Ramadan Karem

Huge rounded red rocks surrounded us, as the hot desert sun was beating down. We walked through the sandy-bottomed valley, which once had water flowing through this ravine many, many years ago. This was our second day of hiking in the Jordan desert en route to Little Petra. While I was thirsty now, I couldn’t stop thinking about the many people who were participating in Ramadan. Ramadan is the Muslim tradition of fasting from sunrise until sunset, even water is forbidden. However the holiday is more than fasting. It is a month of prayer, restraint and forming a stronger relationship with Allah, (the islamic god). The holiday is also called the holy month. Muslims believe that in 610 A.D., the angel Gabriel appeared to Prophet Muhammad and revealed to him the Qurʾān, the Islamic holy book. That night is referred to as the night of power.

Suddenly we stopped.

“What is it?” I asked.

“A snake,” my dad replied. Our guide leapt out of the sand and walked on a rock a few feet above. I couldn’t get a glimpse of the snake but I wasn’t sure what to expect. I got up on the rock and looked back to see the snake. At first I didn’t see it. Where is it? Then my eyes found it.

“Oh.” It was like a garden snake, or maybe a worm. Either way, it was super small, and sorta flailing around. Our guide even asked if we wanted him to kill the snake.

“What? No!” My dad exclaimed. I could see why, this fellow was about the width of a finger, and pretty short. There are poisonous snakes in Jordan, but this clearly wasn’t one of them.

After the “snake” spot we kept on walking through the valley. A few times we had to climb over boulders and big rocks. I looked up seeing the cloudless blue sky peeking through the rocks that were marbled with light and dark shades of red and orange. I saw the trail suddenly cut straight up, and out of the valley. That doesn't look great, I thought while I craned my neck to see it all. We had already climbed up a lot, but I knew there was more. I just didn’t expect this. We saw the road we were walking on farther ahead earlier in the day. We asked our guide, Omar (who spoke next to no English, but still more than I spoke Arabic), if that was the way. He used some translation app on his phone, however when the robot voice read it back to us, it said “Even in Morocco.” As Omar looked at us with a confident smile, we exchanged a confused look, and stifled a laugh. Of course, we had no idea where we were going, how long, or how far. Well, maybe we will end up in Morocco, who knows. Certainly not us. We were just following blind. We deciphered that we would stay on this road, however minutes later, we cut off from it. Well, we don’t really know what’s going on anymore.

We started to climb up and over the lip of the wadi, which we learned is just a dry, or sometimes wet valley. So really just a valley. Even though it was steep, it was mostly in the shade which was nice, considering the heat. Luckily, Jordan is VERY dry and it is never humid, which is what we have at home. I sucked at the straw of my camelbak, remembering our last trekking adventure in Nepal. This one is very different. From the views, to the food, to the elevation. This hike is extremely beautiful, just not in the same way. There are definitely not 29,000 foot, snow covered mountains. Here there have been mountains of red rocks and desert plants, where you can see miles and miles of sand and some valleys and mountains.

I mean, the food on Everest Base Camp was good, but it got old fast. On this trek we have had a lot of very sweet tea. There is so much sugar, I think they turn the cup upside down like a Dairy Queen blizzard, and if the tea stays in, it’s good to go. The elevation is low, no one was getting H.A.C.E. here. We think that our highest point was 4,500 feet. In comparison, Kathmandu's elevation is 4,593 feet, and that wasn’t even the starting point of the Everest Base Camp trek.

I remembered when we started this morning, it seemed like so long ago. I wondered if that’s what people who participate in Ramadan think. Ramadan starts every morning before sunrise around 4:00 am. This meal is called suhoor. The morning prayer is called fajr and it is around 5:00 am. It is recommended that for suhoor you eat vegetables and fruits, which are high in fiber and other foods, like rice and meat. In addition, you should drink milk because it contains protein.

I realized that I was over halfway up. Or at least I thought, but who is to know on this trek. Huffing my way up the hill I turned back to see beautiful shades of red, yellow and a little green. Once we got to what looked like the top from down below, we realized that there was so much more. False summits--doh! After a small bump, we saw we had to climb up something that looked a lot like what we just finished. I sighed. This trail was covered with small rocks and pebbles, from the size of a fist or smaller. Sliding every few steps and after an additional hour, we finally made it up.

All of a sudden we started walking on a road. Where did this come from? I thought, as the walking became easier. Continuing up the road was nice. It was kinda steep, but it was paved. Then Omar (our guide) gestured and basically said that the road hurt his feet. Wait?! How does that work? So, we had to take a “shortcut” straight up. Ahh yes, this is much better, I thought as I kept rolling back down the hill on the rocks that were everywhere. THIS ISN’T A TRAIL! I angrily thought while huffing up the hill. I looked to the right only to see the nice paved road. That’s just mean, I thought.

We continued on our “shortcut”, not really sure where we were going, but the views were beautiful. Following our guide who seemed to be walking a little too confidently, now on a flat gravel road, I turned around and found that I could see where we started this morning. It looked far. It had been almost 2 hours since we had run into the nice paved road, on top of the six hours we had already walked. Eight hours already! Suddenly our guide slowed down, I had been so focused on the views that I hadn’t realized we’d stopped. I bumped into my mom's backpack. Startled, I shook the daze from my head. He gestured towards a truck in the distance. “Maybe my brother,” he said. His brother was the one who drove to the places we stayed with the food and the bags. So if that is him, we are close, I thought, when we started walking again.

