📸 Photography sickmint79 takes you to jordan

[sickmint79]

i believe due to inflation, business flights ex-cairo have become pretty good deals. a cairo to chicago round trip flight on british airways i originally priced at 1400 i ultimately had to wait and book for 1800. i have another flight upon return there to get back to thailand, then return to cairo, on royal jordanian for 1050 (in business). due to this i decided to pop up here and explore a part of the world i haven't visited before, and to kind of make cairo like a virtual positional airport for myself. so at the moment, i'll be able to price out my next work trip, vacation trip, or trip back home from both bangkok as well as cairo.

this did involve me taking a positional trip up to the region. so i have a jordan half working/half vaca itinerary, and an egypt vaca itinerary, before i go home for the holidays. so positioning up to cairo from thailand, i flew from phuket to doha to amman on qatar airlines. these were originally both 787-8 QR flights. both have just one cabin, which in long haul qatar calls business, in short haul it calls first. this 1. can sometimes make it a pain to price and 2. means i get access to the fancy qatar first class lounge. qatar actually does have a real separate first class, on their a380s only. also my second flight got switched to an a350-9 old/non-q suites config. i think this is a sweet spot booking of only 40k AA miles and $60.70 in taxes and fees.

the cheapest i can find any business class hkt-amm is $1493 on less cool planes, on qatar it is $2290. this is off season/winter pricing plus with the turmoil next door in israel plenty of people canceled their plans too. if i use 2290, then (2290-60.70) * 100 / 40000 = 5.57 cents per mile redemption value. the points guy currently values AA points at 1.5 cents per mile, i personally try to miiiinimallllyyyy get 2 cents, but i really don't like that.

started leaving my place saying goodbye to some cats (mama and son) and taking a speedboat to phuket. it was a 90 min ride and about halfway stopped at the phi phi islands. although i live near both, i never go to either. had some phuket thai which included a mango salad, which i haven't had for some time, and like more than the more famous papaya salad. i think mango is generally more of a northern thai one, and i'm not sure if anywhere on my island does it. other dish is laab gai, although it wasn't very spicy, they definitely gave me the white version.

the lounges at phuket are lame, so we will skip talking about them and get on my bird. i'd estimate the cabin flew eventually at around 50-60% full.

the amenity kit included socks, which i always use minimally from it, but qatar did not hand out jammies. not sure if you have to ask, or if they just don't do it on a day flight, or what. the amenity kit was also just in a box. i had 3 with me from other airlines that i use to store cameras and stuff. i have even more back in my room. they can be cool and useful. big sad that i did 2 qatar flights and got 0 cool bags. the black one here has a different camera and is from american. i got a lime mint drink before takeoff, surprisingly they did not serve arabic coffee and a date, which is common for ME airlines.

i ate a fuckton of food because that is how i roll. here is the fuckton. i'll note i control myself in my daily routine, but on fancy flights and "free" food, i just stuff it all down the hole. bread and some kind of amuse bouche. i had some kind of spicy lemon oil i picked for the bread too, although don't think i'd do it again. did a chili oil on the second flight.

roasted tomato soup

classic arabic mezze

chicken with saffron cream and gnocchi. i was between this and a massaman curry with beef (thai) which i was def curious about but i just had massaman the prior day.

cheese plate

chocolate tart with mango and passion fruit

leaving thailand

watched some movies, got some departure chocolates, didn't make it off the plane with them

doha has a new attraction in part of their terminal c "the garden" - supposedly it rivals the jewel at changi (singapore) which has a huge indoor waterfall and is a large mall area. i have not had a layover long enough through SIN to go visit it and i haven't seen it. i thought doha's area would be larger than it was. it was nice and pretty nonetheless and you could definitely spend your layover here happily, although i of course had to go eat a lot more food. anyway some airport pics, starting with the garden.

it was here i also realized i needed to do some shopping. i was going to be moving around constantly over the next 3 weeks, usually with my shit at a hotel or more often in a car, whether my rental or a tour guide's car. i needed to carry around shit but couldn't wear my backpack because it is heavy and full of shit. so i went about trying to price out some kind of small bag. ended up between fanny packs essentially or some kind of small shoulder tote. went with the fanny pack as i could also wear it over shoulder and tighter so it wouldn't be flopping around if i was fucking about. got a $47 adidas one. a hugo boss one was $107. an armani leather tote was $417 with "60% off" for me. this thing is getting tugged around the dessert and (oops) i've accidentally already dragged it in a parking lot today so glad i went with the cheap fella.

