Petra: One of the World’s Most Extraordinary ‘Must Sees’!

[Guest fountainhall]

Arrived in Amman at 06:00 after a pleasant 9-hour flight from BKK. Royal Jordanian’s in-flight service is pretty good. The relatively new A330 was packed in economy, about half full in business where the seats are angled lie-flat, yet still very comfortable. I managed a good 6 hours sleep.

 

Amman airport is the pits. A much-needed new terminal opens in the next few months. The present one is appalling. At that hour in the morning, there was no-one at the currency exchange desk – a problem because most people get their visa on arrival which needs to be paid for in Jordanian currency. After the clerk finally arrived, there then was no-one at the visa desk. I was second in the queue and we just waited and waited. Eventually, an Immigration officer arrived, entered the booth and woke his colleague whom we had not noticed asleep on the floor! It took a full minute to get him awake!

 

Because I only had 3 days in the country, I had booked a tour. My driver was waiting for me by the baggage carousel. He strongly suggested that my half-day tour of Amman would not be advisable because traffic would be so bad. Much better for me to go direct to Petra and then ‘do’ Amman on the return. No other explanation. I felt like arguing, but decided not to. Just as well, because there had been days of riots in the city as a result of the government withdrawing fuel subsidies.

 

So at dawn off I went in the car for the fast 3-hour trip to Petra, the main reason for my visit.

 

 

 

En route, we stopped for Arabic coffee, pleasantly laced with cardamom, and a short visit to the ruins of the old Crusader castle at Sawbak. Nowhere near as impressive as some others in this part of the world, but still fascinating.

 

 

The desert is not the fine powdery sand I had expected – more of an arid landscape scattered with small stones. I had also not realized that this part of Jordan is situated quite high up, making the descents into the valleys spectacular with amazing rock formations.

 

Petra itself is situated on a steep hillside. It’s a boring place. According to my driver, it only has hotels, restaurants, souvenir shops and tour buses –but I did notice a couple of Turkish baths! Thankfully my hotel was right at the entrance to the archeological site, the closest one could get. The Petra Guest House does not sound very appealing, but it used to be the Crowne Plaza and is billed as 4 stars (I’d give it 3.5). The rooms are excellent, the bed very comfortable, the bathroom fine (although it smelled a bit). It was the perfect location for visiting the ancient city.

 

I started into the archeological site just before 09:00 the next morning. It was surprisingly cold and I set out with three layers of clothing. The first 3kms or so is all down, down, down. You pass some old ruins showing the influence of Egypt, Greece and Rome architectural styles, for Petra was, for more than a millennium, a major transit point on the old caravan routes.

 

The Obelisk Tomb

 

Then you turn left into Al-Siq, an extremely narrow crevasse with walls rising on each side as high as 80 meters.

 

Al-Siq Entrance

 

Al-Siq Crevasse

 

Here it feels as though the earth just cracked apart and opened up this extraordinary passageway whose walls have been smoothed by rain and flood. To the bizarre geological features, the early inhabitants, the Nabataeans, had added carved religious elements and water channels.

 

Elephant Rocks

 

After a seemingly endless but fascinating walk downhill, my guide suddenly asked me to turn back to look at a carved figure of a horse high up on one of the cliffs. I looked, searched, saw absolutely nothing. It was all a ruse, though, for he wanted to surprise me with my first glimpse of the most extraordinary building in Petra – the Treasury, one of roughly 800 man-made structures build up to 2,400 years ago that make up this amazing city. As I turned around, there through the smallest of gaps between the walls of the dark crevasse was a glimpse of an enormous building carved out of the cliff, its pink sandstone bathed in bright sunlight. Dean Burgeon’s description “a rose-red city half as old as time” seemed so fitting. No matter how many times you have seen this in photos or on video, nothing – absolutely nothing – prepares you for that magnificent jaw-dropping sight. It is absolutely mind-blowing!

 

(Note: you must be at this part of the site before the sun disappears, and so you have to enter the city before 09:00 in winter at the latest)

 

That Extraordinary First Glimpse

 

Getting Closer

 

The area in front of the Treasury is remarkably small. It feels almost like you are at the bottom of a deep well, which makes the structure’s 43-meter height all the more amazing.

