Feb
19
to Mar 4
Jordan With Petra (14 days)
An exotic Journey to the crossroads of time and beliefs.
Jordan has been a country rich in diversity of culture and beliefs since the beginning of recorded history. From the world’s oldest statues (7250BCE) thru some of the greatest stories in the Christian bible and one of the new 7 wonders of the world to the modern city of Amman, Jordan is a journey of the body, mind and spirit.
Our tour in Jordan will explore the philosophies of early Christianity, early Islam, early Judaism and the nomadic traders of the desert. Across the huge variety of cultural history that you will see on this tour we will have the opportunity to discuss the beauty of each of the cosmologies as well the aspects that we may be missing in our modern thinking.
Jesus, Moses, Sodom and Gomorrah
Even though some of the archeological sites we will explore may be listed as Muslim or Christian nearly all of them have at different times of history been passed backwards and forwards between the different religions. We will share with you how the desert people rarely destroyed the buildings or cities as they conquered and instead modified them to suit, leaving behind a rare and sometimes graphic mixture of beliefs.
Whether we are standing on Mt. Nebo viewing the Promised Land like Moses, or wetting our heads in the Jordan River like Jesus, or standing at Lot’s cave after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, whether you believe in these stories from the Bible or not the power of each of these sites is palpable in your mind and body.
Wadi Rum and the Templar Knights
To feel the waters of the Dead Sea confuse the body and its relationship with gravity, or lie in the warm sands of Wadi Rum and gaze into the vast open wonders of the starlit sky allow your mind and spirit to journey into the uncharted areas of our own psyche. And together let’s traverse the Ghazali Canyon and onto the Great Sand Dunes of Shalalah each of us reliving our own version of Lawrence of Arabia’s epic mission.
As we journey thru early Islamic palaces and the fortresses of the Templar Knights we see how both cultures were doing what they believed to be right within their own belief systems.
Petra & The Nabataeans
And we explore one of the greatest wonders wrought by man and nature, “The rose-red city of Petra”, known as being ‘half as old as time’, you will get to join with the Bedouins living in the valleys beyond the Siq the same as they did thousands of years ago. We will spend time in gigantic ancient tombs carved into solid mountain faces, connecting with the desert people of a time long gone, yet each building still filled with the life force of the Earth and the echoes of the Nabataeans that worshipped and connected to life after death, and that all things live on for ever.