March 2020
It’s been several posts now that I mention the mysterious trip to Jordan that marked the end of an era and started something new and different. I’m talking about the thing that impacted literally everybody in the world – the coronavirus pandemic. After the trip around Iceland in 2015 we decided that the next BIG cycling adventure would be in Jordan, and it took us four years of dreaming and postponing until finally setting the date… Which collided with the lockdown on the whole planet. In hindsight, our decision to go to Amman no matter what, despite disturbing news and a clear disaster with toilet paper and pasta supply happening that very moment in London, seems particularly dumb but who could possibly imagine how this whole coronavirus thing would unfold?
So just in the middle of the panic, countries shutting down one after another, we still took that plane to Jordan hoping to wait this covid-hysteria out. Empty roads of Jordan with a desert as travel companion – wasn’t it the best place to hide ourselves from the virus?
*Bitter laugh from October 2021*
What happened next is easy to guess – we spent two full almost carefree days exploring Amman and every time we sat down to scroll the news, felt both bewildered and unconcerned, and secretly delighted that we didn’t stay in London with our flatmates for this madness. It didn’t last long though. On the third day all sightseeing spots were shut down for a “disinfection” that wasn’t supposed to last longer than a week. On the fourth day the restaurants followed, then delivery, and then a total lockdown in the whole country was announced. We had to think what to fill our days with having nothing but our cycling equipement and freezing to death in a cold airbnb.
At that point we didn’t think about our trip, we didn’t regret or complain – there was something going on much bigger than us and our plans. The tandem stayed in its box without ever being unpacked. When food shopping became impossible too, we had to admit that it would probably last longer than we naively thought. Luckily, the French Embassy together with other European embassies in Jordan were organizing an evacuation and put our names on the list of the willing to leave.
The worst part about it was that we weren’t allowed to take our tandem with us as it was oversized baggage and nobody wanted to take care of it, which at that point was absolutely comprehensible. The poor thing had to stay one year in the cellars of the French embassy before we found a way to bring it back to France and reunite it with our bicycle family.
It took another half a year to fully realize the loss. Once the Covid-19 danger was less intense, it dawned on me that we couldn’t fulfill our dream even after coming so far and we won’t be able to do so for at least another three years. Hence this article that came from the bottom of my personal grief and indignation against the circumstances that can’t always be controlled – that’s the way the life goes. With all bad consequences of the pandemic for billions of people, ours is not that bad and we both admit it. I simply wish it had happened differently.
As for Amman, we had quite a good overlook of the city in two and a half days of freedom. Amman is so different from what we are used to see on our travels that it felt like a cinema setting or rather a whole new planet. Houses looking like yellow boxes scattered across the hills – walking through those made us cheer our decision to wear proper hiking boots. Ironically, Amman turned to be impossible to cycle. I think it actually isn’t. It felt weird – coming to Jordan and staying only in Amman, leaving other more famous treasures like Petra and Wadi Rum deserts for later. Later.
In the end, everything was for the best – if we stayed in London, we would definitively have had a horrible time locked in a shared flat. Instead, we were evacuated to France where we could stay in a big family house in Pau, took two lovely chickens, explored Béarn and Pays Basque (the articles are yet to come!), learned to surf and did completely different things to what was initially planned. That is the beauty of life. As for Jordan, it will have to wait or it’s rather us who will have to wait, I guess.
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