Ein Bokek, Israel

Mad (and bad) tourism news out of Israel, talking about a mammoth proposed development on their side of the Dead Sea, encompassing an unstated number of new hotels and spas. Read it and weep.

A couple of points.

The Dead Sea is collapsing. Because of the desperate shortage of water in the Middle East (Israel’s neighbour Jordan is one of the five driest countries in the world), the Dead Sea’s freshwater inflow has been dammed and underlying aquifers have been tapped beyond sustainable levels – not just by Israel, but by Jordan and, upstream, Syria too.

The Dead Sea surface is dropping by a metre a year. That’s a bit under an inch a week. Shoreline sinkholes are opening up because the ground is now so unstable. Hotels built on the beach 20 years ago are now marooned a mile from the water.

The most seductive plan to reverse the damage – the Red-Dead Canal – is challenged by environmentalists as too slow, too expensive and too uncertain. They say the most effective way to save the Dead Sea is to alter existing habits of unsustainable exploitation.

So up steps Israel with a hotel plan that is explicitly, and deliberately, exploitative.

The idea, so the article (presumably sourced from government PR) says, is to “emulate the spas and hotels on the [Jordanian] shore”. With the new Crowne Plaza (not yet open to the public), Jordan now has six Dead Sea hotels. At the Ein Bokek resort alone, Israel already has at least 14 hotels (I was once told 26 but that may have been an exaggeration), plus around half a dozen smaller establishments nearby – and that’s not counting the hotels at Ein Gedi just up the coast.

Kempinski Dead Sea, Jordan

If Jordan’s Dead Sea hotels lie “at the heart of [the country's] tourism success” – which is debatable, incidentally – it’s because they’re world-class, not because they’re huge (they’re not) or because there are lots of them (there aren’t).

The concrete tourist pen of Ein Bokek, by contrast, is horrible, not least because it doesn’t stand beside open water, but by one of the industrial evaporation ponds which extract minerals from Dead Sea water. Here’s a story about it.

If Israel really wants to take a leaf out of Jordan’s book, it should bulldoze Ein Bokek and start again.

The Dead Sea’s “barren hills”, blithely mentioned for asphalting in the article, may look barren to a big-city hotel developer, but are better characterised as a unique wilderness habitat worthy of conservation. Such a scheme could generate jobs, tourism dollars, sustainable socio-economic development and perhaps a whisper of global prestige.

Yet the Knesset had NIS850m (US$220m; £135m) burning a hole in its pocket – so it asked the Israeli public how to spend it.

As Henry Ford once famously remarked, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Mind you, if the Red-Dead Canal works and the Dead Sea starts filling up again, the whole miserable scheme could be underwater in twenty years. Nature always finds a way.

Once, travel was about putting yourself out there. You went to a new place, and you figured stuff out. You got things wrong. You paid too much. Maybe you carried a guidebook – but they were sketchy at best. Hand-drawn maps. Skimpy on the detail (the 1987 Lonely Planet guide covered Jordan and Syria in 200 pages: the current LP Jordan alone is 360 pages). Dodgy, pennypinching advice (“Carry a pocketful of Smash with you, so the first time it rains you get a free meal” – apocryphal line from an unspecified guidebook, as related to me by a veteran writer in the late 90s. He was joking. I think.).

Now, though, there’s an urgency in the air. An author friend recently sent in his updated chapter on Palma de Mallorca, only for the editor to return it because he hadn’t supplied a street address for the cathedral. Another friend, working on a Cotswolds app, was required to find every public wifi hotspot between Cheltenham and Oxford, with price where applicable. Another, in Tuscany, was told to supply phone numbers for every church.

27.175444,78.042096 – Taj Mahal, Taj Ganj, Agra (U.P.) 282 001, India

Then there are the geocodes. Rough Guides have abandoned – for now – their newly announced requirement for authors to supply geocodes for every named building, attraction, point of interest, hotel, restaurant, bar, shop, cow and haystack, after authors (I’ve been one for the last 15 years) jumped up and down and shouted a lot about copyright and workload and other stuff, but the requirement will no doubt resurface in some other form, sooner or later. Geocodes in NYC or NSW I can understand – they can be useful in a big city – but geocodes in the Jordanian desert? As part of ordinary guide content for people touring around? Put the damn phone away. Talk to the bedouin. Look at the road. If there is one.