 

The Treasury in all its Magnificence

 

It’s tempting to say that nothing thereafter can match its magnificence, but that would be hugely unfair. Petra boasts around 800 man-made structures and was a major part of the old Silk and Caravan routes.

 

The Street of the Facades

 

The Multi-Coloured Sandstone Rock

 

The Tombs of the Dead

 

It was conquered by the Romans around 100 A.D. and taken over by the Byzantines, until being left of all human habitation for about 400 years. Like Angkor Wat, Petra is so much more than just one building, and like Angkor, it really needs several days to explore the whole site. I only had one, and had a number of decisions to make. It’s easy to see a lot of the important structures – the amphitheatre, the massive Royal tombs, the colonnaded street which originally ran through the city centre ending at what would have been the city’s main Temple, the Qasr Al-Bint.

 

The Qasr Al-Bint Temple Ruins

 

The Varying Architectural Styles of the Palace Tomb

 

The Massive Royal Urn Tomb

 

Guard Surveying the Site (a Long Way Below)

 

But two other main sites are a long hike away. The Monastery requires a trek up more than 800 uneven steps, and the Sacrificial site with its views over the entire site is up an even higher, separate climb. You can rent a donkey – at a considerable price – but I decided I would be seeing enough in the floor of the valley. I was also mindful that I still had another 3km hike back up to the hotel, a third of it on fine, dusty, energy-sapping sand.

 

The Ideal Way to see Petra!

 

By the time I got back to the hotel, I was physically on my last legs! Rarely has a long cold beer tasted better! It had been an amazing, extraordinary day. But when I get back to my room, I learn that have been more demonstrations in Amman, this time with calls to end the monarchy.

 

The following day, I returned to Amman via the longer and more scenically interesting King’s Road, taking in a visit to the Dead Sea with a few intrepid swimmers – it was a little cold for me!

 

 

We also ascended to the top of the arid wind-swept mountain where Moses came to die, although why he should have picked such a barren spot beats me! Perhaps it was just to be closer to his God!

 

 

 

There’s not much to see in Amman itself, although the Roman citadel which sits astride one of the city’s hills has commanding views of the old city, especially of the large and small (to the left) amphitheatres which are still in use to day.

 

 

 

Jordan may not seem an automatic choice for a stop-over en route from Europe to Bangkok, but if only to see Petra it is certainly worth considering as Royal Jordanian has daily flights on to BKK. Petra is utterly, staggeringly unique. Had more people known about it at the time, it would surely have become the eighth wonder of the ancient world. Rightfully, it has now claimed its place as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.

[TotallyOz]

Simply stunning! You keep adding to my bucket list FH. Thank you for such amazing world insight and the fabulous photos!

[Rogie]

Best photos of Petra I've ever seen, linked by some great descriptions.

 

You are a latter-day Jean Louis Burckhardt Fountainhall.

[kokopelli]

I was relating Fountainhall to Indiana Jones; wasn't Petra the location for some scenes from the Last Crusade?

[Guest fountainhall]

Indeed it was. The Treasury entrance features as the entrance to the temple housing the Grail in the very last scene. If I'd remembered to take my Indiana Jones hat, I'd have posted an extra photo

[Guest thaiworthy]

Great pictures, Fountainhall. You have surpassed yourself once again. I would like to have seen your Indiana Jones photo with hat, and especially your long whip. Maybe you'll share on your next sojourn, if you ever make it to the Amazon.

[Guest fountainhall]

I did in fact go 1,000 miles up the Amazon almost 10 years ago - but alas with neither hat nor whip! And it was on a ship which hardly merits as an Indiana Jones adventure!

 

Incidentally, one regular visitor to Petra was the real-life Lawrence of Arabia. When making the movie, director David Lean had hoped to use both Petra and the southern Jordanian port of Aqaba, but had to film these scenes in Spain. He did manage to shoot a small part of the film near the huge cliffs and valley of Wadi Rum, a little south of Petra, and the Jordanians now use this as a tourist attraction.

 

Although I haven't seen it, the new restored version of "Lawrence of Arabia" (released 2 months ago) is visually stunning. It has been remastered using what's called 4K Digital Restoration which gives the cinema version 8.8 million pixels per frame. This compares with 2.2 million pixels for most HD and blu-ray discs.

 

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