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.

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.

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:

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.

The walk has been developed by Anna Dintaman and David Landis – lovely people, who I met and walked with in southern Israel last year. The Jesus Trail has been totally self-motivated: they’ve plotted it, waymarked it, GPS’d it and now they’ve just published a map and guidebook to the whole trail. (Disclosure: they very kindly sent me an unrequested free copy, not so’s I could blog about it but just because! I’m blogging because I like it…)

I’ve only had a quick skim through, but it seems excellent to me – full colour, loads of maps, route plans, detailed walking info – but also loads of insight. Anna and David live in Nazareth, at one end of the trail, and clearly know Israeli culture and Palestinian culture very well.

It’s an incredible achievement, to have put this amount of personal time, energy and resources into opening up ways for ordinary visitors to access village culture. And, despite the trail’s name, it’s up to you whether you want to also buy into the religious motivations for walking these particular routes or not. Like Abraham’s Path, like the St Paul Trail, the point is to put your feet on the ground. Anything that encourages grassroots travel and personal encounters in a place like the Middle East, so smothered with negative images, is a good thing. Buy the book!

It was a great presentation. Kate is very passionate about discovering and preserving these walking routes through the hills, spending thousands (from her own pocket) on waymarking and maintenance, applying herself for EU funding, dealing directly with the Turkish tourism authorities to engage them in developing these old roads – and, by her own account, making some headway in introducing the idea of long-distance walking on heritage trails to Turks themselves: though originally from the UK, she is now a Turkish citizen. She self-publishes her own guidebooks – they are the most authoritative sources on these routes – and leads regular tours.

One thing she happened to bark out in response to a question from the audience stopped me in my tracks. In 20 or 30 years, she said, when coastal tourism is threatened by climate change or finished altogether because of rising sea levels (or economic collapse), community-based walking and nature tourism will still be thriving. “Five-star tourism is a blip,” were her words.

What a thought. There’s so much money wrapped up in luxury tourism – both in the investment, but also in the wider industry which supports it – that it can be hard to see past it. When you’re in the middle of the whirlwind, either reporting on hotels and PR-driven tourism initiatives or aspiring to the kind of lifestyle where a stay in a luxury resort is something to be desired, it all feels so exciting, so now.

That’s the point, of course.

But Kate is right. ’Going on holiday’ – the idea of travel as mass relaxation, which we (in the West, at least) spend so much time, energy and money pursuing – was unknown a century ago.

And the notion of spending excessive amounts of money to play at a life of luxury within an opulent tourism complex under sunny skies far from home is even newer – perhaps less than 25 or 30 years old.

I don’t want to get too Alain de Botton-ish about this, but what Kate is doing – and many others involved in grassroots, sustainable tourism worldwide – mirrors how people have always ‘travelled’: with sensitivity, emotionally invested, on foot. For the entire history of humanity up until a few decades ago, travel was dangerous, unknowable and prohibitively expensive. It’s seductive to think that they way we do things now is the way things have always been – but of course that’s not true. Travel for pleasure is a very 20th-century thing; nothing says that it will last.

If fashions change and, some day, advancing technology renders five-star hotels obsolete or laughable (think of holiday camps, charabancs and “port out, starboard home”), walking will still be there.

It’s how we get about.

Martyrs' Statue, Beirut

Really enjoyed my return visit to Beirut earlier this month. I don’t really like cities, but Beirut is always memorable.

At the time I tweeted: “Beirut is a great place to try & figure out how cities self-perpetuate (and prosper) despite lacking sane central authority.” That’s what it felt like: more than any other city I know, Beirut feels like a collection of individuals thrown into the mix together and jostling along working things out day by day. To a know-nothing journalist, floating along as an outsider for a few days, I got no sense of collective endeavour or sense of community. It felt directionless – and that was compounded by the megalopolitan redevelopment of the downtown area, where vast areas of what was central Beirut – damaged beyond repair in the civil war – have been bought up by the Solidere corporation, bulldozed and are still in the process of being redeveloped for upscale residential and business use. They form a ghost town of quiet and luxury amid the rambling disorder of the city all around.

To get a handle on how things have changed since I was last here, several years ago, I joined Be Beirut – the city’s only guided walking tour (and the only such initiative anywhere in the Middle East, to my knowledge). I loved it. Led by Ronnie Chatah, we walked for five hours through West Beirut to the shot-up Holiday Inn, then into the Solidere’s ‘central district’ to end, poignantly, at the small garden dedicated to Lebanese journalist Samir Kassir. Ronnie really knows his stuff: his explanations at various stops were fascinating, from tales of the old civil-war days around the cafes and cinemas of Hamra, to the Armenian Haigazian University, the Magen Avraham synagogue (currently under restoration), the Hariri-built Al-Amin Mosque – all very engaging.

