Damascus to Amman

Aqaba, Jordan

 
(Wow, I'm way behind in my updates. This update is for Monday, December 5th...)

After two and a half days in Damascus, I was ready to move on. Damascus wasn't nearly as interesting to me as Aleppo was and since I hadn't really met any other travelers in the hostel, I didn't see a need to stay much longer. I also only had another day on my visa and didn't think it was worth going through the trouble of getting an extension. So Monday morning, I headed for Amman, Jordan, but not the way most people go...

 

After riding buses from throughout Turkey and Syria, I was looking at alternative ways for getting from Damascus to Amman. Not that there's anything wrong with the bus, in fact in the Middle East the buses are really well run and even serve you drinks (water/tea) and sometimes even food on board! Rather I was just looking to "try something different", since that's pretty much the entire reason to travel. After a bit of research, I learned that there is a train that runs weekly from Damascus to Amman and back. Named the "Heja Railway", you can read all about it here, or see a bunch of pictures that someone took here.

 

Frankly, I'd never heard of the Hejaz railway before, I guess among histories and train aficionado's, the Hejaz is rather famous. So, Monday morning around 6.45am, I hoped in a taxi in downtown Damascus and headed towards the outskirts of town to the Qadam Train Station, in search of the train. Just about everybody that I had told in Damascus that I was taking the train thought I was nuts. Some locals didn't even know there was a train. All said I should just take the bus, but I was determined to be different. And besides, I didn't have anything else to do all day so why not try something different... Many hours later, I would learn why the locals take the bus.

 

Things started off simple enough with the taxi getting me right to the station without any problems, though for double the price that the hotel said it should cost, which is probably about right because the hotels always seem to underestimate costs like that. (When the price is triple, then you know you've been had. Just double means that you got the normal non-locals rate, so that's pretty good). At the ticket office, the agent asks me right away if I'm going to Amman. Surprised, I tell him "yes" and he gives me this pointing arm/hand motion that is about as accurate as the one that airline attendants use when pointing out the emergency exits on board the plane. I figure he's telling me that I need to head to another ticket office, but at 7am in the morning I'm not really understanding where he's pointing. After a few seconds, he summons someone sitting down in the waiting area and has a quick chat with him. This individual, who speaks more English then the ticket agent, tells me to follow him to the other office. Cool, gotta love the friendly locals. 

 

So this guy, who's name is Omar, starts walking out across the parking lot, back towards the entrance to the station, then out onto the sidewalk. Strange, but I figure maybe the Amman train leaves from another track or entrance. We walk about 200m down the street (there's a wall all around the station) to another entrance, but this time it's to a small parking lot with a few mini-buses in it. At first I'm thinking that they don't understand I want to take the train, but after I see Omar talking with some other agent, I notice that the agent is pointing back to the direction we just came from. Not good and I instantly realize that this is going to be a long day. 

 

So Omar and I walk back 200m to the main entrance, then continue on another 200m (I think the train station is symmetric or something) to another small parking lot with more mini-buses in it. It's basically a mirror of the previous place and again, the agents point back to the direction we just came from. 

 

At least Omar is sort of laughing, because I'm pretty much lost since neither of these agents speak English. (Few travelers in Syria take the train since the buses are so much faster and in many cases, cheaper.) Omar and I head back to the main ticket office for some more guidance. This time, there's a different agent on duty who again does a strange "out the door and to the left" hand wave. This time, Omar and I literally go out the door and immediately left, following up a set of stairs in the adjacent building. A quick knock on the door, followed by, I think "Come in", and we're inside the control tower for the station. There's one guy,somewhat startled to see us, who is washing his face or something, with the main track switchboard in front of him. I guess since no trains were coming or going, he figured it was a good time to freshen up. 

 

Anyways, this is obviously not the right place and again he does a sort of "out and to the left" hand wave. At this point I'm thinking that maybe Omar is the problem, but he's all I've got so I keep supporting him. We walked down from the control tower and headed along the platform where somebody who I think worked at the station starts off with the friendly "Hello" and "Where are you from?". I quickly dispersed with the formalities and asked him where to get the train to Amman. He again does that damn hand wave but this time he includes a little English with it. Turns out, you have to go along the platform to the pedestrian overpass, take the overpass to track "one or two", and wait there. 

