Jordan

Take it from King Hussein’s mouth: “Jordan itself is a beautiful country. It is wild, with limitless deserts where the Bedouin roam, but the mountains of the north are clothed in green forests, and where the Jordan River flows it is fertile and warm in winter. Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love ever;’ inch of it.”

Now, he has to say that, because he’s the king of every inch of it (The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, that is). But he has a point. It is a beautiful country, and the geographic diversity is fascinating and appealing. Jordan’s countryside is indeed strewn with imperial rubble.

In ancient days, this was the land where John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the famous Jordan River. Once a remote branch of desert trade routes and of the Roman Empire and later a neglected chunk of the Ottoman vilayet of Syria, modem Jordan (Al-Urdun) was created by a stroke of a British pen ("Now a giant mixing machine called the West has thrown us together,” wrote former Prime Minister Kamcl Abu Jaber, “and here we are loving it and hating it, constantly adjusting and readjusting….").

This small kingdom with its commensurate king today finds itself sandwiched between some of the rougher players in a rough neighborhood: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Syria, and Iraq. There are internal divisions, too; the memory of the 1970 civil war between radical Palestinians and conservative backers of the Hashemite monarchy is still fresh and bitter. The more recent trauma of the Gulf crisis brought some of these intra-Jordanian tensions to the surface again, although the country is calm now.

As engrossing as the people and the country are, Jordan has another bonus for the pluclq’ budget traveler: until recently, even the most awe-inspiring sight was still relatively undiscovered. Thus, despite growth in tourism over the past few years, most of the country and its sites of interest are uncommercialized. Jordan is not yet a land of predesignated, freshly polished, for-tourist-eyes-only sights and experiences. The Bedouin at Wadi Rum are still the genuine article, unspoiled. Close your eyes at the Desert Castles or Petra and you can be in any century; explore caves and hidden staircases in remote castles as a bona fide explorer.