The adventure continues...

By now it's getting late and Taysir says that it's the same distance

to his village as it is to the entrance of Petra, and he asks us to

come back and have tea with his family in the Bedouin village,

 and he'll give us a lift back to the entrance in his uncle's truck.

Why not! And it was magical.

The sun was setting, we were the only people for miles around

 and we wend our way through the back f  the valley and look back

 at the monuments from our happy camels, with only a few sheep

and donkeys for company. Taysir gives us Arabic names (though

I've had mine for ages. In Bahraini slang shayna means ugly and

Zaina means beautiful, so no contest there...) and he sings at the

top of his voice, echoing through the valley. He sings of his love for

Zaina and Yasmine (aka Sylvia) and we sing Beatles songs back

and then we're silent and it's a perfect moment. So beautiful.

In the twilight, we begin to climb the steep rocky path that leads to his village just a few hundred yards away. It is very narrow... and I

already said steep and rocky, right? I see Sylvia's camel struggle a bit on a particularly steep and slippery rock and I hold on tight...  which does me no good at all because my camels back feet slip, his hump drops and the whole saddlew ith me on it, slips off the back of him. I fell flat on my back on one big rock, cracked my head on another. A festive fountain-likespurting came from my head, not that I noticed. Taysir leapt from his HUGEcamel, held my head and by the time I could see him, he was socovered in blood I thought he'd hurt himself too! And you should see the rock!

Anyway I had to lie there for a while, praying for a speedy death, but no such luck...

  All the time wondering, where the F*** is SYLVIA???

Eventually got up, realized that my head was being a  bit Quentin Tarentino, but was fine. It was my left arm/ shoulder that was really

painful, and that wasn't going to kill me.

(I feel I have to mention that I have a very low pain threshhold. iIm upset for at least a week if I stub my toe or get a paper cut. Just

saying "paper cut" makes me squeamish! So take this whole account with a pinch of salt.)

So I get to the village and Sylvia is there, and we have a cup of tea with Taysir's family .

 Sylvia was about to phone her boss to arrange an airlift. I am not joking!

I say I don't think that'll be necessary, but where have you been!?!

Poor Sylvia has had an adventure of her own. When Taysir heroically leapt from his lead camel to care for me, the line of camels kidnapped her. They just kept going. They were on their way home! Sylvia's stuckk in the middle  about 7 feet high, with absolutely no control crying STOP!!! . The last thing she saw was my head hit the rock. She thinks I'm dead, and she can't get the camels to stop. She gets as far as the village, and the Bedouin look on bemused. Finally a brave little boy figures out what's happening and bravely stands in their way... so they stop, but they just stand there being huge. Finally a man comes and with much hissing and spitting from all parties the camel sits down and Sylvia is released.

After tea, we get back to our driver who is having kittens, cos Petra's been closed for about an hour now and he has no idea where we are. We go to a government hospital close by and are very well taken care of. Lots of pictures, no broken bones, and the nurse gives me a pain-killer injection in my bum that creates a bruise about the shape and size of Africa. Still hurts!

So that was my camel related incident.

I went back to the hotel and had a long bath and a couple of whiskeys and Sylvia opened her M. Poppins bag and has arnica and ??? a massive variety of medicaments and ointments  and is so used to dressing and undressing children that she is completely unphased by having to do the same for me. And then  half-Italian Sylvia settled into the

Italian game shows. They're somethiing else again...quite amusing when you're a bit drugged and drunk!

We went back to Petra the next day. Taysir was waiting for us, so relieved and apologetic and thanking Allah for my life etc. etc. We

sat and had tea at a different uncle's tea shop, and he let game Sylvia ride his camel back to the entrance. I walked...