Ah Petra! Seen the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? There is a scene in it where Indiana Jones (played by Harisson Ford), his father (played by Sean Connery) and others visit a place on their quest to find the Holy Grail. They eventually reach a magnificent structure (The Treasury) and then a city carved into the rock. Those scenes were shot in Petra, Jordan. After seeing them, both my wife and I have always wanted to see the structures first hand. And that is why Petra has always been in our bucket list.

With the Egypt leg of our trip done, it was now time to explore Jordan. And the first destination was of course going to be Petra 😀.

We had caught the early morning Egypt Air flight from Cairo to Amman. Once we landed, our local travel company representative was already inside to help through all the formalities; currency exchange, immigration and baggage retrieval. Once all done, he guided us to the vehicle that would be with us throughout our Jordanian trip. It was going to be a few hours ride to reach Petra. Around noon we stopped at rest house for a bio break, tea and lunch for our driver.

We were soon back on the road headed towards Petra. A couple of hours later we got our first glimpses of the city of Petra from the car.

Check in formalities completed at our hotel and freshened up, we decided to step to walk around a bit. Our hotel was literally 2 streets from the entrance to the ruins of Petra! You can see it at the the end of the street behind my wife in the below photo.

Hungry by now, we decided to catch a late lunch. Being in Jordan, we of course had to try out the local cuisine. We found a restaurant in the next lane. It had an interesting decor; in the bedouin style.

Tummies full, we then decided to stroll around the area. We headed towards the entrance fo the ruins of Petra. Yes, we love Petra!

A bit after dusk we slowed walked back to out hotel. Besides our hotel, there was a shop that we had seen. By the time we reached back, we saw that the shop was closed. Interestingly they had simply left the stuff that was kept out when the shop had been open, as it is on the sideway in front of their store; something unimaginable in many parts of the world. You can see it in the picture below. It gave us an impression of how safe they considered the neighbourhood to be.

Back in our rooms, we were all super excited about the morning when we would make our visit to the ruins of Petra. But we all went to bed early given that we were exhausted from our early morning flight and travel.

The next morning brought in rain showers. Hmm, something that we did not want during our visit 🙁. The forecast for the day also predicted rain during the first half. We prayed that it would not continue to rain. The signs were not promising as we peered out of the windows during breakfast. We had hired a local guide for 2 hours for our visit to Petra. This is something that we try to do when we visit new places that have a lot of history. He was at the hotel reception at the designated time.

At the entrance to the historical site, there were hardly any visitors. This was supposed to be peak tourist season in Petra! However, owing to the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine, there were hardly any visitors around!

It will still drizzling. Thankfully we had come prepared for rain. We each had a poncho or an umbrella. Here is how it looked once past the entrance gate.

You can see the dark clouds looming overhead ready to pour down 🙁. And sure enough it started to rain again. But we decided to move on even in the rain; thankfully it was not a downpour.

The path that we were walking on was still dry. However it was all going to transform in some time given the continuous rains.

Our guide told us about a similar situation that had happened several years ago with the rain. The rains had resulted in a flash flood further down in the ruins. The tourist police had to shut down the site and some tourists had to be rescued. Given this incident, our guide warned us that there is chance the tourist police may again close down the site given the continuous rain. We saw 4×4 police vehicles going into the ruins towards the Treasury; all signs that they were preparing for the eventuality.

Soon we entered As Siq (as referred to as The Siq). This is a 1.2 km long gorge and the main entrance to the ancient city of Petra. Given all continuing rain and movement of the tourist police, our guide nudged us to hurry on. He wanted us to atleast see the Treasury even if the police decided to close the site. The path on which we were walking had transformed to a mini stream. We were literally wading or walking in it. Here are some scenes from our walk in As Siq.

We pushed ahead and finally got our first view of the Al-Khazneh, aka the Treasury; yes we had made it to our long awaited structure 😃. Here is the first view from the As Siq.