there's at least 4 of these in DOH in different places. they are actually all different rigs too. i didn't try any as i had food to eat.

this bear is well known at the airport. i flew through here once before, in 2014 iirc. he was there. i also exited the airport for an overnight as the marriott next to it was only 10k points for a stay.

this is the older business lounge. i tried some things that looked appealing.

i went to the newer lounge, it had a lot of nice looking desserts spread out, although i didn't eat anything there. i took video but no pics apparently. since my next leg was considered first class, i went to that lounge to nom. they didn't want me to video there so i have much less. also 'no video' seems to generally be 'no cameras' which seems to also generally be 'no cameras other than your phone'. in any case, i went here and ate.

i was amused by this woman's nothing but LV as i sat with my adidas purchase and lols about the armani price.

she probably looked over at me in shorts and a t-shirt and had lols about them letting the riffraff in these days. bread and various spreads for it.

some kind of seared wagyu beef starter

hot mezze, was quite tasty

salmon

the trick for getting 2 desserts and not overtly being an asshole is you ask which one you should try of your two favorites, which will often be met with why don't you try both? they actually ran out of the chocolate torte i wanted. poached pear with cake and ice cream next to a petit four instead of the tort.

i walked around a while after this and explored the airport. i came back later but not a ton later to do afternoon tea. which i never do but it's free and i'm here in first class so let's do it. i didn't eat all of this. just most of it. sandwich course then pasty then desserts? or however it is arranged? i mean the top is all desserts anyway. by this time the chocolate torte had been made and stocked back up, i saw some other people get it. it looked good.

i asked for a quiet room, but the time to do that was when i went for my walk. the lounge was pretty dead then and i would have scored one. by this time they were all taken. this is basically a bedroom. i could have used it to catch up on some sleep.

the lounge also has a spa and jacuzzi. i did not use. not sure if they cost extra, i think the spa does. the new business class lounge has a gym, free to visitors, but it was not yet open. the airport spa includes access to a legit pool and pretty legit gym, but it was $50 and i needed a lot more sleep than gainz, even though it would have been nice to direct all this food toward building one strand of new muscle instead of 5 pounds of new flab. alas i just slumped into some chairs in a quieter area and tried to rest.

maxed out pics here i'll have to post more on a follow up, although i need to do dinner at the hotel i'm at now else i think i'll run severely low on options very quickly. so more to come. i mean more food, but eventually i actually you know, get to jordan. don't worry i found some more cats

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[Mook]

MORE PICS. I want to see the culture.

 

[cdh027]

Living like a fucking king.

 

[Pro Stock John]

Great pics, food looks awesome.

 

[CMNTMXR57]

I was gonna say, fucking baller. Me being the extremely picky eater, wouldn't have touched 90% of that.

Did you go to the mandatory Petra?

 

[IZZy]

Yessssssss I want to go to that part of the world soon, maybe you are on to something as right now is probably the cheapest it’s gonna be lolz

 

[SpeedSpeak2me]

I was gonna say, fucking baller. Me being the extremely picky eater, wouldn't have touched 90% of that.

Did you go to the mandatory Petra?

I would starve if I was on most of these trips. Not saying the food isn't good, and it sure does look very tasty, but ehhhhhhh, most of it wouldn't agree with me.

sickmint79 we will live vicariously through your digestive tract instead. Keep the photos coming.

 

[IZZy]

The food in other cultures is one of the biggest pleasures of traveling though, I’ve eaten stuff that I couldn’t name or knew what it was but it’s all about being adventurous

 

[sickmint79]

i got a zillion matches on tinder here. i had over 40 likes to me when i landed and a bunch of matches too. i think this is because doha is small and kinda boring and chicks go here to get into sex work. many appeared to be from africa. and were hot. i'm currently at the dead sea and there seems like a lot of hot israeli girls on there and bumble now.

anyway. there is a boarding area in the lounge that will take you via bus to your plane. there were 3 of us on it going to amman. i think the cabin flew with maybe 6 of us in it.