If you think travel is a sequence of unconnected dots which need linking, knowing geocodes make perfect sense. But if you think travel is about people, local knowledge, local stories, landscapes, journeys and experiences, knowing geocodes is about as useful as knowing the Taj Mahal’s address.

But the impulse to overguide doesn’t stop there.

When is a price not a price?

Since Rough Guides started, in 1982, they’ve had a system of price codes for accommodation: the author draws up nine brackets relating to the price for a double room in high season (e.g. 1 Under $10; 2 $10-20; 3 $20-30; and so on) so that every hotel in the book is given a price code, indicating an approximate range. When you’re travelling you quickly establish that hotels in, say, the 3 or 4 brackets suit you, so your eye goes straight to them. Or you stick with 1s and 2s – or you splurge on a 9.

It was a rough guide – and it matched what travel is like. But if you have that system you HAVE to tell the reader what the price code means. Rough Guides took their eye off the ball. With tweak after design tweak they hid the info that explained the price code system. You had to read the whole book to know where it was. By the end it was squashed into the gutter of the inside back cover, between some corporate blurb and the photo credits. It forced you to keep flipping to and fro. So when Rough Guides went to focus groups (oh yes, publishers pay through the nose to find out what you think), they realised people had to flip to and fro. Nobody explained price codes, so readers didn’t understand them. What does 5 mean? Where’s the price?

As of this year, Rough Guides have abandoned price codes. Now they will – like Lonely Planet – list an actual price for every hotel. Good, eh? Progress?

“In the book”

Except most hotels don’t have an actual price. There are different rates depending on how you book – direct, through a local travel agent, through a travel agent at home, through an online booking system, and so on. Prices shift according to demand. And season. And how far in advance you book. Some hotels offer cut-price deals every weekend; others drop prices midweek. There may be a range of room types, at different prices on different days. And then, of course, this year’s price is out of date before it can even be published.

A single price is actually a lie. It looks like it’s pinpoint accurate, putting power in the hands of the consumer – and it lets the publisher boast about how great their book is – but it’s really hiding the truth, and it’s really misleading the reader. A range of prices would be more honest, more accurate and more informative. Something like, ooh, a price code would do the job really well.

Hoteliers, too, prefer price codes, because they know that the inevitable result of quoting a price to a guidebook writer is that, 12 or 18 months down the line (if they’re lucky; perhaps years in the future), some white-kneed foreigner will be standing in reception, stabbing his fat finger into a guidebook and demanding a room AT THAT EXACT PRICE and not a penny more “because it says so in the book”.

Need to know

Online updates, in one form or another, get around some of that – but which publisher is going to pay to have authors keying in updated prices for every hotel in every book, every six months? Apps go out of date too; it’s just, when you download them, it doesn’t feel that way. They feel permanently new. Another lie.

The awful truth is that PEOPLE DON’T NEED TO KNOW an exact price for a hotel; they just need to know roughly how much to expect, then they can check out the booking options for themselves. They don’t need to know phone numbers for all the museums in Yerevan. They don’t need their mass-market guidebook to Oman or Brazil to be quoting geocodes for every village (unless they’re on a serious offroading expedition, in which case they wouldn’t be buying the Rough Guide anyway). It’s a waste of everyone’s time.

One researcher can’t find every public hotspot in a single city, let alone an entire region – and even if they did, what value would that information have in 3 months, when it’s only 95% accurate? And 12 months, when it’s 75% right?

The gilded cage

Overguiding – turn-by-turn directions, precise information that isn’t precise, contact information for places nobody needs to contact, illusory prices – is a gilded cage. It’s like Google: apparently beneficent, actually evil. We’ve been seduced by it, imagining all this information makes us more powerful, more knowledgeable, more travel-savvy. In truth, it traps us, by cutting off the need to explore. It packages the world; it’s an attempt to eliminate strangeness that is doomed to fail, because travel is strange. What does travel mean – in Cheltenham, as in Kamchatka, as in your very own street – if not finding stuff out for yourself?

Newspapers and travel magazines do it too, with their relentless Top 10s and Best Ofs – gutting and filleting destinations to shield us from the horror of Getting Something Wrong. Eating an unremarkable meal. Sightseeing in a touristy part of town. Sleeping in an ordinary hotel. The shame.

But who’s kidding who, here? If overguiding is bad for readers, bad for writers, bad for travellers and bad for locals, why do publishers do it? Who benefits?