 

With Omar in tow, we head over to a small building that looks like it could be an office of some sort, which is attached to a huge garage where they repair the locomotives. I'm still not convinced we've found the right spot, but this train station really isn't all that big and there aren't that many other places to explore. We see yet another station worker who finally just tells us to sit on the bench outside the small office and to wait for the train, it will arrive. That's the best news I'd heard all morning. 

 

Shortly there after, I actually see the passenger car, which I recognized from these photos, getting attached to the locomotive and now I'm convinced we're in the right place, even though I still don't have a ticket. After some more talking with Omar, I learn that he actually doesn't work for the train station and is actually waiting to catch an 8am train to Aleppo. Turns out the ticket agent just asked him to help me and he did. So Omar, if you're reading this, thanks for sticking with me for almost an hour, I couldn't have found it without you.

 

As the locomotive rumbled towards where I was sitting, a station master showed up to sell me a ticket. Folks, this was old school, as he pulled out a huge ledger from under the desk to manually enter in my passport information. The ticket was almost as old and 210 Syrian Pounds later (about 4US dollars) I had my ticket for Amman.

 

You really need to look at the above websites to get an idea for the train. It's essentially just a freight train with a single, ancient, passenger car attached at the front. For the Damascus to Jordan section, the passenger car had 6 small cabins in it. Each with two benches facing each other. The springs in the benches were just about to burst through the leather, most of the windows in the train were broken, many didn't go up and then entire car had a solid layer of dust in it. I was the only traveler on the car, accompanied by about 3-4 police or army personnel who were catching a ride down south. They cozied up in a cabin with some hot tea, while I staked out the only cabin who's window actually went up and who's sliding door actually closed. Without that room, it would have been a really cold train ride. Around 8am, the train slowly pulled out of the station and I was on my way to Amman...

 

Right away, one of the army guys comes up to me and in broken English basically tells me not to take any pictures until we leave the city. The reason is that for the next hour or so, the train slowly creeps through the outskirts of Damascus, passing several military bases along the way. I guess the Syrians are weary of anyone taking pictures of their completely rundown, litter filled military installations. I actually just spent some of the time curled up on the bench sleeping the morning away since I didn't feel like standing and there was no way I could sit such that I didn't get some spring right up my ass. So I laid down, and slept on and off till around noon, when we reached the Jordanian border.

 

The train station at the border is pretty small but the town is sort of happening. There's a souq right nearby and quite a lot of pedestrian activity immediately behind the station. It has that sort of "last change to buy shit" feeling before you get into Jordan. I took the down time to grab some lunch while they played musical cars with the trains to get the Jordan train configured. (It's a different train to go from the border to Amman then from Damascus to the border).

 

The entire time I'm trying to keep track of where my passport is. Like most border crossings, you place an incredible amount of faith in "the system" when it comes to your passport. Basically, you give your passport to someone who looks sort of official and hope that you see it again. My passport got handed off several times, at one time I saw some military looking guy just wandering around the train tracks with it in his hands (which was strangely reassuring to just see it). I kept asking when I got it back and was always told something along the lines of "it's on the train". I'd respond with "No, it's not on the train." In the end, I sort of figured that I'd get it back once I got on the train.

 

After about 2 hours of waiting, the Jordan bound train was ready. Myself and about a dozen other locals, carrying everything from lettuce to PVC tubing, boarded one of the three passenger cars. We were also joined by about 3-4 Jordanian police, who would be our "escort" through the border zone and on into Amman. One of them was carrying my passport, which pretty much made my day. I was hoping for an improvement in cabin quality but sadly the Jordanian train is actually worse. The cars are cleaner, and actually sort of nice, but the only seats are wooden park benches that line the side of the car. No rooms, no padding, no forward/backward facing seats. Just wooden park benches along the side. Oh, and I think the car was built right around the time suspension was invited. It had some, but barely.

