Sunrise Walk Among the Sinkholes

Pickup at 5am from Sweimeh or anywhere on the Dead Sea road, then an hour south to Ghor Haditha, where the ground is falling in. As the sea drops, roughly a metre a year, fresh groundwater dissolves the buried salt layer under the Lisan marl and the surface collapses without warning. There are more than six thousand of these holes now. Some are two metres across; some would swallow a bus. We walk about four kilometres on a route Odeh has checked that week, past a farm track that ended in 2011 and a stand of dead tamarisk still upright in the salt. This walk has real rules. Single file, behind the guide, and nobody wanders off for a photograph, because the crust that looks solid is the part that fails. Under-twelves cannot come. There are no toilets for the first two hours and no shade at all. We start at first light because by nine it is over 35C down here and the walk stops being interesting. You will be back at your hotel by ten, dusty, and ready to sleep through the middle of the day, which is the correct use of a Dead Sea afternoon.