It’s all about courtesy

If a bedouin in Jordan offers you a coffee, you must accept it. “You have to drink the first cup,” explains Ali Hasaseen – it’s basic manners.

“But you should consider more carefully whether you want to drink the next cup. If you drink the second cup, you’re promising to stand by your host’s side in battle,” Hasaseen continues with a laugh.

The whole Bedouin family is gathering to greet visitors to the Dana Nature Reserve in Jordan. Father Muhammad Hasaseen roasts the coffee beans, then brews the coffee and rings the bell to call together any neighbours who might want a cup – another ancient ritual in this part of the world.

But today only the family is present. 

The journey to meet the Bedouin clan begins at the top of a mountain, in the 15th-century village of Dana. It’s then a hike of five to eight hours through a canyon to the valley where Hasaseen’s family lives.

The path, which reaches heights of more than 1,000 metres, winds its way down through steep cliffs and along dried-up river beds and bare fields, the stillness only occasionally broken by the bells of herds of goats. 

Today there’s only one group on the trek, perhaps because Jordan borders not just on Israel, the occupied West Bank, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but also on Syria with its rebel armies and above all the Islamic State.

“The tourists don’t see the difference. They lump the whole region in together,” says tour guide Aiman Tadros. “But Jordan is safe.” 

The stagnation in tourist numbers can also be seen at the ad-Deir monastery in Petra, the city famous for its monumental architecture half cut into the rock.

Despite being a Unesco World Heritage site and one of the new Seven Wonders of the World, there are no tourists in sight, just a donkey ambling by.

Jordan’s tourism industry is in crisis – tour guides say that visitor numbers are only around 30 per cent of what they were in 2010. 

“Nobody used to be able to stand here for long or take a photo in peace,” says tour guide Tadros, pointing at the Treasury.

The Jordanians are doing their best to adapt. There are security checks at hotel entrances and the tourism board has launched a marketing campaign that includes a visitor pass giving free entrance to 40 tourist attractions.

The Bedouin live in one of the most unusual places in Jordan, perhaps the world: the Wadi Rum desert, also known as the Valley of the Moon, where the landscape is so unearthly that a Hollywood blockbuster, The Martian, about an astronaut stranded on Mars, was filmed here.

The Wadi Rum is a valley surrounded by weirdly shaped granite, basalt and sandstone mountains up to 1,750 metres high, with naturally formed bridges, canyons and ravines. 

Here too, tourism has taken a hit. The area surrounding Wadi Rum was once prepared for regular bus loads of tourists – the enormous parking lot is a testament to that. 

Today, though, it’s home to just four buses, none of them full.

 

IF YOU GO

< Check out the Jordan Tourist Board’s website at (http://uk.visitjordan.com).