old config a350, people complain about getting it instead of the q-suites version. still nice, can't complain much. also < 4 hour flight for this hop.

this time i got arabic coffee and a date.

got some warm nuts, bread, much better chili oil this time. salmon with saffron labneh

beef

vanilla cream with baklava...

and second dessert, orange pistachio mousse

no pics of the jordan airport. i went through here once in like 2016. i had my helmet with me and planned to kart on my layover, but it was raining so i didn't do it. the security guy held me up over half an hour because of the helmet.



i got a jordan pass, which meant it included the costs for the visa on arrival. afaik only 5 of us on the plane appeared to be non-jordanians when going through the immigration line.

i got a rental from sixt. pretty sure it was supposed to be automatic. instead i got a manual hyundai atos. i don't know anything about the modern version of this car, except it is weak.

i was packing my raincoat when leaving, then thought wtf do i need to carry this for i'm doing to the dessert. jordan and egypt are pretty dry. so of course when i actually arrived it was late and raining. i'm not sure if it's poorly marked, painted, or what, but at night in the rain the lanes were super hard to distinguish. basically if you imagined the lane lines to be dashes of short shiny black paint, that is how they looked.

in the day they usually exist, but not always. even when they do exist, plenty of jordanians are ignoring them. i haven't driven a car for almost a year but half of these people appear to have learned this morning and/or have glaucoma. some dudes are straight up straddling the line on the highway, and for a long ass time. there's no real excuse for this, it's not like some chaotic overcrowded situation, it's just people being terrible sloths. i'll note at this particular stoplight all 3 of these cars on my left are in the same "left lane".

there are lots of speed cameras here (and speed tables) and i'm scared of picking up tickets and getting reamed out the wazoo by the rental company who will charge a bunch for them. this iraqi dude was just blasting through traffic though.

stayed at a sheraton in amman the first night, did some work. place had one of if not the best gym of any hotel i've ever been to. the guy said it was the biggest in amman for a hotel. i should have used it so at least some of all these calories could have gone to muscle instead of just fat. view from my room in the morning. i wonder what amazon is doing here.

the pics above were from my drive to jerash, which has some of the best preserved roman ruins, and foreign cats for me to meet.

i parked in the wrong place, some guy who gave me some info who i think completely bullshit me that it cost 1 JOD to park there (1.41 USD) i gave anyway as he gave me good info and figured he might watch out for my shit, as i had a laptop in the car. probably just had a smoke and left. lots of dudes trying to sell you stuff or give you "free" things here but i plowed on, they are not so keen on taking no for an answer though.

no pics (but some vid) of the highway, dudes all over are selling fruit and veg on big stands next to it. also fair amount of guys with big silver pans trying to flash and wave you in to establishments, some annoyingly very close to the road (feels like pan could hit your car) - not great considering you're already dealing with people that can't stick to lanes driving in the first place.

interesting drive down, mostly cruising 70-90 kmh, max is 100 as far as i've seen. so not a super fast cruise. my ears were popping as i went down to the dead sea.

it's not the saltiest sea on earth, but i think it's 3rd or 4th. it is the lowest spot on earth. the sea is too salty for anything but some bacteria and well adjusted fungi to deal with. no plants no fish. i'm staying at the dead sea marriott. pool view and hard to see sea with these weather conditions.

follow my frand

you can cover yourself in the mud (that thing in the middle right) and let it dry and then go into the sea to wash it off to give you a nice uh whatever mud is supposed to do thing. i was barefoot and it was rough getting in since there are just a bunch of rocks. if you have people that know what they are doing they tell you to just kind of let yourself fall onto your back and not try to walk down all these painful stones. or you have like me and plenty of other newbs did, just walk until you inevitably fuck up and fall in anyway.

no pics cuz i'm a dude and am like bigfoot and only take like 4 pics a year and don't ask strangers to take them at that, but the water was pretty cool. that first splash in i got some in my eye, that stung. and on my lips too which were salty tasting af the whole time. the water is going to find any opening in your skin and irritate you since it is so salty. i have some skin rubbed off my right fingers which my new theory is from a clenched thumb when throwing a punch in my gloves. anyway that stung. didn't realize i had some thigh/ball chafing from the walk around jerash but the sea definitely let me know as it definitely stuck down in muh nethers a bit.

