Jordan 2021

Day 9: November 13

Qasr Kharana - Azraq - Qusayr Amra

Jordan 2021

Itinerary

In the morning, the air is filled with fine, fine dust, and everything around has taken on an orange tint.
The sky is covered with semi-transparent clouds. The sun looks like a lamp. Because of this, the morning does not feel like morning. Everything seems blurred, indistinct.
An amazing feeling of some kind of timelessness.

Today we are heading to eastern Jordan. We leave the city, first driving along a wide highway, and then turn onto a two-lane road leading to Iraq. There are few cars here, mostly trucks. There is nothing around, just a lifeless plain with sparse low shrubs. Only power lines stretch along the road, dissolving into the orange haze.

Road to Iraq

Our first stop is Qasr Kharana. It is a very unusual structure, a cube rising in the middle of a deserted expanse. It is called a desert castle, but the term “castle” is not quite applicable here. To this day, scholars are still unsure of the purpose of this building. More likely, Qasr Kharana was a caravanserai, a resting place for travelers.

This is a two-story building. Inside there is a courtyard, and along the perimeter there are many rooms of different sizes. It really does resemble a hotel.

Qasr Kharana in the middle of nowhere

Presumably, Qasr Kharana was a resting place for travelers

Inner courtyard

One of the rooms

Next we head to Azraq Castle, built of black basalt in the 13th century. Very little remains of the castle. We are the only visitors. Volchiy notes that even stone was used for the beams. The reason for this was that there are no other trees here besides palms. Palm wood is very soft and not suitable for construction. The same goes for the doors — all the entrance doors are made of stone. It is said that the stone doors moved easily thanks to palm oil.

Entrance to Azraq Castle

Inside the castle

Stone Door

Beautiful arches

The city of Azraq itself is dusty and unremarkable. We head to the “center” along the main street in the hope of finding something to eat. We stop by a bakery and buy 3 flatbreads. We find a nice shawarma place and order 2 shawarmas at 1 dinar (36 UAH) each. The shawarma is delicious (it was our first shawarma in Jordan, and it turned out to be the tastiest). Interestingly, in Jordan shawarma consists of flatbread, meat, pickled cucumbers, and a little yogurt with garlic. No cabbage, carrots, or anything like that.

In the bakery shop

Eating shawarma

On the way back to the car, we buy fruit at a roadside stall. There are tasty oranges here, and surprisingly, we came across tasty bananas. The tangerines turned out to be sour.

Roadside fruit stand Returning to Madaba by the same road. The sun is already sinking toward sunset.

Returning to Madaba by the same road

Our final stop is Qusayr Amra. Once a desert fortress, only the hammam building remains. All the walls inside the hammam are decorated with frescoes.

Hammam in the Desert

Frescoes in Qusayr Amra

Upon returning, I ask the hostess whether there’s any way to fix the internet, and she offers to move us to another room — it’s on the first floor, but it has internet, a good shower, and overall the room is nicer. We agree, have dinner of canned hummus and flatbreads from Azraq. Today we covered 230 km.