert safaris – the reality is simply not enough to meet expectations.

But praise to the BBC for commissioning a four-part series about travelling across the Arabian Peninsula – that must be a first. Interesting that it was scheduled in the middle of Ramadan, as well.

However, this is the map the BBC have drawn to illustrate the route. That diamond at the top is the ancient port of Gaza – but, as I’m sure must be known to BBC TV executives, Gaza is not an Israeli city. A simple question: where on this map is Palestine?

UPDATE: Seems I might be wrong about that Saudi prince – possibly not Prince Alwaleed, but rather Prince Bandar. And the Daily Telegraph have pulled no punches in their review of this programme today…

UPDATE 2: For detailed travel notes about following in Kate’s footsteps, click here.

Never mind. Politics aside, one of Aleem’s most memorable stories – apart from his blog from the haj – came from his idea last year to walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem, retracing the journey made by Joseph and Mary in the Christmas story, arriving in Bethlehem on Christmas Day. If you haven’t read his blog and watched the video clips from along the way, take time to do so – it’s a great travel story, told brilliantly well.

Then came this story about Israeli transport officials planning to impose Hebrew place names on locations throughout Israel. Tourists – and, apparently, locals – are “confused” by the lack of standardised spellings, so in future Nazareth will be signposted in English and Arabic as Natsrat, using the transliteration of its Hebrew name. Similarly Caesarea will be shown as Kesariya, Acre as Akko, Jaffa as Yafo.

If the advert map was (in the most generous interpretation) merely cackhanded mismanagement of spin, it’s hard to see this as anything other than part of an attempt to erase official recognition of any cultures other than Israeli Hebrew culture in these towns and cities.

Do they imagine that they are doing tourists a service by replacing Nazareth with Natsrat? Are they expecting the Arabic-speaking residents of Acre to suddenly start calling their own city Akko?

If the Swiss government in Bern were to issue a decree forbidding the mention of “Genève” and requiring Geneva to be signposted using only the German name Genf, it would (rightly) be interpreted as an attempt to deny the reality of that city’s francophone culture.

Who, then, are the Israeli government trying to kid by, in effect, trying to squeeze the very word Jaffa out of existence? Nobody but themselves, it seems.

The author, Daoud Kuttab, is a renowned Palestinian journalist, and writes in detail about the tortuous border problems – and financial corruption involved – from a Palestinian perspective.

I’ve crossed here, both ways, maybe half a dozen times. Being a ‘foreigner’ (as opposed to a Jordanian, a Palestinian or an Israeli) it’s much, much easier to make the trip, but this nonetheless still rates as the longest, nastiest, least appealing border crossing I can think of. Not everyone, regrettably, shares my freedom to cross elsewhere.

One of the most interesting things was Rabbi Froman’s affirming the possibility of maintaining viable Jewish communities under Palestinian rule within a Palestinian state on the West Bank – surely a ‘third way’ between the expansionist status quo (immoral and profoundly damaging) and a Gaza-style settler clearance (inconceivable under current conditions, it seems to me). I would love to talk to him about it – and to try and gauge Arab opinion about Sheikh Bukhari in Jerusalem and Ibtisam Mahameed in Faradis. Are they admired? Respected? Marginalised? Ridiculed?

…but I’m not going to blog about that.

Instead I’m going to blog about this story in yesterday’s Jordan Times – which I followed as it unfolded on Queen Rania’s Twitter page. The Queen and Minister of Tourism went to Rasoun, a small village in northern Jordan, to mark the launch of the ministry’s project establishing walking trails in under-developed rural areas. I was in Rasoun a few weeks ago for the Independent: it’s a simple country town, set in a beautiful landscape of forested hills. Down in the valleys, streams water orchards of fig, olive and pomegranate. Up on the slopes are a few hard-to-find towns: Rasoun itself, Orjan, Baoun, with some smaller villages, linked by goat tracks. Some people are farmers, but most are public sector employees: civil servants, police, army.

