After spending the day exploring the rather magnificent Karak castle (a huge crusader Castle that made me want to yell Monty python esque threats to the invading hordes), we set off on the third stage with well rested legs.

This section has been the most impressive yet, with more lovely interactions with locals, remote wild camping and incredible rock formations.

The country out from Karak is noticeably drier than the North, and, as a result less populated and more dramatic looking.

The first day took us out along the edge of an escarpment, with sweeping views out over the potash farms at the tail end of the dead sea. It was super windy (gusts of >50km per hour) and really cold (about 8°c before windchill). We also had to detour a couple of times to give a wide birth to some over zealous guard dogs who where being too successful at defending their territory. So by the time we got to where we thought we might camp we were pretty tired.

The campsite was within view of a town, so we were initially a bit nervous. However, as we were setting up a shepherd passed on his way back to town, and in true Jordanian style simply glanced over and said ‘welcome’before continuing on his way.

On day 2, we packed up at first light, and set off for the nearest town to find some water. It was very small but spread out place, and we were amazingly lucky to bump into Sami, who was on his way to open his shop for the day. Like everyone seems to be in Jordan, he was incredibly nice and insisted on us sitting in front of the heater to warm up and making us turkish coffee before we left.

After our coffee it was time to head down into our first big wadi (Wadi Al Hasa), which dropped us around 1000 metres over a series of donkey tracks and steep rocky switchback roads.

After crossing the river at the bottom, we began the climb up past a beduin camp to a spot with absolutely stunning views and not a soul in sight.

Day 3 took us up out of the wadi, with a slow gradual climb back up over 1000m and again stunning walking. We opted for a hotel (Al Farez) in Ais (near Tafila), which turned out to be a university town with pretty good vibes, much to our surprise (even if the pastries were the first real duds of the trip).

Day 4 took us over rolling hills and into the town of Al-Beyda, where the local shopkeeper shared an apple with us, and a kid unloading tomatoes from a truck handed us one each as we walked past, with a huge smile on his face.

We then walked out past the abandoned village of Ma’tan, perched on a cliff edge and then down into a deep Wadi. The way down was steep, but followed a series of donkey tracks and old terraces.

It turned out the entire side of the wadi had been terraced in the distant past. A severe drought caused the community to be abandoned, but I suspect that the marginal soils here had also been eroded away. This seems to be a problem in several areas where goats have denuded entire hillsides and erosion is obvious.

Our campsite 3/4 of the way down was our most spectacular so far, with the deeply eroded sandstone making weird domes and fissures. As you can see in the photos below it was a bit like Girraween on steroids!

We finished the section in Dana at a very nice guesthouse run by the incredible Malik. Our bedroom has a terrace with the view below, and we are the only guests in the entire village!

We’ve now walked more than 210 km and climbed the equivalent of Mount Everest from sea level! Only 300km more to go!

Section summary:

12/01 Karak to Wadi Al-Mugair, 23km, 680m ascent, 450m descent, wild camp

13/01 Wadi Al-Mugair to Burbeita, 17.7km, 562m ascent, 1292m descent, wild camp

14/01 Burbeita to Ais, 19km, 850m ascent, 155m descent, Hotel Al-Fares

15/01 Ais to Ma’atan valley, 18.5km, 520m ascent, 932m descent, wild camp

16/01 Ma’tan Valley to Dana, 14.7km, 1054m ascent, 578m descent, Dana View Guest House.

Total so far = 212.9km, 9209m ascent, 8990 descent.