UPDATE: full text reproduced here

Laziness? I um’d and ah’d for a bit, then emailed her an idea for a story about a new hotel opening in East Jerusalem – in fact, the first new luxury hotel to open there in almost 50 years, the St George.

Luckily, she commissioned me – and the piece appeared in the paper today (subscribers only). She also took two more ideas from me. Thank you, Jane. Travel eds: please form an orderly queue. Travel hacks: Twitter works.

As for the story itself, I think it’s a cracker – how many hotels can claim to have been their city’s first new luxury property twice? Click here to view the article – or click on the embedded image to enlarge.

Libyans? At hotels in Amman?

When I got to Jordan I made a few phone calls. It seemed to me there was an untold story there. I was lucky enough to be able to discuss it with Jordan’s Minister of Tourism, Nayef Al Fayez, and the president of the Jordan Hotel Association, Michel Nazzal, who both kindly took time out of their schedules to meet me.

Then, with the help of the remarkable, and remarkably generous, Lina Ejeilat, editor-in-chief at Jordan’s 7iber.com, I managed to find and interview some of the Libyans receiving treatment in Amman’s Jordan Hospital.

This photo (above) shows Ali Muhammad Albusaifi, 24, who’d spent most of 2011 fighting Gaddafi’s forces and was now recuperating from leg injuries. “I want to keep on fighting. I just don’t know who,” he told me.

This photo (above) is of his friend Muftah Al Sadeq Belhaish, 23, a unit commander from the Jabal Nafusa mountains of western Libya, who’d been shot through the shoulder early in the conflict but had never received proper treatment, and had fought on for another 9 months.

Lina and I talked to them (and other patients) for some time. What these young men went through doesn’t bear thinking about. Their courage and resilience is exceptional.

I wrote a script for BBC radio’s From Our Own Correspondent.

The item aired on Radio 4 in the UK on 26th January - click here for my bit – and globally on the BBC World Service one day later. I am pasting the transcript below. I hope you like it.

For hoteliers in the Jordanian capital Amman, January can be miserable. It’s the lowest of low seasons for Western tourists, who prefer the temperate months of spring and autumn. And long-stay Arab tourists, who escape the heat of the Gulf to spend cooler summer holidays near the Med, won’t arrive for another six months.

Yet this week, even in the depths of winter, the smiles are broad all across Jordan’s hospitality sector, thanks to an unexpected Libyan windfall.

Amman is a highland city. When I drove in from the airport it was not so much raining as condensing: the misty air was grey and saturated, and it was bitter cold, high above sea level amid precipitous urban hills.

The lobby of my hotel was steamy and crowded with pretty scruffy-looking characters, lounging in tracksuits on the sleek, ultra-modern furniture, arguing in an accented Arabic I couldn’t place.

“We are suffering a bit,” hotel manager Ibrahim Karajeh told me. “These Libyans are not well educated and they talk loudly – but they’re making good revenue. This is very low season for us but I’m having to turn business away.”

Jordan was a key Arab ally for Libya’s rebel armies during last year’s revolution, supplying logistical and military aid. Now, it seems, payback time has come. Lacking both hospital infrastructure and medical expertise, post-war Libya is flying thousands of its citizens abroad for treatment, including at Jordanian hospitals, widely regarded as the best in the Middle East. Medical bills, lodging and three meals a day are being paid for by Libya’s new government, the National Transitional Council. Officials tour Amman weekly, settling hotel and hospital bills in cash – and handing out $300 (roughly £190) per person per week as pocket money.

The arrangement began last summer, for fighters who had been seriously injured in combat – but the trickle has become a flood since the death of Colonel Gaddafi three months ago.

I sat in on a discussion between Michel Nazzal, president of the Jordan Hotel Association, and Nayef Al Fayez, Jordan’s Minister of Tourism. Every three-, four- and five-star hotel in the capital is full. 26 planes arrived last week from Libya. Amman, they told me, is hosting 14,000 Libyans.

But the minister is not complaining. “We need them!” he said, with a genial smile. “It’s good for business.”

That’s undeniable. I would estimate Libya is pumping around £10m ($15m) a week into the Jordanian retail economy. That excludes income from hospital bills, which could also be substantial.

In a modest, resource-poor country which saw a 40% drop in tourism last year, that’s no small windfall. According to hotelier Charl Twal, the Libyans are “saving Amman”.

