Sunday, February 19, 2012

Walking the gauntlet

I finally made it from Jordan to Egypt and the journey took only an hour and a half but definitely memorable. Omar, my agent's, man in Aqaba and his driver picked me up from my hotel and drove me to the Israeli border. Except for me, Omar and the guards on duty, it was absolutely deserted. After paying a small departure tax and leaving the Jordanian security checkpoint I walked the very exposed 200m strip of 'no-man's-land' luggage in tow, and headed to the Israeli guard tower. I badly wanted a photograph of both guard towers from the mid point but thought better of it. I had read that there had been threats of violence from Hamas here in 2011, and it was a beautiful day for an incident. Israeli security is very efficient and I went through the usual questioning and bag search, tax payment and I was through. An Israeli driver picked me up and drove the 30 minutes through the Israeli resort town of Eilat to the Egyptian border, and went through the same drill again. The contrast between the Israeli and Egyptians sides was startling.

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