Two small criticisms: five hours is an hour too long, and since the company does a separate culinary walk around Gemmayzeh and Achrafieh, our tour did not go into East Beirut at all – a serious omission. That aside, this was a perfect reintroduction to what was, for me, a half-remembered city. (And, in case you were wondering, this is not a sponsored endorsement: even though I was on assignment I paid my own hard-earned cash to join the tour…)

More from me on Beirut later.

Yamaan Safady

Back in June I blogged about how a tour-guide friend from Jordan, Yamaan Safady, had been shortlisted for a major award – the Paul Morrison Guide Awards 2009, run by Wanderlust magazine in the UK.

I was at the awards ceremony last night, at London’s Royal Geographical Society, and I can report that Yamaan took the Silver Award – a landmark achievement that confirms him as the top guide in Jordan, and one of the best in the world. Hearty congratulations to him, to Tejendra Singh, who took the Bronze Award, and to Diego Torres, who took Gold.

Yamaan also got the biggest laugh of the night. All three guides were asked by Wanderlust editor Dan Linstead to say what their clients most often wanted to know during a trip. The others said that guests asked how long they had been guiding, or which was their favourite destination. Yamaan just said “Are you married?” Brilliant.

I wish him every success. He says he wants to use his £2500 prize to qualify as an International Mountain Leader, which would make him the first Jordanian to do so and enable him to represent his country abroad. “This will allow me to lead hiking groups all over the world and promote my beautiful country – a dream come true!”

Good for you, Yamaan.

I went expecting milky tea and earnest vicars – and instead, in a quiet moment sitting at the back, glimpsed the future of tourism.

The revelation came courtesy of Daniel Adamson, former trekking guide for ATG Oxford, now based in Beirut as Director of Communications for the Abraham Path (and just about the least stereotypical PR you could ever meet; sorry PRs). This is how he explained it.

Web 1.0 was where a webmaster presented a site for ‘consumption’ by individuals; it was, if you like, a mediated experience, where end-users had little or no say in what was presented. They browsed. This is still mostly how TV, radio and newspapers operate (and long may it continue; it has a purpose).

Web 2.0, on the other hand – as Wikipedia defines it – “refers to a second generation of web development and design that facilitates communication, information sharing, interoperability and collaboration”. Design creativity flows to and fro between webmaster and ‘consumer’, ideas are shared and websites are no longer shop-windows, developing, instead, into meeting-places. There’s a nice visualization of the difference here at Sizlopedia.com.

The concept is exemplified by Facebook, Twitter, Flickr – websites which create nothing but which serve at platforms where individuals can meet and create on their own terms.

Tourism remains stuck in a 1.0 mindset. Most travellers, most of the time, get a mediated experience of their destination – variations on the well-worn theme of the 1970s-style package holiday, where you pay someone on your local high street (or your computer screen) to sort the whole thing out for you. This ‘expert’ tour operator then shepherds you – and a bunch of other people – from the airport to the destination and back again. The tour operator acts as webmaster, while their customers browse pre-selected attractions with impotent docility. Destinations become mere shop-windows.

What the Abraham Path Initiative is trying to do is not construct a path, or develop tourism, or act as guide or tour operator. They want to be a platform, upon which individuals can create their own experience of these destinations. They are network facilitators, trying to establish a system within which travel can return to being a means by which people can meet other people, unmediated by ‘experts’.

Tourism 2.0 is scary – like Web 2.0 is scary – because it highlights the fact that you will only get out of your holiday what you are prepared to put into it. You create your own experience, and you meet a whole bunch of unexpected people and challenges along the way. The end is likely to be different from how you imagined… if you ever reach the end; Tourism 2.0 begins to erase the differences between ‘home’ and ‘destination’.

Tourism 2.0 also means travel can finally lose its Noughties’ laziness. A journey can become a journey again.

Lots of people will prefer the 1.0 model: tour operators and ground agents still have a long and lucrative life ahead.

And, of course, truly independent travellers – who do their own research and make their own decisions – will thrive, as they always have done (and always will).

But those travellers who fall between the two – disliking the commercialism of the travel industry, but seeking some structure, theme or direction for their journey – finally have a model to aspire to, and to develop on their own terms. Lots of 1.0 operators have been trying to find them, dreaming up specialist small-group low-impact tours, voluntourism and all sorts of niche products. But it’s all still 1.0. And, I’m afraid, it all rubs me up the wrong way.

The Abraham Path are breaking new ground – literally and metaphorically. I won’t blether on any more but I had an exciting day, imagining the possibilities for Tourism 2.0.

But I’m only a journalist – what do travel professionals think of this? Am I being idealistic, or is there the nugget of a genuine innovation here? The economics of creating a Tourism 2.0 platform are not easy to pin down – has anyone got any ideas? Love to hear your thoughts.

Fantastic news! Yamaan is a great guy, and he knows Jordan’s backcountry like nobody else. Looking forward to the awards ceremony in October…

UPDATE (12 Sept 09): Check out this fantastic 4min video, uploaded yesterday to YouTube, in support of Yamaan’s nomination…

UPDATE (14 Oct 09): Click here to find out how Yamaan did…

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.