Across town in the private, 300-bed Jordan Hospital, administrator Amany Khatab told me since November they’d treated 465 Libyans as inpatients – but many more as outpatients. “Minor cases would have surgery during the day,” she explained, “then go back to the hotel, and return next morning.”

She walked me along broad, brightly lit corridors, spotless and quiet. Doctors smiled in greeting.

At bed 128 on the 1st floor, 62-year-old Saleh Muhammad Suleiman passed a tired hand over a white beard. He’d arrived three weeks earlier from his home in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk for treatment for chronic hypertension. “We were relying on foreign doctors,” he told me. “But they all went home during the war.”

Two of Suleiman’s sons fought against Gaddafi. “Libya has a good future,” he said, gesturing with his cannulated right hand. “The people running the government are young. They know what is best.”

On another corridor, Ali Muhammad Albusaifi was on crutches. His leg had been fractured in Zawiya, early in the fighting. Then he’d fought in Zintan, before spending the summer smuggling weapons into government-held Tripoli. “We’d come in at night,” the 24-year-old told me, “bringing guns in rubbish bins or under cars.”

Then, in October, in Bani Walid, his convoy had taken a direct hit. He’d been thrown high in the air, landing on rocks, breaking his nose and teeth, damaging his hearing and tearing muscles in both legs.

“It’s a fantastic feeling,” he said, with a hollow-eyed smile. “But we never imagined any of this before.”

What had life been like under Gaddafi, I asked.

“I don’t want to rewind,” he said, gazing at the floor. “We have strong national bonds –” and he twined his fingers together to demonstrate. Then he shrugged angrily, a mixed-up young man, who’d already seen too much violence in his life.

With pathos, and some despair, he added, “I want to keep on fighting. I just don’t know who.”

Even though Libya is successfully outsourcing treatment, healing, it seems, must start at home.

I won’t blather on, since Andrew’s already set up a blog devoted to the book, and is posting regularly – lovely stuff. Find it at grandhotelsegypt.com.

It’s published by the American University in Cairo Press and is available in real bookshops as well as Amazon and elsewhere. I’ve already put my name down for a copy.

David’s post is here, but also read the comments – they’re a fascinating glimpse into the travel blogging mindset.

After what I wrote there, Nathan Midgley followed up with this. Then a business journalist writing about the Visit Jordan campaign emailed me for my opinion. I thought I’d lay things out here.

Visit Jordan’s strategy has considerable merit.

Here are some sweeping generalisations for you. Jordan is a difficult destination. It’s hot and dusty, and a bit underdeveloped. It’s in a war zone. Not many people have been there – word of mouth doesn’t yield much info. You have to be tough to get around, and you have to like scrambling over ancient ruins, cuz there isn’t much else. The people are nice enough, but it’s not exactly a Land of Smiles. Women need to watch out. Tread carefully around cultural issues – people are easily offended. And watch your wallet.

Rubbish, isn’t it? But that’s where I think ordinary folk are coming from. They simply don’t know. For years, I’ve been bellyaching about the lack of information out there on Jordan.

So a campaign which delivers a large quantity of first-hand experiences, in text, pictures and video, to an audience already primed & softened up to the delights of travel makes sense. Over a year you could realistically expect mainstream media around the world to run perhaps 30 separate print features on travel to Jordan in total. Maybe 50. That’s a lot of eyeballs, sure, but it’s also a lot of dead ends. Bloggers can deliver hundreds of posts, as well as FB & Twitter coverage, that – I’m guessing – have way more trickle-down impact than MSM. By plugging closely into a SM-savvy market, you could potentially spark the holy grail for every tourist board – Positive Word of Mouth Worldwide – without having to spend millions on Incredible India branding or sumptuous Malaysia Truly Asia ads.

Nayef Al Fayez – former director of the Jordan Tourism Board (i.e. the overseas promotional arm) and now Minister of Tourism – is a smart guy. He travels constantly. He listens to people. He knows how Jordan is seen around the world.

And he knows that whereas half of Jordan’s tourism is package holidays booked through a tour operator, that leaves half which is effectively independent and unmeasurable. For a DMO to be able to talk directly to consumers and be believed has inestimable value.

So, aside from the danger of firehosing the web with Jordan content rather than dripfeeding under controlled conditions, JTB’s strategy is basically sound. The problems come, I’m afraid, from the bloggers.

Much has been made of the fact that blogging shatters the old journalism model, by allowing writers to be their own publishers – Alastair McKenzie, for instance, makes that point here.