you're not supposed to dunk your whole head in, nor are you really supposed to swim. i think people drown when they must be panicked or something and stay face down or face in or something. otherwise you just float. it takes some effort to try and get into a standing type position, and you can just do it still and you won't sink. you'll probably have to fight to stay balanced that way since the water will want to push more of your body up. you can just lay back and float pretty effortlessly, the only thing i was putting any effort into was not just laying my head in it. it's pretty cool for a lazy ass junk swimmer since it is zero effort floating.

not sure if there is much to go here other than other resorts. just ate everything here and did some work at night. lunch and ended up with dinner at the same of the on site restaurants. manager there was a really pretty jordanian woman. no pics of her but pics of food. complementary starter, some kind of beef almond rice, and mixed grill for lunch.

for dinner i had some kind of fried halloumi mezze and beef shawarma.

i had some dessert i totally didn't recognize, so obviously need to order and assess it. it's some kind of cheese then has these crunchy honey tasty bois. they have some liquid honey inside too. i don't need to drizzle extra honey on the not sure why that is provided. was good though.

tomorrow i drive to petra, have 2 days to explore during the day and my last 2 days of work to do while on this trip.

 

[CMNTMXR57]

I was gonna say, all pictures I see of people in the Dead Sea are just them floating on their back.

 

[Jimy Bilmo]

I vote you try and float face first and see how long you can hold your breath

 

[sickmint79]

I was gonna say, fucking baller. Me being the extremely picky eater, wouldn't have touched 90% of that.

dunno how picky you are, probably enough options you could find something though.

my bro is pretty picky, visiting thailand for the first time last week i took him and others to mixed or western places, at the more straight thai places i was surprised he wasn't down with much though. he's not down for spicy but i curbed him to other parts of the menu, even then though at best he found some things basically just tolerable.

Did you go to the mandatory Petra?

have a 2 day pass, going tomorrow

Yessssssss I want to go to that part of the world soon, maybe you are on to something as right now is probably the cheapest it’s gonna be lolz

pop out next week and you can split all my fixed costs for hotels in egypt lol. not sure when is actually the best time to visit here, but the 'winter' is certainly cooler weather. dead sea was perfectly fine for me to pop into today, warmer than i expected. i'm wearing pants and a jacket but had to take the jacket off hiking around jerash. curious how petra will be. wadi rum i expect can get pretty cold at night.

I would starve if I was on most of these trips. Not saying the food isn't good, and it sure does look very tasty, but ehhhhhhh, most of it wouldn't agree with me.

sickmint79 we will live vicariously through your digestive tract instead. Keep the photos coming.

my bro and his gf and her friend all seemed to have some stomach issues when visiting, not sure if the girls totally had it or were just paranoid. both are vets and they had a massive pharmacy of stuff for real and would take some as preventative measures. my bro not too adventurous with food and this is the farthest he's gone on a trip by far. only recently left the country to do mexico.

dunno if i got used to foreign cooties or what but have not had much of a problem. once during covid i was a bit shitty and my speculation was the knife this fruit stand woman i would go to was not clean was my theory at the time. my only real bad bout was in chicago, dunno what it might have been from but was straight up shitting my brains out and ass blasting everywhere and firing turds that defied physics and space time. went in for dookie analysis twice figuring something HAD to be up, but went away, unknown, thankfully never to return again.

 

[NOMIEZVR4]

Seeing other cultures and foods is fascinating. Though I'd have to work up to the food. I stayed in amaan last year for 1.5 days, also visited the dead sea. Beautiful drive out there

 

[sickmint79]

i'm by petra but israeli girls are still coming up in the apps. lots are quite hawt but pretty sure they are not down with an agnostic brotato. a ton are divorced with kids, i had to google something i kept seeing come up on profiles - D +2. D +3. like did she get granted jewish dexterity +3? no, that means divorced with 3 kids. apparently as a result of religious and cultural pressure to marry young and produce a lot of kids, one of the results is a lot of younger ultimately incompatible couples resulting in a lot of divorcees with kids. israel might be hot single mom capital of the world as a result?

