The Land Beyond

Travel Guide

In the West Bank, he met families struggling to lead normal lives amidst political turmoil and had a surreal encounter with the world’s oldest and smallest religious sect. In Jordan, he visited the ruins of Hellenic citadels and trekked through the legendary Wadi Rum. His journey culminated in the vast deserts of the Sinai, home to Bedouin tribes and haunted by the ghosts of Biblical history. The Land Beyond is a journey through time, from the quagmire of current geopolitics to the original ideals of the faithful, through the layers of history, culture and religion that have shaped the Holy Land. But at its heart, it is the story of people, not politics and of the connections that can bridge seemingly insurmountable barriers.

Some of the trails

Jordan

The Jordan trails grew into existence alongside an emergent hiking trail amongst local Jordanians and its route was initially based on a plan drawn up by British Climber Tony Howard and his wife.

Nablus
Sky Trails – Our path followed a long saddle from the summit of Bayseed to that of Mount Hureish where we rested by another maqam and then descended in to the town of Sanur.

Jenin trail
The trail itself runs from Jenin in the north to Hebron in the south and snakes through the West Bank

Amman
Amman is a wonderful city, the sort of place where it is frustrating to spend such a limited time – visiting, even for a month, seemed only to open the window the possibilities. Oddly aside from the opinion of the city’s own in habitants, who love it unconditionally, it does not seem all that well liked.

Petra

Now we call it Petra, which in Greek means fittingly, ‘rock’ Petra, one of the seven modern wonders of the world, ranks among the most famous and recognizable

Wadi rum

I’ve always found that at the margins of inhospitable terrain lie some on the kindest people and Wadi Rum was no exception

Aqaba

The present day incarnation is a combinations of ancient natural boundaries to the west  the river from which ti takes its name and beyond that, the Dead Sea and Wadi Araba leading south to the Gulf of Aqaba and the most arbitrary of lines in the sand to the east – drawn after WW1 as Britain and France agreed their sphere of influence.

Nuweibaa

Musallem and Austin walked through the Wadis in the coastal range near this town in Sinai. The town faces on the Gulf of Agaba and looks across to the mountains of the Hijaz in Saudi Arabia.