Last year I also passed through Rasoun during a stay in a nature reserve run by Jordan’s Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN), which occupies a swathe of forest on the hilltop nearby. They operate a network of rural trails through the reserve, crossing Rasoun’s remote countryside.

Then I revisited the area this April to walk the Al-Ayoun Trail, a separate concern originating in a cooperative effort among the local villagers to introduce tourism to their area. This has been fostered by the Abraham Path Initiative (API), an American organisation seeking to establish an international walking route linking sites of Abrahamic interest across the Middle East. I’ve written in more detail about the Abraham Path for Wanderlust magazine and the Times. The API discussed cooperation with the RSCN in Rasoun, but were rebuffed (so I understand) by the RSCN’s policy of insisting that anyone walking on its paths must pay for an RSCN guide to accompany them. So instead the Al-Ayoun Trail runs around the reserve perimeter, purposely routed through the villages in order to encourage interaction between walkers and villagers.

Now the Jordan Times is reporting how the Ministry of Tourism wants to establish its own, compeletely separate walking paths in the Rasoun area, following neither the RSCN’s routes nor the existing Al-Ayoun Trail.

It’s a circus! From five years ago, when Rasoun was unknown and unvisited, suddenly everyone from lowly British hacks to the Queen herself are busy visiting, talking and planning. The poor Rasounis must be wondering what they’ve done to deserve it.

Why isn’t everyone co-operating? The background is complicated, but it boils down to this. The RSCN don’t like to work with anyone else: they set their own rules, devise their own business plans and pursue their own goals. They also have closer links with the Ministry of Environment than the Ministry of Tourism, who tend, as a consequence, to leave them alone.

The API has a different vision: their raison d’etre is to bring travellers and local people into contact with one another. For them, the RSCN’s trails, which bypass centres of population to traverse wild countryside, miss the point.

Yet the Jordanian tourism ministry, for its part, is suspicious of the API, since the Al-Ayoun Trail is intended to form one link in the longer Abraham Path (map here), which will connect across the border into Palestine and Israel. The underlying idea – to encourage Jordanians to follow the pilgrimage route into Israel and to encourage Israelis to walk the path in Jordan – is anathema to mainstream Jordanian opinion. The government, I’m sure, feels like it can’t be seen to condone such overt ‘normalisation’, let alone support it. Yet promoting rural development through sustainable tourism is a key theme in the government’s – and the king’s – plans for the next few years, especially in the beautiful, downtrodden region around Rasoun. So with the API cold-shouldered, and the RSCN playing the lone wolf, the government has chosen to go it alone, drawing in (to my knowledge) at least one ex-API specialist to help map new walking routes that follow none of the existing paths.

But how unseemly it all is! Rasoun is such a little place, in an unregarded corner of a much-overlooked country – does it merit a squabble? Aside from anything else, I wonder how sustainable three separately plotted, separately waymarked, separately guided (and, no doubt, separately charged) walking routes can be, in this tiny backwater.

The worst is that everybody is fighting about promoting walking and the enjoyment of nature! It’s such a simple idea: meet, talk, walk, for the benefit of all. Make contact through the physicality of walking on the land, and it becomes possible not just to share experience, but to compare experience. But if nobody can agree in Rasoun, what hope is there for the bigger picture?

Those who plough on regardless hoping or imagining that competing interests will just fade away are condemned to a life in denial. That applies in politics just as much as in business – or in building communities. Ideas are nothing without people. It seems that the Jerusalem Peacemakers – unlike almost everyone else – have realised that to bring about a desired goal (peace) you have to work with all the resources available to you (settlers, non-settlers, Palestinians inside and outside Israel, Jews, Muslims…). The Jordanian tourism authorities, if they wish to bring about the goal of sustainable rural development through tourism, should also be working with all the resources they have – which include, in this case, both the RSCN and the API. Even if the prospect of Israelis walking in the Rasoun hills upsets them, they should hold their noses and work to make it happen. Benefit may accrue – and ignoring the problem will not make it go away.