Travels on a Donkey

Or perhaps it should be called Dicing wiith Death.  I don't think I have a reputation for being a daredevil and I am not known for indulging in white knuckle pursuits. But a couple of weeks ago, when we spent some time in Jordan and went to Petra, walking up 850 steps to the Monastery at the top of the mountain, seeemed a horrible prospect, so I opted for a donkey. After all, if Robert Louis Stevenson could use this mode of transport, so could I.

Well, I was not sure whether I would survive. We are talking of a gradient of, at a guess, one in two, steps which are often just narrow indentations hewn out of the mountain. We are talking about sheer rock on one side and an ever growing abyss on the other. We are talking about a make belief saddle with an iron loop to hang on to. Nothing as fancy as a bridle. The stirrups are shortened by twisting the (fraying) rope round and round and the only other and totally essential aid to staying alive, was my 22 year old Bedouin donkey owner.  With a tchk, tchk, tchk, he encouraged his four legged friend to keep going. With a "You are a very good lady", he encouraged me.

Talking to him - he said he spoke five languages including Japanese and Russian, all learned from tourists - kept my mind off the imminent death I feared but we got to the top, without me sliding off the donkey's rump. I celebrated by  drinking a whole bottle of water, took the obligatory photograph, recovered my wits. More or less.

If I could have taken a helicopter down, I would have but it was not an option. So back I climbed on to the donkey and this time my lovely Bedouin (and he was lovely) told me to hang on to the rope - thick rough string was more like it,  running back from the saddle and around Eeyore's tail. If you want something to leave a welt on the palm your hand, look no further!

But, with the donkey occasionally stumbling and having one leg dangling into the void before being coaxed back on to the crooked and narrow by Mohammed, hold onto it for dear life, I did. Even the odd lurch the other way, with one leg being jammed between the donkey's flank and the mountain, was a negligible inconvenience, all things considered.

Shooting over the donkey's head seemed almost inevitable but like James Bond, I thought  'never say die'. Was it him who said that?  Anyway, I didn't. I am here to tell the tale and I just have.