That’s power – a lot of it. Blogs which attract tens of thousands of visitors, and bloggers who have tens of thousands of followers on Twitter and/or Facebook, are as powerful as publishers. That’s why PRs and DMOs (and advertisers) are wooing them.

But they’re unedited. Unregulated. Untrained. Unqualified. Unaccountable.

That can be positive. They can publish things mainstream media wouldn’t touch – wacky ideas, marginal destinations, tangential encounters. But, let’s face it, they don’t. A handful of notable exceptions aside, travel bloggers just churn out the same old crud. They swan around like wide-eyed first-timers. There’s no insight. There’s no pre-trip research. There’s no post-trip reflection (heaven forbid: publish and move on). There’s no understanding of the economic strategies which brought them to the destination. There’s no sense of perspective. To put it bluntly, there’s no journalism. It’s all just words, words, words. Me, me, me. So we end up with the immortal “Jordan is the Canada of the Middle East“.

As David Whitley so memorably said, the last thing the web needs is more stuff on it.

Because they don’t know any different, bloggers are putty in the hands of the PRs…and it’s a short distance from that to the iambassador marketing programme embraced by Visit Jordan, and queried by Jeremy Head.

JTB’s tactics have let its strategy down. Quantity of material is the driving force, but quality has been underestimated. Quality really matters, if Jordan is to break out of its standard historical/cultural package tourism model and diversify into potentially lucrative niche markets. And, incidentally, those markets go beyond tourism: they have the ability to slowly – but clearly – define Jordan’s uniqueness to the world. This is soft power. It’s absolutely vital to the national interest.

But that won’t come if the country spends money hosting people who can only deliver “Jordan is the Canada of the Middle East”, regardless of how big the audience for that message is.

Bloggers are in a uniquely privileged position. Most of them, though, still view travel as holiday, rather than work, and they view themselves as being in a community rather than as being communicators. That’s not good enough. With power comes responsibility. Responsibility to the destination, sure, but above all to the readership. Show us something new.

Be better.

Disclaimer: In the last 12 months I went twice to Jordan. In the three years before that I was there 7 times. I’ll be there 3 or 4 times in 2012. Sometimes I’m hosted by the tourist board, sometimes I’m not. If you think that means I’m jealous because I wasn’t invited to take part in the 2011 blogger programme (thank heavens), good for you.

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

Which makes me wonder why this doesn’t happen more around the Middle East. There was this idea for the Falafel Bus, running on a regular hop-on-hop-off route between points of touristic interest in Israel, Jordan and Egypt – but, as I heard from a hostel owner in Jerusalem a couple of weeks ago, it’s already folded after less than three months. I’m not surprised. Awful, awful name, transparently attempting to raise a smile by defining what unites Israel and its neighbours – which is a very Israeli mindset, incidentally: you don’t find Jordanians or Egyptians hunting for warm and fuzzy points of cultural commonality with Israel. Funny that.

But the idea itself was all wrong – too big, too complicated, too expensive – and if the accuracy of the truly execrable map is anything to go by, completely unreliable to boot.

But that’s not to say smaller-style initiatives couldn’t work. I was just in Palestine. A tourist bus route that went from Bethlehem checkpoint to Bethlehem, Jericho, Taybeh, Ramallah and back to Qalandia could potentially draw independent travellers out of Jerusalem to see more of the West Bank. It would save on taxis, for sure.

There was talk in Nazareth of a private-sector initiative emerging to encourage tourists to visit Jenin, perhaps as part of a joint hotel package in both cities. But that would be expensive. Independent travel, with community-run buses reliably linking either side of the Jalameh checkpoint, perhaps also serving the superb ancient site of Sebastia nearby, would be more attractive to more people.

And Jordan is, frankly, crying out for something like this. A friend I know recently made enquiries about starting a tourist bus circuit around Jordan to entice independent travellers arriving by easyJet – to no avail: the quantity of paperwork and capital funds required to obtain a commercial permit put him off.

The only example I’m aware of is run by entrepreneur Charl Al-Twal, owner of the (excellent) 3-star Mariam Hotel in Madaba. For some years now he’s offered a private bus for tourists between Madaba and Petra along the scenic King’s Highway – a long, slow route avoided by normal buses, which all follow the quicker but duller Desert Highway further east.

But public transport around Jordan to sites of tourist interest is virtually non-existent – major UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as Umm Ar-Rasas, Quseir Amra and Wadi Rum, are effectively impossible to reach unless you’re on a tour or have private transport.

