a modern silk route 4

Here we are, D and I, on board QR3086 from Doha to Amman. We are travelling in style unlike the silk road travellers of yore. 

Well, those travellers never passed through Qatar (so I guess we don't need to go through the same hardship for this leg). Though the people here in the Arab peninsula share the same life as the nomadic pastoralists of the Central Asian steppes and in northern Sahara, there just weren't enough resources here to make this place of any interest in the middle ages. Besides the gulf that separated it from mainland Asia meant it was not on the way of the travellers.

They went from Xi An in China, past Dun Huang then Tur Fan and Kahs Gar and through Sary Tash, the Fergana Valley and then to Penjakent and of course Samarkand and Bukhara. Like the Gulf or Arabia, the Caspian Sea would have proven a challenge for the camels and like the ancient travellers, we too concluded our first journey on the Silk Road 3 years ago. 

D & I resumed the next leg of the Silk Road earlier this year on the western side of the Caspian Sea (lake actually). The flaming land of Azerbaijan (on account of abundance of near surface gas) is where Asia begins to merge with Europe. It borders Turkey, Iran, Greece and Italy which is the other main terminus of this 10 thousand mile road. 

The Silk Road actually branches into many paths as is approaches the Middle East and Mediterranean Europe. And it is not the main trunk highway to Venice and Rome we are on this time, but to the Middle East. 

So from a little desert peninsula jutting into the gulf on the southeastern tip of the Arabic peninsula, we are now flying west of northwest, past the most ancient civilisations of Sumeria (now modern day Iraq) and Persia (yup, no road to Damsacus for us) to the more verdant lands of Jordan (Gilead in the biblical past). There is almost no place more central in the world (past or present). It is at the strategic crossroads (via land) to the continents of Asia to the east and Europe in the northwest and Africa in the southwest.

I've been to the middle east multiple times the last twenty years but always for business and therefore always to the oil&gas-rich and capital cities of Doha, Abu Dhabi Dubai and Riyadh where we have business. I never took time off the see the rest of the region especially places of old civilisations. After all, this place is the cradle of human civilisation, the crossroad of the world.

So with a weekend in between visits to Doha and Riyadh, I got D to join me and see perhaps one of the most important places here: the Heshamite Kingdom of Jordan with sites like Petra and the Dead Sea and not to mention the river where Jesus was baptised. 

We land first in Amman, the capital of Jordan and are met by Weesam. An "Indiana Jones" adventure awaits us tomorrow but today we will tour the city of Amman (Ammon in the past) and literally traipse through its many millenia of history.