Feeling the fragility of life even when travelling.
It's incredible how sometimes you feel you received a signal to remind you how life is fragile,no matter where you are, what you're doing or with whom you are. During our visit of the archeological site of Petra,something very sad happened that marked me a lot.
We started our day full of energies and ready to discover the treasures that the Nabatean city hosts. Walking through the Siq was magic, it was like a preparation to something big, very big. When I saw El Khasneh, the temple which is in the common imaginary whenever we think about Petra, I immediately felt overwhelmed by its beauty. The perfect union between nature and humans, a masterpiecethat survived many centuries protecting something absolutely unique. I felt joyful tears in me.
Then, we decided to climb on the wall right in front of the Treasure to see it on another perspective, a much higher one that allows tourists to understand the proportions of the monument and the fact that it's really part of the limestone wall.
We were enjoying the view and talking about the security of the site. Petra became Unesco heritage in 1985 and the Treasure has been part of the New7Wonders of the World since 2007.
Despite its status, there are no real security measures, for example people can climb almost everywhere they want on the walls of the main pathway, there's almost no police around, no signs indicating that you need to be equipped and cautious while climbing.
And just before getting down from the wall to continue the visit, we heard people crying, tensions, I immediately understood there was something bad going on. I started thinking the worst, we were just talking about these security issues.I asked what was happening to a guy and he told me ''A rock felt down from the wall and hit a tourist''. Panic in me, I immediately felt so fragile,
I was such in a good mood, I was in front of the place I was dreaming about, I was feeling happy and all of a sudden it all disappeared in a black hole.
The victim was an Italian tourist on holidays with his friends, he must have been as me, so full of excitement and joy in the last moments of his life. I didn't want to see the scene, but it was enough for me to create a memory that I will never forget.
This accident brought us back to reality, reminding us that even while travelling, the thing that I love the most, we can't abandoned the consciousnessof the fragility of life.
As a tourism student I started thinking about this accident on a tourism perspective. it made me realise that a site that hosted 1 millions visitors in 2019 should have higher precautions, maybe allowing people to climb on a dangerous wall just to take a picture or have a better view of the monument, is not the best idea. Security comes first and this Country is just opening to international tourism so they probably need to be guided by more developed destinations and international organisations in terms of tourism strategies, security and management.
I'm with him and his family with all my heart. It took me a while to be able to write about what happened, but I think it's important to share also the harder experiences while travelling and the reflexions that follow on a human and professional level.
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