 

After about 1 hour of train travel, we arrived at the Jordanian border town for passport control. I didn't have a visa, but I knew ahead of time that I could purchase one at the border. Surprisingly, the Jordanian border offce wanted Jordanian Diners, not American or other "hard currency" like Turkey wanted. Well I didn't have any JD's so we needed to exchange some US dollars to Jordanian Diners. The border police were really friendly and laid back and kept saying "Don't worry, we can exchange money." Ok, I thought, no problem them. As I followed the border officer around the platform, I slowly clued in that he was asking other people to take me into town to show me the currency exchange office. Of course, nobody wanted to do that, but ultimately he did find a young boy who took me for a 10 minute walk into town to find the local Western Union branch, where I happily exchanged my US dollars for JD's and was able to purchase the visa when I returned to the station. With a visa stamp (and literally, it's an actual postage stamp), I got back on the train and it continued on it's way, this time through the Jordanian desert.

For the first time all trip, I finally got to experience what I was hoping the train ride would provide... Open air travel through the desert. I had envisioned standing at the end of train, on the balcony behind the passenger car, as the train passed through the desert and finally, once past Jordanian immigration I was finally able to do that.

Turns out, it's not as romantic as you think. It's rather loud, dusty and extremely bumpy, but still, I did get a little of what I was looking for. There was a rather nice sunset that night and as the sky grew darker it became clear that the passenger car had no lights. Apparently the electrical system wasn't working so the local "do-it-all handyman" attached a generator to the back of the last engine, then rang a long extension cord from there to a connector behind the passenger car, which in turn connected to the second car and provided us with light. Well, flickering light to put it mildly. Originally, back when we first boarded the Jordanian train, I had thought this handyman was trying to steal one of the only cushions in the car, but it turns out he's some "ninety" year old MacGyver and basically knows the train and the cars inside all. Go figure.

It turns out that like many things in life, the last 10% is the hardest. As the train neared the first of several towns on the outskirts of Amman, it had to slow down to a crawl because there were few, if any, railway crossing guards. So the train literally had to make sure that the traffic in both directions was stopped before proceeding. Since the train was going so slow, the cars figured they had enough time to keep crossing, so the train slows down even more. This pattern repeated itself until we're going so slow that one of the train engineers was walking in front of the engine waving at the cars to hold their positions! All the while, the horn was going non-stop, just for added good measure.

As we got more into the town/city, one of the accompanying Jordanian police officers asked me to move over a little bit. Since the car was almost empty, and there was plenty of space to my right and left, I thought it was a rather odd thing to ask. Turns out, it was for my safety. The policeman went on to explain that it wasn't wise to sit in such a way that your head was in front of a window. The reason is that all the local kids like to throw rocks and stones at the passing train! In the past, many of the stones have hit the window and in some cases crashed through it, injuring whoever was sitting in front of it.

Sure enough, as we got further into town, the kids started lining up alongside the tracks, rocks and stones in hand, just waiting to make their throw. The police, who until now didn't really seem to have a reason for being on the train, were now outside in full force on the front and rear decks shooing the kids away.

We managed to safely make it through several of these towns and finally pulled into Amman shortly after 7pm that night, some 11+ hours after I had started and nearly 7 hours after the bus would have arrived.

At the station, one of the workers helped me hail a taxi, because unlike most train stations, the one in Amman is deserted and not anywhere near the downtown.

The taxi driver was supposed to know where he was going, but it turns out he didn't really, nor did I. Really, I just wanted him to get me to a certain intersection, from where I could figure out how to get to the hostel, but somehow we ended up in the 5 star hotel region. Luckily I had noticed a placed called the "Internet Yard" not far back which was on my Lonely Planet map. You really only need one landmark on a map to get yourself going in the right direction. I had the driver take me there, then walked the rest of the way to my hostel, which turned out to be on the street we had passed earlier. (The train station guy knew what he was talking about when he quoted me the price, the taxi driver didn't... /sigh)

The hostel was down a narrow alley, easily missed because the sign was drowned out by a dozen or so other store and restaurant signs hanging nearby. I nearly missed it had I not look up to read the sign of a passing restaurant.

By around 8pm or so, I was checked into the Cliff Hostel and ready to start exploring Amman...

Kenny