Category: cycle-touring

The King’s Highway Day 1: Amman – Madaba

Distance: 22.09 miles

Time: 2:42:55

Elevation: 1611 feet

Average Speed: 8.1 mph

Looking at today’s route out of Amman, I could tell that it wended its way over the hilltops – to avoid the busy roads on the valley floor. Still suffering with a bad cold, I considered opting out of the steep climbs, to try weaving in and out of the poorly flowing traffic instead. A brief spell in the traffic seemed alright, and I quite enjoyed the flow, reminding me of my exit out of Hanoi almost 4 years before.


But the route turned off sharply up ahead and I was also interested to see what the hills would be like. I passed through some narrow alleys where a colourful market was in full swing, then the road turned steeply to the left. I tried to engage my lowest gear, but one or two pedal revolutions later, the chain had slipped and I had to act fast to unclip before I toppled over. I’d installed a new rear derailleur just before I’d left, and although it seemed to be set up fine when tested on the flat roads near my home, it would appear that perhaps wasn’t the case.


I got up the first steep ramp in stages, but between the malfunctioning gears and the gradient, it hadn’t been pretty. Impatient to get moving I made some impromptu adjustments and kept on fighting up the hill. The road meandered higher and higher, reaching almost 1000 metres, the surroundings becoming less salubrious as I went. As I reached the summit of the first hilltop settlement, it felt impoverished and cut off, and when the afternoon call to prayer began reverberating around the buildings, I stopped and soaked in the atmosphere.


Back on a major road, I passed a variety of roadside cafes and food stalls, the roadsides were starting to feel like those in Vietnam, it was quite comforting after my ride there. I came across a large square and stopped to take photos of the Abu Darwish Mosque, a large building I’d seen on the skyline from the Citadel the day before. As I lingered a group of teenage boys walked by, they called out a welcome before one asked ‘if I liked Palestine’. What would Rishi say? I briefly considered, before thinking of something else.


The route kept off the main road from now on, cutting through sparse housing developments and up and over steep rises to keep moving forwards. Eventually the housing petered out and I was passing through farmland on a very quiet road. Stray dogs looked too bored to attack and kids looked on inquiringly


After working my way across the countryside for some miles, I realised I was close to my stop for the night, Madaba. Passing through the outer reaches, I tried to follow the route on the tiny screen of my GPS, in bright sunshine, making several missteps, and passing along roads that I doubted many tourists would usually encounter, before eventually arriving at the Black Iris Hotel.


While I paused before going inside, a large group of boys gathered around, seemingly interested in my bike, and the aforementioned GPS unit, and in good spirits. They had just asked me the age-old burning question of Messi or Ronaldo when the hotel proprietors came out to shoe them away. Messi I’d responded, which annoyed the boy who’d asked, but seemed to be appreciated by his friends. Well, the ones in Argentina tops anyway.


Checking into the Black Iris Hotel was a pleasant experience, so I elected to have dinner in the hotel. Being only a little after 4 o’clock, I had some time to spare, so deliberated between the 12 mile return trip over to Mount Nebo, which would afford views of Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, or to make a quick dash down to St George’s Greek Orthodox Church, home to the Madaba Map, a mosaic map known as being the earliest cartographic depiction of Jerusalem and the Holy Land, dating from the 6th Century AD.

The walled city of Jerusalem is at the centre of the image with the Dead Sea above that. Jordan itself would be above the Dead Sea but much has been lost.


Only being an hour left until sunset, I opted for the map. Unfortunately, the area that contained Madaba itself had been destroyed, but I did find Karak just on the edge of the remains, and that’s where I hoped to stop tomorrow.


As I made my way back from the church, I found the heart of Madaba to be very pleasant and slightly regretted opting to have dinner at the hotel. Passing by a very busy food counter, I noticed that they were selling Chicken Shawarma, and as it was the first place I’d spotted that did, I couldn’t help but try one. As it was dinner soon, I went small, at the princely sum of 67 pence. Simply prepared, I received a wrap with a light spreading of tahini sauce and thin slices of hot succulent chicken. It was very tasty, and I was pretty sure this would be better than what the hotel would provide.


Unsurprisingly I was right, but they did put on quite a feast, with soup, big bowls of hummus and baba ganoush, salads, kofta and rice and a chicken and potato stew. Following that was a big slab of baklava, which was very nice, but I particularly enjoyed washing it all down with a bottle of Petra Blonde Ale, as brewed in Jordan.

The King’s Highway: Mint Tea and Flatbreads

After my long day of travel, and late night, I was feeling a little shell shocked when I awoke, the breakfast buffet in the hotel didn’t look particularly exciting, but it actually tasted pretty good. The Arab-world staples of mint tea and flatbreads were present, as were sides of hummus, halloumi and slices of processed meat.


I’d enjoyed my breakfast from a roof terrace with excellent views of one of the most popular sites in Amman, the Roman Theatre – from Amman’s days as Roman Philadelphia – so that’s where I’d be heading, just as soon as I got moving…


From the bottom, the theatre didn’t look like it stretched that far up the hillside, but as I worked my way upwards towards the top, I soon realised that the top tiers banked up sharply and it was much higher than it looked. The walkway at its pinnacle offered great views down over the lower tiers of the theatre and the forum beyond. Across the valley, the sunlight reflected off the buildings, another of Amman’s big tourist draws – the Citadel – perched on top.

