Final holiday roundup - three amazing desert castles

 

This caravanserai dates to the 7th C.  It was a resting place for traders and had something like 65 bedrooms.  There had been a fountain in the central courtyard, and in one room was the large round base for what had been a bread oven.  It was hard to imagine it thronging with people and animals now.

As you can see, it had been much restored.

The desert - the views just went on and on.

Wonderful carvings had survived.

"Just as our coach arrived at Quseir 'Amra, I noticed a bird taking off from a low shrub.  It was a HOOPOE!!!  It was too speedy for a photo, as was the 2nd one I saw shortly afterwards.  Top of my lifetime "wants" on my birding list!  Since I was about 12 in fact, as I remember reading Monica Edwards' book "The Summer of the Great Secret" which as a bout a Hoopoe spending the summer at the castle on Romney Marsh in Kent, and they were trying to keep its presence secret."

This is Quseir 'Amra, a Royal Hunting Lodge, and again 7th C. These desert castles were created by the Umayyad lords.  From the outside, it didn't look too impressive, although it had a separate bath-house/sauna built, and you can just see the water windmill which bucket-lifted water up from a 40 foot deep cistern.

Hunting dogs.

From my journal: "Inside, oh my goodness, ancient 7th C fresco's, though sadly some were very damaged because they offended those who came after - Bedouins who used this as a dwelling.  As this had been a hunting palace, there were clearly leisure pursuits also available and several walls/ceilings had pictures of a sexual nature which had been appropriately damaged later.  There were many other different paintings - people at work, hunting scenes, someone playing a lute, the ever-present Tree of Life and a lovely frieze of desert animals.  I loved the painting of a Centaur, which had been introduced from other influences (Greek mythology)."

Of course, the photo of the centaur is one of the ones which is still on the camera.

Journal: "THEN - OH MY GOODNESS - Al-Azraq Castle, built by the Romans and used ever since.  This final Crusader Castle was the very one where Lawrence of Arabia discussed the Sykes-Picot agreement in 1916. " Wikipedia says: 'The Sykes-Pico Agreement was a 1916 secret treaty between the United Kingdom and France, with assent from Russia and Italy, to define their mutually agreed spheres of influence and control in an eventual partition of the Ottoman Empire.'

Journal entry "The actual castle was built by the Romans.  The double front door was made from two slabs of stone weighing 1000 g, and had pivots on their outer edges (now greased by diesel oil - it would have been olive oil in the past). There was another elsewhere - a single door even heavier at around 4,000 Kg."

Here I am, stood in the very room where Lawrence of Arabia and Prince Faisal had their talks.  The blackened stones above my head were from later Bedouin fires.  The sense of history here was breathtaking.

The very heavy door!

Gabby goes to the shops!!  Prices were very much cheaper here than in the cities or the stop-offs the coach tour used.

Then across the desert again . . .

To the Dead Sea.  That's Israel on the far shore.  I just had a paddle, but most of the folk on our coach floated (it is SO salty, something like 40% saline, you can only float - and you don't want to splash it in your eyes!)  Afterwards, it's obligatory to cover yourself in the mud, which is good for the skin, and then you can have a beach shower to get off the worst before going back to the showers which were part of the hotel complex we had lunch at.  You could hire a towel.

I'll put a couple of museum photos up tomorrow.  Now it's gardening time again.