Seeing other cultures and foods is fascinating. Though I'd have to work up to the food. I stayed in amaan last year for 1.5 days, also visited the dead sea. Beautiful drive out there

yeah i enjoyed the drive in from amman - seemed fairly smooth and down hills and clear etc etc etc. but BROOO this morning driving OUT i was like fuck me i might have a panic attack up in this fine hyundai atos.

i'm just a flat boi from IL i don't like heights, i ain't used to driving through mountains and i sure af want to see nothing off the sides so i can imagine i'm right on the ground. but after driving into the lowest place on earth ya gotta drive out, and i did that driving south along the sea then eventually west - and that shit was terrifying as fuck.

my ears popped at least 3 distinct times on the ascent, and the real problem was i was nervous as fuck in the areas where you're basically just going up and around blind turns left and right, and where everything around you is really high rocky hilly death. even with barriers up, which sure weren't everywhere, it didn't really matter because in my head it's just like YUP WE'RE HIGH AS FUCK NOW with all sorts of cliffs of death in my peripheral vision. i was definitely dipping in the low end of second going up and crawling at some points probably like 20 mph or less iirc, with hands sweaty as fuck.

i have a bunch of driving videos below. i don't have the worst parts of this drive as i was hardly in the mood to juggle the phone when super fuck all high and going around unknown corner after corner. gps stopped working as did internet, i tried to reconnect and just had no directions at that point. when i came to a turn luckily another guy had stopped to much about his car and since petra is uber famous all i had to do was utter the word for him to point me in the right direction. thankfully some basic connectivity got restored a bit later.

cruising


fruit vendors on the roadside


cruising along the dead sea




i think this was after turning inland


earlier in the mountains


further in


i think i was well into not having a fun time at this point




wind farm - other ones later were moving a lot more


rolling into wadi musra to my hotel near petra. with some western style palestinian song i sure never heard before...


here's some dogs fucking with some goats inside petra. i wasn't fast enough to catch them but the goats just prior traversed the petra theater.


ok that's all my videos. going back to where i started, the weather was nicer this morning at my dead sea marriott and you could see the sea from my balcony better.

had a nice breakfast area. i got 2 omelettes, one was "jordanian omelette" with halloumi cheese and some spicy green peppers. i thought these were okra when i first saw them at an earlier meal, except they are actually pretty damn spicy so definitely not. had to reduce the number of them in this pupper by half.

once i got to the hotel, had to hop over a short curb to get into this very non-obvious parking lot. i have done marriotts thus far in part because i need to work and figured they would have more reliable internet. booked this a bit ago and not sure why i switched up here, i think largely because this place is within walking distance to petra - it's super close - and the marriott is both more expensive (2.5x) and a bit of a trip. although i am having a lot of packet loss here now, and i need to work from here 2 nights. :/

room, desk is tolerable, internet was actually kinda ok but is now just shit.

sporting the fanny pack before going to petra. it was high 60s. i guess the town here is fairly conservative, but most anything goes in petra, and i could have done shorts. left jacket in my room. some people had on light, but winter, coats. in a couple places where there was mostly shade and some wind was the only time i would have even considered a light jacket. else you're basically out in the sun, and you're walking around, and plenty of the time you're going up so there's some real work involved. f wearing a winter jacket man.

petra

goats just got done walking through the theater seats

stopped at a restaurant for late lunch, got hummus, this big lamb shank, and they gave me a sweet and tea post meal

i wanted a coffee to go from somewhere, best i could manage was getting one at the nearby movenpick hotel. in their fancy bar area, for quite a bit and with no cap that fit.

ended up here for dinner. it's only a little cooler out now, like low 60s, but it feels much cooler at night without the sun and with a little wind. i have two coats to layer up with me, one was minimal. think i'll need 2 out in wadi rum.

the bread and olive oil stuff on the left is a common included starter. the bottom right is some kind of hot fried cheese pastry guy that was pretty tasty. on the top is rice with some kind of tahini lamb dish.

saw these guys walking back to my hotel

December 7, 2023

www.youtube.com

tomorrow i have another day in petra, i might try to hike to the monastery , or go on one of the side quest hikes. this hike seemed a bit challenging when i got to it, and i wasn't sure i had time to do it.

i did 1 to 13, with a diversion at 8. walking back 13 to 1, which was more uphill, i did pretty direct with minimal stops for extra pics. the walk took 56 minutes. 6 *at most* would have been for stops and extra pics. so the place is pretty big, and that is on the simplest and most well trodden trail.

fyi IZZy i think one of the big hikes to do near the dead sea is wadi mujib to a waterfall, but i 1. didn't really seem to have the time and 2. think it is closed now/winter - so maybe worth coming another time of year then.