I distracted myself from the walking with the views that spanned for miles and miles. Looking out closest to us were red rock cliffs and peaks. Stretching beyond that, was endless sand, dust and rocks. A few small villages and towns were scattered in the far distance. The heat was slightly fading, the brightness however, wasn’t. In fact, the name Ramadan stems from the Arabic root “ar-ramad,” which means scorching heat. I can believe it means scorching heat, since in the later summer months it definitely gets extremely hot in the Middle Eastern countries.

At last, we reached the road leading down to what we realized were a few camps, including ours. Walking down to our truck, we first passed a few other camps, at which point, we realized that everyone else's camp setup was nicer than ours. We walked past a camp where there were lots of small tents for everyone to sleep, and a large bedouin tent to eat and hang out. In addition, they had a porta potty and a shower. A shower! After walking all day in the sun and dust a shower would be really nice. However, we kept walking past other camps until we made it to ours. Waa-waa-waaaaa! No shower, no bedouin tent, and no bathroom.

Omar's brother greeted us with a hello. “Hey!” We responded, trying our best not to sound sad as we looked over our shoulder at the other, seemingly better camps. Our camp had two small tents, a blanket with some thin cushions on it, and the truck. We were right on a cliff with shocking views. Luckily, on the bright side, (literally) to see the sunset all we had to do was look off the cliff. We sat there for a while, waiting for the sun to go down. At last, sunset began. Soon, everyone participating in Ramadan could eat, drink, and smoke, including our driver. After sunset, the driver gulped some mango juice, ate some dates, and smoked a cigarette. Ahhh, at last, is what I pictured him thinking. Our guide however was not participating in Ramadan. This was clear since he constantly smoked and ate with us. Most people break their fast with water and dates because that is what the Prophet Mohammad had to break his fast. The Prophet Mohammed was the founder of Islam and the proclaimer of the Qurʾān, Islam's sacred scripture.

Since the light was beautiful, I took some sunset shots of our camp and the brother, Yasser, who was cooking something for dinner. At last the sun set behind the horizon. I could imagine the call to prayer echoing through the cities as people prepared to eat. The call to prayer comes from a minaret or a beacon (which is the Arabic word), five times a day. The towers are always attached to a mosque. If you look at a mosque there is the main part which consists of a building with a colored dome roof. The minaret is the tall tower connected to the mosque. A minaret has many speakers on it as well as a small balcony of sorts. The person talking is called a crier. The Islamic call to prayer basically says this, (with some lines repeated up to four times) God is great! I bear witness that there is no god except the one god. I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God. Hurry to the prayer. Hurry to salvation. It’s interesting how in various locations the call to prayer is so different, even in the same country. Sometimes it goes on for ten minutes but others it lasts for two.

During Ramadan, there are exceptions for the people who fast. You don’t have to fast if you are a young kid (most kids are suggested to start participating by the age of 14 or so. However, many kids see family members participating, and want to join in much earlier.) You also don’t have to fast if you are traveling, pregnant, if sick or have long term health issues. However if you are celebrating Ramadan and miss a day of fasting, you can make it up later. For example, if you miss 5 days for some reason, you can make up those five days after the official month has ended. Either all at once, or throughout the rest of the year.

While the sunlight was gone, it wasn’t yet dark. We prepared our camp for when the blanket of black would fall; tucking us into the darkness until morning. Before I realized it, the last wisps of light were gone and replaced with hanging stars and bright moonlight. The moon was beginning its arc through the sky.

Tonight the moon was almost full which meant that Ramadan was halfway over, because it starts and ends with the crescent moon. The Islamic calendar is lunar instead of solar, which is why Ramadan is oriented around the moon. This particular year it started on April second, and ends May second. However, every year is different from the one before. Last year it was April twelfth, too May twelfth. One thing that is always consistent is the length, one month.

After a dinner of vegetarian gallayah, we got ready to sleep. Gallayah are vegetables cooked with spices in tomato sauce. To us, two of the three times we had gallayah, it tasted like campbells soup. Finally we got in our tent, got situated, and we went to bed-- everything was fine, for now.

My eyes flickered open. Wind howled outside and one half of the tent was blown flat across us. The tent cover flapped loudly outside. I remembered that we were only a yard or two from the edge of the cliff. Oh my gosh! Oh my Gosh! I thought, hoping that we wouldn’t blow down the hill. It was dark. My mom and I thought “we saw a light” out of the side of the tent.

“Hello?” I said. “Hello! Anyone?” I slightly unzipped the door to find, it was the moon. I giggled. How embarrassing. My mom and I were having a constant battle with the tent -- the wind flattened it to the point of making it feel like a body bag, which seemed appropriate considering the cliff was just a few feet to my right. After an endless battle with mother nature, I was tired. At some point, I fell asleep and woke up to the prayer call at 5:00 a.m. When I came to and realized I survived, I found I was covered in dirt. It was in my teeth, my hair, my ears, my hoodie, everywhere. As I shook the dirt from my hoodie we packed up. The wind was still so strong, we had to hold down the tent when we packed it up, so it wouldn’t blow away. It was way too windy to eat here, so we started to walk down the trail for about 20-30 minutes, so we could eat.

The last day of hiking only took 4-5 hours, albeit with amazing scenery. Along the way, we met some Australians and walked with them, which made the time go by faster. Before we knew it we had arrived in little Petra and completed our trek. A totally different experience than the last trek in Nepal, but still worth doing. The pictures can’t really capture how beautiful it is. While it was hot and dusty, it was also a neat way to experience the desert. Now we are off to Petra, to see the famous treasury, and maybe Indiana Jones.

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The Trail Looked Flat on the Map

The Sunshine Nomad