King’s Highway, Jordan

Continuing to avoid the stamp stigma meant a frustratingly long border crossing process to get from Jerusalem to Amman – separated by about an hour directly on the road. We took six.

We first took the bus to Ramallah again, in hopes that the Representative Office of Jordan would be open this time. But when we got there and asked for a taxi to the “embassy”, we were taken not to the office, which was quite some distance away, but merely around the corner, to what the taxi driver and the people at the building insisted was the Jordan embassy. Continue reading

West Bank, Palestinian Territory

We took two daytrips to the West Bank while still based in Jerusalem.

Our first excursion first led us to Ramallah, the de facto Palestinian capital, where Bernhard and I wanted to buy a Jordanian visa in advance.  (Again, this is to avoid the Israeli stamp stigma, which affects Jordan as well: if you get a stamp from a border that Jordan and Israel share, you may also be denied entry into various countries.)  This was a quick, uncomplicated bus ride from Jerusalem. Continue reading