 

[sickmint79]

i dunno why the last vid is in their twice/it won't let me edit it (can't even remove both) oh well whatever

 

[Jimy Bilmo]

Petra looks so cool.

also, you would have an android

 

[Pro Stock John]

Great content thanks for sharing. Food all looks fantastic.

 

[bimmer4life]

fruit vendors on the roadside

Bad ass posts man. Keep it up for those that never leave the US . Also that big Dodge ram in the roadside fruit vendor video

 

[CMNTMXR57]

dunno how picky you are, probably enough options you could find something though.

my bro is pretty picky, visiting thailand for the first time last week i took him and others to mixed or western places, at the more straight thai places i was surprised he wasn't down with much though. he's not down for spicy but i curbed him to other parts of the menu, even then though at best he found some things basically just tolerable.

Forgot about this. Extremely picky. Like, my food groups are meat, potatoes pizza and junk food. I'm also a fairly plain palette. Meaning I eat basic shit. If I could order off of kids menus, I would be happy as a clam.

 

[sickmint79]

is new stuff at this point something you find actually bad, or you're just not down with something new/different and it's just uncomfortable?

i mean there's some shit i have little interest in eating (oysters) to extremely little interest (balut) myself. but plenty of things i've tried i've found to be a pleasant surprise too, i certainly group up on meat and potatoes, pizza, and junk food...

 

[CMNTMXR57]

I dislike them. I hate veggies. Probably haven't had any since I had a BLT forcibly shoved down my 7 y/o mouth after sitting at the dinner table refusing to eat it, and equally hate fruit. I find so many places try to make these complex and overly complicated concoctions with varying ingredients and sauces (including veggies) and it doesn't do anything for me.

 

[SMRTSS1]

WTF do you do for a living?

 

[NOMIEZVR4]

Wow man those are some cool pics! I went to Petra in 04. But I didn't do any hiking or anything of the sort. It was hot the time of the year I went

 

[sickmint79]

this was the vid i meant to post above izzy for the hike to a waterfall by the dead sea that is not open this time of year apparently:

I dislike them. I hate veggies. Probably haven't had any since I had a BLT forcibly shoved down my 7 y/o mouth after sitting at the dinner table refusing to eat it, and equally hate fruit. I find so many places try to make these complex and overly complicated concoctions with varying ingredients and sauces (including veggies) and it doesn't do anything for me.

i feel like your bloodwork probably has some wonky stuff. i probably don't get in nearly enough myself but you some more problematic. all fruit?? there are def some tasty bois out there yo. i'm a big fan of shakshuka, which can be executed a whole lot of ways, but it is a pretty tasty breakfast egg and veg dish. it was quite popular on instagram for some time a few years ago.

WTF do you do for a living?

i do data engineering / sales engineering / solutions architect type IT geek work, primarily in the AI/ML space. can do most of this remotely. the flights i either have from being clever about points earning/redemption and/or finding good cash deals, and having pretty wide data flexibility since i can just go work from wherever.

Wow man those are some cool pics! I went to Petra in 04. But I didn't do any hiking or anything of the sort. It was hot the time of the year I went

how far did you explore? even the main paths seem like you'll work up a sweat, especially in the summer.

my prior work from marriotts was much better for internet, the current place's internet was rough yesterday, although this is the last day i'm formally working on this trip. i stayed in bed a bit this morning, they called my room @9:20am asking if i was going to have breakfast... not sure how many people are in my hotel now but i was the only one and last one to head down there. nice spread and options for where i'm staying, ended up having 2 omelettes.

decided that i would hoof down the route i did yesterday, but then take the hike to the monastery. on the petra map that is 13 to 15 above. the legend doesn't seem to show what it means but that solid line to dotted line basically means 'a bunch of stairs and shit'. rolled with just shorts this morning.

it was 60, and in the shade with a little wind it felt slightly chilly, although i didin't think i'd regret more clothes once i got moving. and i definitely did not. really with wearing pants, a jacket, backpack, etc. i would feel pretty uncomfortable trekking about, that's a bunch of stuff. having just this fanny pack fella was pretty great. definitely got to sweating on the trip too. i also timed this trip.

hoofing it to the siq (3 on the map) i got there in about 8 minutes. this is the first chunk where some locals will try to sell you a mule ride down. not really worth it unless you have mobility problems. and if you really have them you can get a golf kart type service down to the treasury, although i don't think they got any further than that/i never noticed.

reached the treasury (4) in 22 minutes. royal tombs (8) on the way down.

point 13 was about 50. this was with minimal stops to take more pics and pet more cats. it is downhill so easier than the return where i clocked 56 minutes yesterday. it had some goats on it. some dudes will take you on a mule between points 13 and 8 too, maybe further than 8? might be worth it for mobility issues or saving time. whenever guys asked me i just told them i eat too much and need the exercise and they would stop pursuing me pretty quick.

there are guys at the monastery who will take you with a mule up to a certain point. i don't know what point that is, the mules can use the stairs and shit, and are actually way better than me about it. stairs/trail can be atrophied a bit from water and other stuff, but there is a point where animals i think either aren't allowed or can't get through.

i don't mind a hike - but i do not like heights. as per the car above i don't really like them any more when i'm walking and see cliffs of rocky death around me either. with a hat on and just trying to focus on what is just in front of me as a next step i made my way up what i wouldn't consider that fun of a hike for someone like me. i prefer my vertical hikes to be surrounded on bullshit on both sides so i can't tell how far i am up. this trail felt like it just kept on going. at this point i'm very happy to be in shorts and a t-shirt. no one else is nearly as happy with their apparel choices surely, although most of them seem a lot more comfortable than me about operating with all the open space around us. i don't have a ton of pics because that would involve both stopping and having to look around and acknowledge my uncomfortable situation more.

i have a few more pics going down and this one is actually in that direction. i don't want to walk to the left of this guy because 1. it's closer to scary death and 2. what if he just has a crazy moment and pushes me
so yeah f that

also on the way down, path goes right and down, then left, then eventually to that section with the huts at this point

also a down it was just easier to take those shots. have some video going up but insta360 video i'll do something with later.

i think it took me about 35 minutes to get here, and this is the reward, arriving at the monastery

there's a small restaurant/cafe you can order some stuff at too

i just scooched over and pet this cat instead. there were a few along the way but i was trying to concentrate on making my way up or down so i only gave a few some pets

i can tell you i had absolutely zero interest in then going further off the beaten path into vastly more scary looking/higher/no stairs/pure hikes to get to either of these views.

after i made it down, which felt faster (maybe just from not fighting gravity) i was **very happy** to be back on the main trail and would not be super eager to go do this again. made it back to the treasury and at this time more people were going to some of the more elevated views there than the prior day.

around the middle of the pic, upper right of the girl you may be able to make out a dude. i think people are sitting on this cliff like having some tea. guy probably trying to get a dinar out of you then too. i dunna man i ain't going up there. there are multiple routes and some people are much higher - thought i had it in my pics but there was definitely a guy at the very top of these ridges somewhere. i am absolutely not going up there.

here are some camels on the way out that were at the treasury. a couple hour later i was eating one of their brothers with some fries.

if you told me this was beef i wouldn't have fought you. it is leaner than beef though. was pretty good and i'd definitely have it again.

i walked around a bit, found this which i'm obviously not going on

was looking for a coffee but i dunno if there is actually a place with a real espresso machine around, i typically do americanos. places either had instant coffee or just a regular retail nespresso machine. i ended up at this place and got a couple regular american coffees and this mixed dessert so i could make sure i would end the day in a calorie surplus i guess. will go out to dinner some time a bit later, not hungry at the moment but my options will drop drastically in a few hours if i don't go find something by then.

i guess it is more of a tea culture, nonetheless it feels like if a place opened a real coffee shop near petra it could clean up with tourists.

the actual town here around my area does not give in to much exploring by foot. not sure how great it would be farther by foot, or even if i drove. it is quite hilly and just seems to be very traditional, quiet, and residential. my hotel has an enormous amount of packet loss so just downloading and uploading these pictures takes forever/has lots of frustrating/annoying retries.

 

[CMNTMXR57]

Hey man, just enjoying your pics. I see you did make it to Petra.

I don't want to get this off-topic with other convo. We can have that elsewhere.