Great castle, great hotel
Trip Start
Sep 17, 2007
1
219
272
Trip End
Oct 08, 2008
Karak,
Jordan
Sunday, July 13, 2008
After taking a rather dubious taxi to the south bus station (excuse me taxi driver, but why are you driving in circles?), we found a bus preparing to head to Karak. It was significantly more expensive than the minibus was supposed to be, but there didn't seem to be many options so we climbed aboard.
About two hours later we rounded a corner and the castle of Karak came into view. I love castles and this one was fairly ugly but still quite impressive looking
a great view
. It was perched on a triangular spur of a flat-topped mountain, where a deep ditch was used to protect it from the town that resided on the rest of the mountain. We were dropped off at the bottom of the hill and were left looking up at the hulking beast. We caught a lift in a minibus which zoomed up the hill and dropped us off farther from the castle than we had been originally. So we humped our bags through the town and found the Towers Castle Hotel. More than any other country, Jordan seems to have enacted a lot of changed since our guidebook was published in 2006. Apparently immediately after the book was published, the authorities relocated several bus stations, got rid of all cheap dorms, and stopped offering student discounts (students could get 50% off at Petra when the book was written, but now there are no student tickets). This is a huge blow to students, since a three-day pass would be $50 instead of $100. That's mean. Anyway, in the spirit of change this hotel had got rid of dorms so backpackers would be forced to pay more for a room. It turned out the guy showing us around didn't own the hotel. In fact, he was from Egypt and his name was Sameer. Erin alternates between hating and loving Egypt, so if it had been the wrong day things might have worked out differently. But when he said he was from Egypt, I said we had just been travelling there and it was lovely
looking down at the walls
. I believe that the previous guests might have disliked Egypt in some fashion, because this conversation made us part of his family. He started by throwing in breakfast. Then he plied us with tea, told us all about where he lived in Egypt and gave us all kinds of good information about Karak. He was an interesting man, not stereotypically Egyptian at all, and with a quiet but dignified demeanor. He was a great host. After talking with him for a while we decided to go visit the castle, and stumbled into the tourist center looking for a map and ended up talking with the guys in there. One of them couldn't believe I had just graduated from university (my beard does make me look like I'm 30). From here we paid our 1 dinar to enter the castle. And it was a dinar well spent.
We started off with a small museum which explained some of the history of this castle. It was built by the Crusaders in the 12th century and was the scene of many battles between Saladin and the Europeans. When the castle fell it was occupied by the Muslims and they added their more decorative stonework to the rough, practical architecture of the crusaders.
The castle looks like a boring ruin at the surface. But the best part of the castle is the fact that most of the rooms and passageways were built underground. Therefore, you find an opening and wander into the darkness. You pass down three or four corridors, several rooms lit by skylights, and emerge at the other side of the castle, two levels up, and wonder how you got there. It was great fun wandering around through the atmospheric labyrinth. The views of the surrounding countryside were also amazing
the glacis and Mamluk keep
. At one of the corners was a stone carved by the Nabataeans 2000 years ago. It was a soldier's tomb but the Crusaders, using the stone for construction, had oriented so the carving was displayed, recognizing the guy as a warrior. It didn't look like much from the outside, but we passed a couple hours exploring the tunnels, rooms, and passageways. While Erin went back to the hotel I walked around the outside of the castle and up the opposing hill for a great view of the castle. I had seen it from the castle and marked it as a good point for a view and an elevated point for attacking the castle. I then read that it was Saladin's favorite place for launching artillery attacks. So I sat where Saladin had launched his boulders and looked at the impressive castle. The point where he had broken down the defenses he rebuilt into the Mamluk's Keep, the most fortified point of the castle. The huge glacis (the sloping lower part of the wall) was also interesting to see. These stones supported the wall, made it difficult for siege towers to reach the main wall and for soldiers to run up the slope. Also, if you dropped boulders from the wall, the slope of the glacis was designed to ricochet the stones outwards to hit troops protected from above. They were formidable defenses.Our Egyptian friend directed us down the street to a wonderfully cheap restaurant for a huge meal of chicken, bread, beans, and soup. Erin amused herself by taking pictures of the kids and trying to get them to take pictures themselves. It took the kid a little while to get the idea, but he always made sure he put his thumb on the lens. It was a lovely evening. We rushed up to the roof for a magnificent view of the countryside way below as the sun sunk below the horizon. A kid on a nearby rooftop constantly yelled "hello HELLO!" and waved whenever we were in view.
"You know," Erin told me, "It's great days like these that make travelling so amazing."
~Travis