The trouble is Jordanians – and most tourists to Jordan, who come from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf countries – aren’t interested in visiting Quseir Amra. Or Wadi Rum. And nobody is willing to go out on a limb to start a round-Jordan bus service anyway, in the hope that vivid marketing and a bit of PR will create a demand. So Amra (and others) remain desperately under-visited, Jordanian tourism remains stuck in a rut of seven-day package tours visiting all the same places, and innovation of Jordan’s national tourism product remains largely elusive. Someone, somewhere has to bite the bullet.

Looks like they’re trying in post-revolutionary South Sinai.

The lobby

I was in Jeddah recently, and enjoyed a repeat stay at the Red Sea Palace Hotel.

Built in 1959, and last renovated almost thirty years ago, this was for ages the only luxury hotel in the city (perhaps the whole country? The Khozama in Riyadh didn’t appear until 1978). No longer five stars – and of course overtaken by more luxurious properties – it’s still an atmospheric and upmarket place to stay, with an enticingly home-grown air of old-fashioned glamour. Nobody would call it pretty, and the little lagoon it overlooks is flat and a bit stagnant, but therein lies the charm. Unstudied, you could call it.

I chatted to some of the staff. The night manager told me he virtually grew up in the hotel: he remembers playing in the lobby as a boy, while his dad was working on reception.

It also knocks Jeddah’s phalanx of super-luxe hotels into a cocked hat for its location, plumb on the edge of the old quarter, perhaps ten minutes’ walk from one of the biggest and most absorbing souks in Arabia.

But while I was there I learnt the end was nigh. The Red Sea Palace was about to be taken over by IHG to become a Holiday Inn (even though HI already have a property nearby). The staff were unsure what the future held.

If IHG have got any sense, they’ll keep the corporate branding to a minimum, give the rooms a bit of a spruce (rewiring might be good) but otherwise leave well alone. People who simply want a faceless business hotel have plenty of choice in Jeddah. Charm, old-fashioned service and a sense of history are in desperately short supply. But, as you can imagine, no one’s holding their breath. So much for heritage.

Jeddah, though, still grabs you. Taxi drivers in other cities put their feet up on a break; here, they put their feet up while working.

And then there’s the spiritual element: there aren’t many cities in the world where buying a temporary SIM card amounts to an act of worship.

Jeddah is also home to the legendary fried chicken restaurant chain Al-Baik, with a gut-busting 31 outlets across the city. (By comparison, Birmingham – a similarly sized city –has a mere 24 KFCs.)

But you’re not in Kansas anymore. People want Al-Baik chicken. They really want it. This (below) is what happens in the thirty seconds after opening time – and it’s not a one-off: I’ve seen the same thing myself. Short YouTube video:

Buying fried chicken as authentic cultural travel experience. It’s good, too – hot, crispy, tender – but most of the satisfaction comes down to fight or flight. You have to go into caveman-hunter mode, jostling in line amid the sweat and the grunts, waving your arms, pushing to the front, eyes on the prize, emerging triumphant with your paper bag, then skulking away to tear lumps of steaming meat off the bone with your teeth. Rooooargh.

I love my job.

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.

Now, up steps Jordan – a poor country with few natural resources and a faltering economy. 85% of it is arid. Its once-thick forests were nearly all chopped down a hundred years ago to build the Hejaz Railway – which is now, itself, defunct. Today only 1% of Jordan’s land remains forested, mostly in the north around the highland market town of Ajloun (pictured here).

Ajloun is one of Jordan’s poorest regions, and has been the focus of rural development efforts for a decade. There are signs of success. A nature reserve, established on a remote hilltop, has proved popular, and has sparked the growth of village handicraft projects and community-led rural tourism. Nearby, campaigns by the environmental lobby managed to alter plans for a sprawling hotel complex in the midst of the forest.

Now, the government has announced plans to uproot hundreds of trees across a 300-acre site in the middle of Bergesh Forest in order to build a military academy. This represents a climb-down after the outcry at their initial plans to uproot thousands.

But the policy nonetheless appears to be illegal – and the nature lobby (no hippies: these are respected scientists and sober policy-makers with the ear of ministers) have consequently withdrawn their participation in an environmental assessment, which seems set to be a whitewash before it begins.

