Jordan

I closed out my journey through the Middle East with 10 days in Jordan. Petra was obviously my main draw to Jordan, but I was blown away by all that Jordan has to offer. I would put it in my top 5 favorite countries I’ve visited on this trip (which is now up to 41 countries in the last 13 months, obviously the blog is very far behind). The people were extremely friendly, the food was great, and Petra was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

I started this leg in Amman, the capital and spent a couple days exploring the city. I stayed right across the street from the Roman Theater, a big 2nd century Roman amphitheater. Additionally, there are some impressive ruins at the Amman citadel, located on a hilltop overlooking the city. Some of the ruins within the Citadel date back to the Bronze Age (~1800 BC) and the most impressive is the Temple of Hercules, located right in the center. All that remains of it is 5 stone pillars and the foundation, but that really gives you an idea of the size of it during it’s heyday. There is also a large stone fragment of the hand of Hercules, all that remains are 3 bent fingers but it is estimated that there was once a statue of Hercules here that was nearly 15 feet tall. There is also the ruins of an ancient castle on the grounds as well as an archeological museum, along with some amazing views of the city down below. It was a great way to spend an afternoon.

Something I noticed right off the bat was that the Jordanian people are really amazing. They were so welcoming and hospitable. Unlike their neighbors, Jordan was not blessed with an abundance of oil. They are home to one of the seven wonders of the world however, so tourism is a major industry there and the people really do all they can to make you feel welcome. I really enjoyed just wandering around Amman and checking out some small local cafes, communicating with the shop owners in a mix of hand signals, broken English and Google translate and eating some incredible Middle Eastern food.

After a couple days in Amman, it was time to head to the crown jewel, Petra. I decided to rent a car and drive there myself because the organized tours were expensive and I am really over organized tours at this point. This was my first time driving on this trip and if we’re being honest the most I’d driven in like 4 years. When I moved to India in 2018, I sold my car and when I came back I had planned to buy a new one but then the pandemic happened and then I knew I was going on this trip so I never ended up buying one. But driving a car is like riding a bike, right? If you can drive in America, you can surely drive in Jordan 4 years later. Driving in Jordan was actually very easy, they drive on the same side of the road as we do in America and there aren’t really any rules, you can pass other cars wherever/whenever you want. The roads were wide open outside of Aman as well, there was zero traffic. You just had to be on the lookout for speed bumps that would sneak up to you on the highway as you were entering a town, some of them were pretty big and I hit a couple of them at full speed, which really wakes you up. I later learned that there is a speed limit that is pretty strictly enforced remotely, when the rental car company reached out about 2 speeding tickets I needed to pay. Whoops. They also have this interesting system where the police will stand on the side of the road and wave their arms at you if you need to pull over and talk to them . This happened to me twice and i was pretty nervous I’d done something wrong but both times the cop just asked me what country I’m from and got very excited i was American and welcomed me to Jordan 😂. 

The drive to Petra took about 4 hours and when I got to town I was eager to start checking out the ruins. I stayed right in Wadi Musa and had just a short walk to the entrance. I spent about 3 hours walking into the park on the first day as I ran out of daylight. The walk leading into the ruins takes you through this beautiful narrow twisting canyon, called Al Siq and you walk out to see the famous treasury at the entrance to the main ruins. This was pretty breathtaking. I’d seen so many pictures of the Petra treasury, but it was nothing compared to seeing it in person. The amount of detail is unbelievable and the fact that it is still standing there some 2000 years later is insane. I spent the rest of the first day walking around the front of the park, climbing up to some of the cave dwellings and tombs that are up along a cliff face and got the pleasure of meeting some local beduin people who still live in the cliff dwellings. I met this woman who offered me a cup of tea and brought me into her cave which was an interesting experience. She told me there was an empty cave next door that i could move into if i wanted but i politely refused 😂.

