I used to hate taking pictures of people, and even more of myself. After all, if I am traveling, the purpose is mainly to discover places – not show my face with a changing background behind, as if to yell to the world “I have been there and not you, and look at me, I am smiling, I am happy.” Holy crap I hate tourists. No, what I prefer is to show my friends incredible landscapes and places. “C’mon guys, check this out, you have to come here and have fun with me, it is so awesome – travel more, it is worth it!”

It is worth it.

I used to hate taking pictures of people, until I met these guys, our travel group formed in Cairo and Dahab. Until I found that the ultimate happiness in traveling was the human adventure, the sharing, the joy of simply being with friends, doing things together, and sometimes facing hard times together. Let me thus introduce our happy Middle East party: the Donkeys.

Matt, 20, from Beaumont, Alberta, Canada, always ready to do cool things and hang out with cool people, was the first one I met, at something like 2 or 3 am while walking in downtown Cairo with Shady. (Usual stuff.) We took a walk and went to a street food restaurant together in the middle of the night, and found that both of us wanted to go to Dahab so yeah, why not organizing something?

Yeah well that’s because you told me to put it on my blog, Kirsten! So from left to right, Kirsten, 20, St Albert, AB, CA, and Bailey, 18, Melbourne, Australia. These two were just arriving from Ghana where they had spent 6 months volunteering for an orphanage (awesome stuff) when I met them. But let us find some better pictures.

Now these ones are already better. Last member of our party: Anthony, 36, San Jose, California, USA, used to be a waiter in a top end French restaurant of California, and is hence passionated with French wine and cuisine. We met him while snorkeling in Dahab (usual stuff). After teaching English in South Korea for some time, he decided to travel (hell yea, that’s the spirit) before coming back home. Best decision of your life, buddy.

We were thus all together in Dahab and decided to go to Jordan see Petra. We had two options: the expensive but easier way, taking a ferry. Or, the difficult way: by ground means, which means taking a whole bunch of buses to get to Israel and then Jordan. We chose the difficult way, of course. So we found ourselves in that minibus heading towards Taba, going along the Red Sea Coast, crossed the Israeli border to get to Eilat, crossed the Jordanian border to get to Aqaba, where we found a bus heading God only knows where (we found out the city was named Ma’an later), found a taxi in the middle of the night to Wadi Musa… And we arrived, after that long, long day on the road, in a hotel, tired but happy of our success.

Petra. We finally made it to this 2000-year old city, carved within the very rock of the mountains of this valley. We got ripped off at the entrance (the ticket was 50€ – ouch) but damn, that was worth it. (Even though I would not have refused a cheaper price.)

The ruins were simply amazing. Such skill and technique devoted to the glory of the kings and gods of the Nabataneans, such a crazy idea of carving out an entire city, such a beautiful place in the desert… We decided to hike to the top of the mountain to get a look at the monastery – and were amazed once more. On the summit of the mount (welcome to the end of the world, right?), we met two Bedouin brothers, Selim and Abdullah, who invited us to share their food and celebrate the sunset together.

To anyone who is reading this blog: travel more. Forget your comfort and your stability – just ditch everything, ditch your routine, ditch the society, and come face the difficulties of the world. Because it is the only way to fully live, to fully experience before you die.

It is worth it.