What’s going on? With vast expanses of empty land on which to build, why is Jordan so keen to fell its tiny acreage of surviving trees? Without wishing to be simplistic – and presuming, of course, that there is no element of corruption involved – could it be because the directors of planning are city people, who feel a bit lost when confronted by blank space on a map?

Jordan has a history of this. In 1985, when a new highway was being built east out of Amman, the planners were faced by virtually limitless open desert. Yet they plotted a dot-to-dot route which linked two ancient sites – just about the only two ancient sites out there. Why? Presumably because, well, there was nothing else on the map. And maybe because they were following ancient pre-existing tracks between desert wells. But lorries don’t need to stop for water every 50km.

The result is that these two magnificent 8th-century ‘desert castles’ – Qasr Harraneh and Qasr Amra, the latter a UNESCO World Heritage Site – now have a major highway rumbling directly past their walls, along with lines of pylons and other service infrastructure, effectively eliminating any sense of history or traditional heritage. Calls to rebuild the highway a mile or two away, with feeder roads to the ancient sites, have so far fallen on deaf ears.

Now we have the same kind of thinking again. If you’re Russia, Germany, Nicaragua or Thailand, perhaps chopping down a small forest to build a military base could be justified. If you’re Jordan, and you’re proposing to chop down virtually the only forest you’ve got left in the entire country simply because, well, there it is, it makes no sense whatsoever. Not economically, not militarily, not socially, and certainly not environmentally.

Who is advising the government – that is, His Majesty the King – to go ahead with this?

Is Jordan’s terrible blight – short-term expedience causing long-term degradation – about to recur at Bergesh?

I just saw this post at WorldNomads.com, written by Megan Czisz, about going “off the beaten path” (or track!) in Jordan. Megan defines this as Amman, roast chicken, the King’s Highway, Dana, Petra and Wadi Rum. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that, but it is kinda remarkable how the beaten track can magically become off the beaten track in the fervid world of travel blogging.

Greater travel bloggers than I might now branch off into a thoughtful disquisition on themes of familiarity and exoticism in travel and travel writing. Me? I’m going to force you to watch my holiday snaps instead, in the vain – yet, truthfully, altruistic – hope that people doing a search for “Off The Beaten Track in Jordan” don’t come up with Petra and falafel sandwiches and think that’s it.

There’s not much rhyme or reason to these pics. I’ve compressed them a lot (so forgive the pixellation, but please don’t steal them anyway) and I’m not cramming links in either. For more info on Jordan, go and buy a decent guidebook.

Amman isn’t off the beaten track, but its beauty isn’t widely appreciated. This (above) is a snap which says nothing much about anything, but which has got a whiff of atmosphere to it, at least.

As does this.

And this (above) is one of the city’s loveliest cafés, but I’m not going to tell you its name. Since we were mentioning street food, this guy (below) is most definitely ON the beaten track, and he knows it too…

Moving on, there aren’t many places where this happens…

That (above) is Irbid – visual proof that a kindly old fluffy-bearded man in the sky really does beam down on Jordan.

A gentle scene – except those hills behind are the Golan Heights, Syrian territory annexed by Israel. Here’s another view, from above…

That’s the Sea of Galilee behind the bougainvillea. To get to (or from) that terrace, you drive on one of my favourite roads…

It’s pretty quiet. Here’s another place that’s pretty quiet:

That’s the River Jordan. Yes, the River Jordan. It’s no Amazon. When she stands up, the water reaches her knees. The other bank, by the way, is Palestine – the middle of the river is the international border. While we’re on a biblical theme…

Up there, on top, is where Salome danced the dance of the seven veils for old King Herod, and where John the Baptist was separated from his head. Hardly anyone goes there now.

Just a couple of nice landscapes, both from northern Jordan, the sort of place where a boy can sit in a wheelbarrow, pick his nose and call it a good day’s work.

Thinking of curves, how did those 7th-century architects down in the desert get bricks to curve like this?

Silhouettes do nice things sometimes. Amazing how Jordan seems to inspire scenic nose-picking though.

That pic (above) is in Aqaba on the Red Sea coast, a place which is now trying desperately to get on the beaten track, after years off it. Lots of fancy hotels and upmarket construction. But still a touch of atmosphere…

Balls.

Of handmade olive-oil soap, that is.

At the end of a hard day, there’s always the sunset…

It’s not bad looking this way either.

And even better from this side.

Given a choice, dromedaries (below) always make their own beaten tracks…

And as for whether Jordan is safe to visit or not, best do what the guy says, OK?