Weaving my way through packed streets, lined with barely moving traffic, and with street sellers set up on the pavement, I made for a popular, long-established, Ammani restaurant, Hashem. Renowned since 1952, for its falafel and hummus, so that’s what I would have, alongside the mint tea and flatbreads, of course. At 2 Jordanian Dinars (£2.24) all in, that might not be the last falafel and hummus of the trip.


The sun was lowering in the sky by this time, so I made the steep climb up to the Citadel. The site of an old Bronze Age fort, the focus of my attention became the splendid ruined pillars of the Roman-era Temple of Hercules.

After I’d waited for the light to change, then to change again, eventually I remembered that I had a bike to put back together again…

The King’s Highway: On the March

On the run up to the trip, I’d had a busy few days at work, and then, two days beforehand I was struck down with a cold. The weather outside was appalling with gusting 50 mile an hour winds, so I retreated to the kitchen, and boxed up my bike in there. Luckily I’d ended up with an enormous bike box from Decathlon, but was it too big? Its length was 195 cm and the length for an oversized bag was meant to be a maximum of 190 cm…


Arriving at the airport in plenty time, I was relieved to see that at 21.2 kg, my box was comfortably under the 23 kg weight restriction, and that seemed good enough for the check in staff. Getting to the oversized baggage point, however, I was momentarily alarmed when asked to match up my 195 cm bike box alongside a 3D template of a 160 cm one. ‘Oh it’s ok, it’ll still go’ I was assured, ‘you just need to take it over to that room at the far end of the hall as it’s too big to go through our scanners’. Whilst I watched another member of staff opening up the box and carefully searching through all of the contents, it did make me think about all the other bike boxes that I’d brought to this airport that would have been too big to go through their scanners…


The two flights went smoothly enough, the final stretch into Amman circumventing Israel by heading further west over Egypt, and then approaching from the South. Rushing around the airport after landing, at midnight, I procured some Jordanian Dinars and a new SIM card before meeting up with the driver of the van who was hopefully going to squeeze a very large bike box in the back. As the driver didn’t speak English, the manager of the hotel had also come along in a car, to meet me off the plane.


Once back at the hotel he pushed me to pay for the return leg as well – as van drivers were difficult to procure – then proceeded to charge me an eye-watering fee given the prices that should have been involved. In my depleted state, I paid what he asked, but I had been totally ripped off. And, as I lay in bed that night, there was no way I could make the numbers add up to what I’d been charged, even if I paid for the ‘van and car’ combination both ways!


Looking at it pragmatically, if I placed a value – to me – of being able to get my bike to and from the airport in the middle of the night, and storing my bike box for a week while I was away, as well as somewhere to stay at the beginning and end of the trip, maybe the manager had achieved that figure. That’s the way I’ll look at it anyway, as long as the van arrives to take me back to the airport next week…

Jordan 2023: The King’s Highway

Up In The Air

At the culmination of my lap of Iceland in the summer, I was asked ‘what’s next’? I quickly responded that somewhere warmer might be nice, like a winter escape to Jordan… And it might be nice, I’ll find out very soon!

Usually, when I’m planning a cycling trip, it develops gradually into a vague outline and a smattering of half-formed ideas, then I book the flights, and quickly those half-formed ideas become a plan. On this occasion, after several months of agonising over which flights to book, a sudden price drop forced my hand, and only then did I think to check out the news flash about the Gaza strip which had just flashed across my phone screen.

From that moment, an air of uncertainty hung over my planning: firstly when British Airways extended the duration of the flights in and out of Jordan, presumably deeming it prudent to take steps to avoid flying directly over a war zone; and secondly when they cancelled my homewards flight, offering up the possibility to postpone my trip until a time when the region appeared slightly less volatile. On considering my alternatives, I quickly realised that I would almost certainly end up claiming a refund on the flights to Jordan, then immediately replace them with cheap flights to Egypt, a country also bordering Israel and the Palestine Territories, but in which I had done no research at all. So, Jordan it was…


Jordan was somewhere that had appealed for many years, my interest piqued by photos of the red sandstone tombs of Petra glowing in the slowly-setting desert sun.
In recent years, the country had positioned itself as a safe haven for adventure in the middle of a turbulent region, so, when I first learned about the Jordan Trail, a mixed terrain mountain biking and trekking route running 400 miles down the middle of the country, I took notice. In calculating my remaining annual leave for the year, it was clear that I didn’t have enough days left to undertake the full thing, but surely I could find something to entertain myself?


In reading about the Jordan Trail route, there was regular mention of a road, ‘The King’s Highway’, an old communication path down the spine of the country, starting in Damascus, Syria, and finishing up at Aqaba on the Red Sea. Regarded as being one of the oldest roads in the world, it was documented in the bible and dotted with Roman ruins and Crusader Castles along its length.


The 250 mile stretch from the Jordanian capital, Amman, to Aqaba appeared to have some of the most impressive landscape features, bisected by the towering gorge of Wadi Mujib, tiptoeing around the edge of the Dana Biosphere Reserve, before descending to the spectacular desert landscapes of Wadi Rum on its final approach to the sea.


Oh, and in case I forgot to mention, it passes Petra along the way..