Greencaviar Travel

I had to improvise a headdress from a yellow bandana to put under my gray Calvin Klein hat. It was a fashion paux pas   but I had to cover the back of my neck. It was hot, I was sweating bullets. We just entered the Siq at Petra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Jordan, famous for its rock-cut architecture. Our first stop was in front of the small intricately carved openings in the rock face: Carved into the sandstone hill by the Nabataeans in the second century A.D., the structure that started as a temple may have been used as a church or monastery in the later centuries. Our guide's explanation about the place was interrupted by the hooves of horses as they pulled carriages carrying tourists who were unable to walk along the rock-walled alley.    Meanwhile, a fellow tourist told me that we were seeing the opening scene from the movie 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade '. Thank God, I had not seen the movie or it would have clouded my impression of an amazing...

We were traveling on what seemed to be a modern highway (Highway 35) when our guide announced, “We are traveling on the Kings Highway, one of the oldest roads in the world. It stretches 335 kilometers from Amman to the southern region of Aqaba.”  The highway is mentioned in the bible (Numbers 20:17 Please let us pass through your country. We will not pass through fields or vineyards, nor will we drink water from wells; we will go along the King's Highway ; we will not turn aside to the right hand or to the left until we have passed through your territory." Mt. Nebo and Madaba We took a detour to Madaba to see Mt. Nebo where Moses stood and gazed over the Promised Land that he was not allowed to enter after leading his people through the desert for forty years. Today, we gazed at the endless horizon. The view has an eerie dead calm like the Dead Sea. We could actually see the Judean hills and the Dead Sea from our vantage point. #1.  A view from Mt. Nebo ...

The Holy Land:  The Dead Sea and Qumran The "Health SPA" Dead Sea We started our pilgrimage with a relaxing stay at the Dead Sea Spa Hotel. The hotel was located along a beach resort area in Jordan, alongside Kempinski, Marriott and other luxury/SPA hotels.  After settling into my hotel room, I immediately went for a swim. There was no talk about the Dead Sea as it relate to the Bible at that point, nor information about the Dead Sea, except a warning from a co-pilgrim, Mrs. L, a walking Wikipedia or Britannica Encyclopedia.  She told me not to stay in the water for more than three minutes at a time. She had a wealth of information and told me that sunbathing was safe, "The Dead Sea is the only place when one can sunbathe for extended period of time with little or no sunburn because harmful ultraviolet rays are filtered through an extra atmospheric layer and evaporated layer that exist above the sea rather than the thick ozone layer".  I was surprised ho...

I don’t really want to talk about religion, but my most recent trip involved faith and religion. I’m always open to all kinds of religious beliefs because I believe that all kinds of religion expound on the same essential truth – the individual relationship with nature, with other people and with God. I believe that everyone has the right to worship their God the way they want as long as they do not hurt others. For me, I chose to remain and worship my God in the church/religion that my parents introduced me to, but as I get older, I start to lose my faith in the church. Thinking that I needed some sort of spiritual reawakening, I joined a pilgrimage to the Holy Land organized by our local parish priest. Sadly, the so-called pilgrimage turned out to be not a pilgrimage but a tour to the Holy Land. I did not feel like a pilgrim, but a tourist that fell into a “trap.” The line between commerce and religious was fuzzy from the very beginning. The fact that the trip was marketed as ‘Spe...