The history of Petra is pretty interesting, in that it is honestly still pretty unknown. It was the capital city of the Nabataean people, who were quite wealthy due their prominence in the incense trade. Not a lot is known about the Nabataean people beyond that. The city was then seized by the Roman Empire around 100 AD (the Romans were everywhere) and they were responsible for building the large amphitheater at Petra and there were a lot of cliff dwellings that can be attributed to the Romans as well (I learned how to distinguish a Roman cliff dwelling from a Nabataean one, I can file that away with all the other random useless shit I’ve learned on this journey 😜). From there, it was taken over by an Islamic King in the 7th century and then served as Christian outpost during the crusades in the 12th century. After the crusades, it was basically forgotten and it was only rediscovered by the Western world in 1812 by a Swiss archaeologist. According to my guide, Petra still holds many secrets buried under the sand. Advanced satellite imagery has shown additional monuments that are still buried under the sand and require excavation. He was also adamant that there is a lot of gold that is buried under the sand and has not been discovered yet. Apparently the Jordanian government also has a similar hunch, because there are cameras set up to monitor for any treasure hunters and he said that if you go off the designated trails there will be military helicopters circling you within minutes.

That night, I watched the world cup semi-final at a local bar, which was a hell of a match between Morocco and France. This was the furthest an Arab nation had ever advanced in the World Cup and the locals were going crazy for Morocco, so i jumped on the band wagon. Morocco put up a hell of a fight but was not able to knock off the strong French side. I also met my tour guide for the next day at this bar. I don’t think he was actually a properly sanctioned tour guide (you get those at the entrance to Petra), but he was exactly the type of tour guide I was looking for. His name was Mohammed and he took me all over the park the next day. We climbed up this alternative trail to get an amazing view of the treasury from up on top of this cliff and then climbed back down, caught a local jeep to the back side of the park and then climbed up to the monastery and walked all the way back through the park to the entrance. You always see the pictures of the treasury and the monastery at Petra, but I was blown away by the overall size of the ancient city, it is massive. I spent 3 days hiking around it and there were still parts i didn’t get to fully explore. 

After our 12+ hour day of hiking around the city, Mohammed invited me to his home, where his mom cooked us an incredible dinner. We then went to a local hookah place and smoked shish-a and played cards with the locals. The game was some sort of variation of rummy that is very popular in the Middle East. I then went and checked out Petra by night, where they line the trail into Petra with candles and do a light show and some local music performances in front of the treasury building. I wouldn’t do that part again, it was very touristy and i wasn’t super into it. We closed out the night drinking beers and smoking hookah in Mohammed’s car on top of the highest peak in the area, overlooking Wadi Musa with an incredible view of the stars. As previously mentioned, he was my kind if guide. I don’t think the Petra sanctioned guides will take you to their house, teach you card games and drink beers and smoke hookah with you in their car to close out the day 😂. 

A couple additional interesting observations about Petra. The locals are aggressive in terms of wanting to get you to buy souvenirs or take a “free horse ride” (which requires a massive tip at the end), etc but what I liked was that they would back off when you gave them a firm no. A lot of the bedouin locals also wear a lot of eye makeup, which makes them look like desert pirates of the Caribbean, which i found to be pretty hilarious. The other thing that was really impressive to see at Petra was the irrigation systems that were built along the cliff walls to bring in fresh water for the 30k residents of the city. This irrigation channel very slowly dropped only 12 feet over the course of a mile, to allow gravity to assist and bringing fresh water into the city, with underground cisterns that were used to store water during the dry season. Impressive engineering and craftsmanship from 2000+ years ago.

After 3 days at Petra, i made my way to the Wadi Rum desert for my last adventure in Jordan. The Wadi Rum desert is famous because it looks other worldly and doesn’t feel like planet Earth. It is a massive desert with giant red rock formations. It is actually where they filmed the Martian and some Star Wars scenes because it literally feels like you’re on Mars.

In Wadi Rum i stayed in this really cool camp and slept in a martian dome that had a glass roof which allowed for an incredible view of the stars at night. The first day i got in around sun down and they cooked this huge traditional bedouin meal in which they cooked all the meat underground. After dinner they offered a star gazing tour that i signed up for. I assumed they were just going to drive us out to the middle of the desert to see a ton of stars, but they actually took us to a neighboring camp that had 4 really legit telescopes installed. These weren’t your standard recreational “I want a telescope for Christmas” type telescopes. These were atomic grade telescopes set up on these bases that rotated against the spinning of earth to allow you to lock into planets and distant stars. It was really freaking cool. These are actually the most powerful telescopes in the Middle East and there was a resident phd astronomer there who taught us a lot about the stars and we got to look closely at the moon, Mars and Jupiter.

The next day i got up early for a 6 hour jeep tour around Wadi Rum. We saw some amazing rock formations and got to do a bunch of hiking around the rock faces. From there i headed back to Amman to catch my flight the next day. Next stop, Phuket, Thailand!