Dead Sea Diary

Float on Water, Sink in Land

The Dead Sea is dying — the surface of the water body, landlocked by Jordan, West Bank and Israel, is falling by more than a metre a year. The region is water-starved and governments have diverted the rivers that feed it. I visited the Dead Sea Spa Resort, one of the scores of hotels in Jordan along its shore. As I walk down from the resort to its private beach, I spy a sign: ‘The Dead Sea level receded quickly, the water was here in 2000’. Ahead are signs from 2005 and 2010. It takes almost 10 minutes to walk down to the bank. However the resort was one of the luckier ones — at Ein Gedi in Israel, the shore has retreated a couple of kilometres inwards, leaving behind cavernous sinkholes that have swallowed up roads and parking lots. The region might soon have the distinction of being a place where you can float on water but sink in land. To revive the lake, the governments of Jordan and Israel plan to pour water from the Red Sea into the Dead Sea, a distance of 180 km. The controversial plan, however, has been stagnating for years. It’s not all gloom and doom though — the Dead Sea will never completely disappear. As the salinity increases due to evaporation, the rate of water loss will ultimately reach an equilibrium with inflow. But by then, the sea will have lost a significant portion of its already reduced expanse.

The Most Painful Sea

I remember reading in school that the Dead Sea was one of the saltiest on earth. However, I never realised its implications until I felt the sea against my skin. It is so saline that it does not even feel like water — rather a concoction of oil and mud. My hosts had warned me to not shave for a couple of days before my visit. Even minor cuts can flare up in the brackish water. And most importantly, do not let the water get into your eyes. Armed with these instructions, I waded in carefully. The buoyancy felt odd in the beginning, but after half an hour so, I began enjoying the bobbing. A while later, I saw two other Indian tourists at the edge, one of whom kept gushing Kitna accha paani hai (The water looks so beautiful). She stooped down and before I could warn her, cupped her hands into the sea and splashed water on her face. The paroxysm of screaming that followed was ghastly. To mollify her, her companion threw even more sea water into her eyes. Thankfully, someone managed to find a pipe of fresh water and hosed her down. As unfortunate as her was my friend who had rather spicy food the day before. A certain orifice of hers burned every time she entered the sea!

Oxygen Overdose

Despite being a small country, Jordan is geographically diverse. In a few hours, you can cruise from the snowy hills of Amman to the lowest point on land — the Dead Sea, 400 m below sea level. Due to the low altitude, the air pressure and concentration of oxygen are much higher and ultraviolet radiation lower. This surfeit of oxygen reputedly has therapeutic benefits for the heart and lungs and makes physical exertion easier. Scientific journals today and Cleopatra two millennia ago were equally enthused about its healing power. Perhaps the blame lies with my Delhi-stained lungs, but the enriched air did not help me much, as I realised on a cycling tour from Amman to Dead Sea. While the largely downhill route was a breeze — and breezy too — it was punctuated with short uphill stretches. Despite the oxygen serenading my alveoli and the lovely weather, I could not pedal on the steep inclines and had to hop off my bike. I was also one of the last to reach the finish line, trailed only by the teenagers from USA who took selfies at every Instagrammable location, which were plenty en route.

Skin Deep

At the resorts, it is quite common to find tourists encrusted in clay scooped from the bed of the lake. The lowest place on earth also happens to be its largest natural spa. While the Dead Sea is touted as therapeutic for a variety of organs, it is skincare entrepreneurs that have made the most of it. Not only do people spend days here to heal skin disorders such as psoriasis, eczema and acne, there is an entire industry devoted to selling cosmetics made from its mineral-rich deposits. In 2015, it was a $1.2 billion industry and is expected to grow to $3.4 billion by the end of 2024. Along the Dead Sea Highway are plenty of stores where you can expect a hard sell for miraculous lotions and potions. I spent too little time in the sea to experience any tangible surge in wellbeing, but my friend swears the packaged salts worked wonders on her eczema.