Bloggers to chronicle adventures around Jordan

AMMAN — Young Jordanian and Palestinian travel bloggers are scheduled to tour the Kingdom this Ramadan and share their adventures with their readers to encourage domestic tourism.  

Starting at Um Qais on June 19, the bloggers will travel for 12 days, finishing the trip in Aqaba. 

“It will be tiring as we are fasting for the holy month but this is the challenge” said Kasem Hato, a Jordanian known for his travel blog Ibn Hattuta .

“We thought that we needed to do something for Jordan because we will be travelling for a while,” Hato told The Jordan Times on Thursday.

He will be travelling with his friend Motasem Ilaiwi, who runs a popular Facebook page, Life of Mota, about travel and tourism in Palestine. 

The bloggers will hike in the Dead Sea area, go camping, visit archaeological sites, including Petra and Machaerus, and head to nature reserves in Ajloun, Bergesh and Dana. 

The trip is being sponsored by the Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN).

Mona Taq, the director of public relations at the RSCN, said the society will help facilitate the bloggers’ visits to nature reserves. 

“We support young people to promote tourism in Jordan, especially ecotourism in the nature reserves that are attached to the society,” Taq told The Jordan Times. 

Hato and Ilaiwi will chronicle the whole trip on social media and on their blogs to allow readers to share in the experience.

“Many people want to have this kind of experience, even during the fasting month, especially as it is a summer break for most university students,” Hato said. 

A fourth-year computer science student, Hato started his blog in 2014 to share information about cheap ways to travel. 

“I started my blog ‘Ibn Hattuta’ when I realised that people in the Arab world are not aware that travelling can be done cheaply,” Hato said. 

The student is headed on a farther flung adventure next year, as an exchange student to Europe 

“It will give me the chance to travel to more places and share the experience with visitors to my blog,” he said.