Those trees that seem a stone’s throw away? Yeah! That is Israel. Literally a half mile away!

I had come to Jordan in May. Then next month, Sharmila, Nikita and I were headed to India. The flight to Doha took a little southernly route due to the war in Ukraine. I was so excited that we might be going near Jordan that I had woken up Sharmila from her sleep to show her the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba when we crossed it. From about 40,000 feet high on Jun 10, I had taken pictures and posted them.

I had also promised that I will have my friend Mahmoud takes us to that city that we saw from the plane.

Well, today was that day!! Mahmoud brought Sharmila and me to Aqaba. We have not ventured out of the hotel yet. We will do so in the next two days.

How often do you get to fly over a completely unknown and small city from 40,000 feet high and hit that city soon on the ground as promised?

(The left is a picture I took from the plane that day; the right is a Google map picture right now)

For most of the drive from the Dead Sea to Aqaba, we were but a hop, skip and jump away from Israel. In fact the whole drive was spotted with border sentry points like you see in this picture. These were, at times, half a mile away (at best). Beyond that was Israel (and of course, Israel’s checkpoints).

You can literally walk over to Israel if you could negotiate the two checkpoints, that is.

Prior to the 1994 peace treaty, there used to be a lot of checkpoints on this road itself. After the treaty (where both parties agreed that a third country cannot use their land to attack the other country), all those checkpoints were removed.

Curiosity led me to read what happened after the 1994 treaty. Just search for Israel Jordan Peace Treaty in Wikipedia. Couldn’t help being impressed by King Hussein’s commitment to peace in the area.

We were going thru a lot of mountains. Eventually, the mountains started receding in the horizon and the desert took over.

The rather predictability of the horizon was suddenly broken by this very odd landscape. Look at the particular rock I am referring to. It is almost flat on the top for *many* *many* miles. Looks almost like a perfect plateau. Except that it is flanked by either side with normal mountains.

Not sure about what makes it this way.

Do you remember the story from Mongolia?

I asked my friend Mahmoud. He was not too sure. Hope to find out soon what those half buried ties here mean…

After a lot of very hard rocks, salt and then the desert sands, suddenly we were hit with a lot of limestone mountains! I was not expecting this in the least…

Roger, this sure brings back the memories of the Bactrians in Mongolia. I think these would be more difficult to ride than those. What sayest thou?

Reminded us so much of the divi divi trees in Aruba island! (We are not sure why the trees here evolved to look like that)

Some of the scenes reminded me of Mongolia. Except that – that was a cold desert and this is a decidedly hot one…