We’re like a flock of sheep. Except not really, because we’re tourists, not pilgrims. They, the pilgrims, are being herded to the baptismal site of Jesus in large charter buses and led by orthodox priests in long black robes. We’re under the not so watchful eye of a tour guide who tells me I cannot walk the two miles, I have to wait for the shuttle under the bamboo canopy, with the rest of my kind, the tourists, and that even if I could walk, I probably wouldn’t want to he says pointing at the heavy concentration of policemen and soldiers that the uber driver told us were a normal sight this close to the border. I remember reading that the newly developed tourist and pilgrimage site had to be de-mined before opening since it was located on a military base, which makes sense since the site is also located on the Jordan river and that since 1967 is the sensitive border between the West Bank and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Anyhow our flock is led into a small shuttle and given a rapid spiel about the significance of the place as we barely slow down to look at Jehova’s Hill then down a narrow road bordered on one side by a barbed wire fence and guard towers and on the other a deserted rocky landscape from which a series of seven–if I remember correctly–christian churches of various denominations stand out, the last being a Russian orthodox church and that’s where the parking lot is where we get to get off the bus. Now we walk. Finally. Follow the leader and stay together the guide tells the group and we join the flow of pilgrims already engaged on the pathway leading to the river only a smoking policeman picks us out of the crowd and stops us before we actually step off the pavement of the parking lot and asks us questions we don’t understand because he’s speaking Arabic which makes sense because we’re in Jordan but doesn’t help because we don’t speak a word of it but we try to gesticulate our answers while stating loudly that we’re with the group which we point at only it has already proceeded down the pathway. Someone comes to our rescue speaking Arabic and the policeman reluctantly lets us through. We then hurry to rejoin our small herd so we don’t miss the sparse but helpful insight provided by our leader regarding the fact that the flow of the river has been diverted and therefore the actual location of the ruins of the church where John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the river Jordan is now dried out and sits a few hundred yards away from the more recent course of the river where a modern church has been erected and is the location where most of the pilgrims surrounding us are aiming to take a dip in the muddy waters or at least get their craniums sprinkled with them. Of course there are more policemen stationed along the shaded pathway and I’m thinking it must get really hot here in the summer months because it’s January and it’s not cold even though it’s overcast and sure enough it happens again that one of those guys in uniform splits us away from our group at a fork in the trail and since he’s very serious and very armed we don’t argue but we’re lost sheep now and when our path seems to reconnect with the main path people are traveling in both directions and we’re confused we think our group must have passed already but that doesn’t make sense because the main path seems longer than the one we were forced to take so we wait but they don’t show up so finally we backtrack along the main path and run into them. And then we get there, to the river and we have to fight through a thick crowd of pilgrims with a service or sermon of some kind belching over loudspeakers in what sounds like a mix of Arabic, Russian and Latin church bells ringing and our guide screams that we have twenty minutes to enjoy ourselves and don’t be late because he can’t wait but it would take at least a half hour to follow the queue that descends to the river because that’s the whole point of being here for most folks, the water, the same water that Christ was dipped in only of course it’s not really the same water since that was a long time ago and anyhow it was written in the bible which is just a collection of short stories more or less loosely based on true events but certainly embellished and editorialized by writers of the time because that’s what writers do and at any rate the real site of the baptism they think, they being the archeologists who dug it up, is a few hundred yards away, a dry river bed and some old stones. On the opposite bank of the river, the west bank, the chaos is just as grand with pilgrims flocking there through Israel and they’re only twenty meters away, twenty meters you could easily swim because the current doesn’t seem that strong and we can see people on that side wading waist high in the sacred waters and they have no trouble standing up but of course if you actually tried to cross you would most certainly get shot or sent to the Jordanian or Israeli version of Guantanamo or some other form of highly unpleasant treatment. Then the twenty minutes were up we found our fellow tourists our leader and headed on home as a marching band struck the familiar melody of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”.