Magnificent Petra!

Inhabited since prehistoric times, this remote Nabataean city, situated between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, was an important commercial centre between Arabia, Egypt and Syria-Phoenicia. Petra is half-built, half-carved into the red sandstone rock faces of the gorge, surrounded by towering cliffs riddled with passages. It is one of the world's most famous and eye opening archaeological sites and probably the most amazing place I have ever seen. It is totally worth the hype and more. A fascinating and quite beautiful place to visit.

Today you can still see the channels in the gorge that fed the ingenious water management system that enabled a city to grow in what was/is essentially the middle of the desert. So much of the original city facades and caves are still standing and all of it can be thoroughly explored and clambered over.

If you don't know what Petra is, and that intro doesn't ring any bells for you, then check out Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade; Indy and his dad Dr Jones, ride through a narrow gorge on horses that opens out in front of a red stone temple looking building. The gorge is the actual entrance to Petra that you walk through, and that building that you see is actually The Treasury, one of the most recognised buildings in the city.

We visited in April 2023 while I was strapped up in an Airfix boot and unable to walk far with an injury to my foot, so we opted for the Golf cart service that drove us the first 2km stretch down through the gorge to the main square, and site of The Treasury buiding. It was busy with people selling crafts, camel rides, donkey rides, horse rides and so much more. There were people everywhere, but behind all of the chaos was this incredible city of carved building facades, many of which have been eroded by the wind and merely hint to what they once were, but some are still very intricate and beautiful. And, unlike the archaeological sites you may visit in Europe, these cave buildings, passages and carved stairways are open and available for visitors to explore at their leisure.

The ground is worn dirt and stones and can be tricky to navigate on two good feet, but I managed (slowly) to get around and continue walking further through the gorge. Gaz managed to climb his way to the cliff top and look down on the city from above, while I was only able with my boot to access the ground level caves.

In one cave, we found Omar, a young Jordanian man who was selling coffee. The cave was a single square room with a number of shallow alcoves. He had laid overlapping red persian style rugs on the floor and invited us to sit down.

We were visiting with my friend Shera, so she and Garry sat on the floor while Omar ran and grabbed a stool from somewhere outside for me to perch on. He made us black instant Nescafe in paper cups and chatted to us about the cave (inherited from his Grandfather) his life (he sells coffee in the cave each day, and sleeps there sometimes on a mattress in the corner), but he lives on the other side of the mountain in a cave house with his family. The 'coffee shop' cave had no electricity; he boiled water using a gas bottle and stove attachment, but he explained that he did have electricity at home.

He talked of wanting to go to Europe and of marrying a European girl, but he explained he only wanted one wife, despite his father and other people in his family having multiple wives. He introduced us to his brother who was all smiles and charm as well - I guess a touch of charisma increases your earning potential! I loved our conversation with Omar - both sides shared information that surprised the other. It's genuine interactions like this that make travelling for us what it is; a chance to experience something unique, to meet new people on a human level and to learn.

Further down into the city, there is an immense amphitheatre carved out of the rock and further buildings and passages to explore. We didn't go too much further because of my injury, but there is so much more to see and we will have to return one day to explore the rest and make our way to the famous Monastery.

As we were making our way back, Shera and I got talking to a female craft seller. She was the only one we had seen and she was set up quite a long way from the other sellers. We showed her that we had already bought a scarf and a couple of other things from the other sellers that we had seen first. She nodded and explained that as a woman, she was not allowed to set up her stall in the main area and that was when we realised that she was the first woman seller, in fact the first female we had seen working in any capacity. She was a representative of a group of local women who had lost their husbands but still had to find a way to provide for their families - creating and selling crafts was one way of them doing that. So naturally Shera and I bought some of the locally made jewellery from her.

To get out of the city it's a 2km walk up a slight incline, but we had sensibly paid for a return journey on the golf carts, so in theory it was just a matter of waiting for one in the main square. Unfortunately there was only 1 hr to go before the golf carts stopped running and about 80 people had the same idea as us, so we joined the back of a very long queue. We waited for an hour, but luckily were put on one of the last carts. (it would have been a looooong and painful expedition if we had to walk.)

Whilst the site is of course a commercial enterprise in respect of the entry fees and commercialisation of the image of Petra, the hawkers and craftspeople selling their wares do so under the control of a form of local mafia. We saw this in action when the golf cart we were in stopped at the end of the canyon and gave money to a man who was sitting on a rock in the shade. The golf cart then continued to the main entrance of Petra.

The elaborate carvings, the remnants of engineered channels and dams that controlled the flow of rainwater, and the remains of celebrated religious buildings and other public buildings, are evidence of Petra's unique artistic and architectural strength formed by those incredible lost civilisations. One for the bucket list for every adventurer. A must see.