Last weekend we went biking at Wadi Tayyiba (no, I didn't know where it was either till I was directed there). Well, a wadi is a valley, as you may know, and this particular valley used to have the only tarmac (asphalt) road going through that part of the mountains. I suppose before that there was just a path, then a track, then one day they made the tarmac road, and people thought it was really modern and cool, and they whizzed through the mountains and visited their relatives more often and went shopping (this would be maybe in the 60's).But then... A new six-lane road was built through a different part of the mountains. Which is great, of course: now people can whiz faster and from further away through the mountains, visiting people, or places where they don't know anyone, and going home again almost before they realize they've been away. Meanwhile, the glorious tarmac road up Wadi Tayyiba has gone into disrepair - well, that's putting it mildly because now there are just a few spots of tarmac dotted up the valley, as if dropped from a giant's tar brush as he moved it from somewhere to somewhere else. There would be seasonal floods in this wadi, and they've undermined the road and it's crumbled away. The bits that are left look like real bits of road, but they appear and disappear as you go along:
I love ruins in general, especially things like castle walls that some time were built to keep people out, and maybe had people swarming up them and fighting to conquer them; and now they sit peacefully with ivy on them and birds nesting in them, wondering what all the fuss was about. And this road seemed like that.
Look at the road past your house, the road you drive to work, and imagine that one day it will look like this:
