i entrusted this donkey with my life

I'm not sure why ‘ass’ is an insulting and demeaning term.  And the term exists in almost all languages.  Bengalis scold each other with a scoffing “gadha naki?” when they refer to someone being an idiot, i don’t know how many guys I’ve referred to as ‘asses’ and the kids in my classes  scrunch up their faces and mutter a despicable “hamarr” to whoever it is that they are furiously pissed off at.  Of course you can always call someone something that’s much worse than an ass, but really, these animals, fellow donkeys, should be praised.  They are probably one of the most resilient and strongest animals around.  In India, I’d see lines of donkeys slowly walking by with the kid responsible for keeping an eye on them occasionally striking them on the side with a thin narrow slender stick or a tree branch, and these eeyore like donkeys trot along, with a giant sturdy canvas bag like thing swung over their backs carrying literally tons and tons of bricks that no human being could every carry.  Lifting up 5 or 6 pieces of bricks is probably  a challenge for most, but I’d see these donkeys carrying 50 or 60 pieces, just slowly trotting along. 

One of these donkeys, one in Petra Jordan, not in Udaipur, India, carried me up almost a thousand steps up the edges and swerves and sometimes smooth and sometimes rough and choppy curves of an ancient mountain up to the very top, to the ancient site, supposedly the most worthwhile spot, to the Monastery, an age old architectural wonder perched on the very top of a mountain in Petra, the red rose city.

The hike up to the Monastery, the very last stop in Petra was sped up to a 20 minute hike instead of an hour long one riding on the donkeys.  We were pressed for time. Our day in petra had begun at noon and starting from the entrance and making our way to the top of the monastery had already taken us to 6pm and we wanted to be back by 5.  We actually got done around 7ish, after every bit of our physical strength was exhausted and we were all wiped out.

“A rose red city half as old as time” is how the city of Petra was described by the Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt after it was rediscovered in 1812.  And since then this stone city, which arguable stands uniquely with no other  contesting place on earth resembling anything like it, has been brought to your western eyes by movies such as Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and if you go to Petra now, you’ll see small shops with the Indiana Jones hats, and young boys riding horses egging on tourists to ride through the city with “Indiana jones” style horses.  I gave in. not only did I buy the touristy Indiana jones hat, I also rode the freakin horse.  It was pretty darn fantastic.

 UNESCO calls it one of the most precious cultural properties of man’s cultural heritage and BBC says its one of the 40 places in the world you have to see before you die.  I intentionally try to avoid reading up on things I’m going to see before I see it because I want to view it with fresh eyes and then go back and learn about what I saw.  Sometimes expecting something to be wonderful makes it as wonderful or not as wonderful depending on your perception and really takes away from the inherent aesthetics and history of what is in front of you, and I don’t want to see world wonders with anyone else’s eyes but mine.   

Without having a preview or trailer of what it’s about,  I was pleasantly overwhelmed with what I saw that day.  I was literally wide eyed.  As a person who is exhilarated by bright colors or colors of the earth,  especially natural hues blending in together and dancing in harmony  on the steep natural sides of giant boulders in an inimitable way, I drew into Petra because of its unique blending point of an immense natural wonder meeting man made genius.  Most wonders of the world are either one or the other.  Man made or natural.  Petra is a simultaneous composition of both.  In the past year, alhumdullilah, I was fortunate enough to see the Taj Mahal as well as the Great Pyramids of Giza.  And as crazy as people may think I am, Petra beats them all.  The Taj Mahal is glorious and the Pyramids are breathtaking but Petra is  a journey  and not a destination point like the others.

 The stone.  The sheer stone city, the red stone, with swirls of colors, the ancient grooves, pillars, structures,  tombs, buildings, sacred burial sites, just sitting there, waiting for your eyes to feast on and wonder what kind of world this city must have existed in when it was originally built is mind staggering.

The rising sides of the steep carved mountains majestically shade over the narrow path in between (and by narrow I mean only several feet wide in certain spots) which provides a calming, and soothing cool walking entrance to the contrasting scorching and blistering bare and sunny trek beyond the Siq. The Siq is the official entrance to Petra, a natural gorge.  It’s absolutely breathtaking.   I mean just look at this thing :   

You are literally walking in between a natural split.  The swirly red stone, and the looming two sides of the crack provide shade that you wont find for the rest of the walk in Petra.  At the end of the gorge is the Treasury or the Khazneh, which is a massive construction carved in the 1^st century.   As I stood in front of the face of this structure, I was at awe trying to imagine what this must have looked like 2,000 years ago if it looks like this now.   I must say, I just knew before going to Petra, that going to Petra is the thing to do if you go to Jordan but I had no idea what that meant.  I had no idea that it basically meant going on a journey to “rediscover” an ancient stone city.  It’s not a single monument or a single destination spot, but it’s an actual lost city.

By the end of this trip, my feet were blistered.  The most memorable part of the day was a slight detour that our group of seven took.  We started climbing a mountain and were told that the very top was a sacred burial site.  And we kept on climbing, not knowing where it ends really.  And we climbed for a good hour at least.  I was drained and exhausted but the view from the top was something that I will never forget.  Not only could you see all of petra from a birds eye view but you could see unbelievable terrain.  And looking closely at the panoramic breathtaking view, you could see things like shepherds herding their animals and going down sides of mountains.

The donkey.  I was reluctant to do the donkey trip up to the monastery.  But you realize when you’re so close to something so ancient and so amazing, if the only way to do it in time is to ride a freakin donkey, you will get on the donkey.  So I got on the donkey and held on to dear life as it went up.  And going up, as its feet trotted up the broken uneven steps, sometimes missing them completely, sometimes brushing your body against the rugged mountain, I kept on thinking about how much fun going down the mountain would be..  At that point, going up that high on this animal, with nothing but a rein on my hands, which meant absolutely nothing, I realized that one wrong move would have me tumble to, well, death, or a lot of pain at least.  There was no other option but to hold on, reallllllly tight, and trust this animal completely and let go of any fear, any discomfort, or worry, because there was absolutely no point in doing any of that.  All you could do is trust, and let go,  and just enjoy the ride going up and somehow safely come down again to level ground. 

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leaving you with a poem about Petra which won the Newdigate Prize for Poetry in Oxford in 1845 :

Petra

John William Burgon

It seems no work of Man's creative hand,

by labor wrought as wavering fancy plnned;

But from the rock as by magic grown,

eternal, silent, beautiful, alone!

Not virgin-white like that old Doric shrine,

where erst Athena held her rites divine;

Not saintly-grey, like many a minster fane,

that crowns the hill and consecrates the plain;

But rose-red as if the blush of dawn,

that first beheld them were not yet withdrawn;

The hues of yough upon a brow of woe,

which Man deemed old two thousand years ago,

match me such marvel save in Eastern clime,

a rose-red city half as old as time.