Once at the Treasury, we could see water gushing down from the other side too and merging with the “stream” from the As Siq. When the opportunity came we took photos of the magnificent structure. Here are some of them:

The old city of Petra has lots to see. We had just seen the Treasury. We wanted to try our luck with the other parts before any decision was made to close the site. So we headed on further into the site when we got the chance. The path (Street of Facades) leading away from the Treasury and further into the city had a much stronger “stream” given that the water had now merged from two “mini streams”. But we braved it and walked on the side slowly.

Here are some pics of the structures while walking through.

It was cold and the rain continued. So we decided to get a local coffee at the “Why Not Shop” shop.

When planning for our visit to Petra, the trails that we had wanted to do were the Main Trail, High Place of Sacrifice Trail (Wadi al Farasa Trail) and the Treasury Viewpoint Trail (Al-Khubtha Trail). But given the weather we were not sure how much we could cover or be allowed to cover. After our coffee, we decided to explore parts of the Treasury Viewpoint Trail. We wanted to look at the various tombs and some living quarters from when the city was occupied. Here are some pictures from doing that.

We could not complete the whole trail as tourist police started to ask people to come down to the Main Trail. They had decided to close the site 😞. Tourist were not allowed to go further down the Main Trail, even to the Great Temple. We were all asked to go back to the Why Not Shop area. Here is the view of the amphitheatre as we passed it:

Here is the view from the amphitheatre looking towards the Why Not Shop side.

Once back at the Why Not Shop, we let go off the local guide. The rain had stopped. We then decided to take on the High Place of Sacrifice Trail (Wadi al Farasa Trail). It was a trail starting besides the shop. Here is how the start looked like.

We started the climb up the steps. Shortly after, we heard the tourist police calling us back. They asked us not to proceed further given the risk of slippery rocks. So we had no choice but to abandon the trail and walk back down. Here are pictures that we managed to take when we were up there:

Back at the shop we decided to hang around. Rain had stopped and we hoped that the Main Trail would be opened soon for tourists. And it did. We headed towards the Great Temple next. Here are some photos from the walk and the structure:

We had not planned to do the Monastery Trail. Access to the other trails were still restricted. And it was already past noon. So we decided to make our way back on the Main Trail to the entrance.

The sun was out. What was “mini streams” earlier had all dried up. The place had transformed itself. We started to see what we had seen in pictures, and that too without people! What more could we want 🤩.

The biggest transformation was the As Siq. It was stunning! My next blog post will be dedicated to it.

Back at the entrance we discussed the experience that we had gone through since the morning; rains, a mini flash flood and then a total transformation of the site; all this with very less tourists at the site! While we did miss out some parts of the trails, we still counted ourselves lucky to have experienced all that we had.

Virtual Video Tour

Here is a short video that I made of our visit.

Recommendations

I recommend Petra being on everyone’s bucket list. The place is just beautiful. Here are some tips for those who are planning to visit it.

  • The ruins of city of Petra is vast with many hiking trails and sites. So it will be good for any visitor to read up about them and decide which ones they want to do when visiting the site. Here is the online site that we found very useful when planning our visit. I thank the author for having done an excellent of creating the site and documenting the various trails.
  • Take appropriate clothing. The weather can change from hot to cold over the course of the day, depending on the season. We even had rain 😊.
  • Most of the walking will be in the open. So if it is going to be sunny, definitely have a hat or umbrella.
  • Did I say that you will be walking a lot? Well, we had done around 14 kms during our visit. So wear appropriate footwear. Most of the trails, other than the Main Trail, involve going on rock stairs and uneven pathways.
  • There are options to hire an electric buggy from the entrance till the Treasury. Take it only if you find it difficult to walk. Otherwise, please go on foot. Your experience, especially in the As Siq will be much better.
  • Start early in the morning, especially if you want to cover a few trails.
  • Take enough drinking water with you
  • There are toilets at places and are clean. So that part is taken care of.
  • Definitely hire a local guide, atleast for some time. The one whom we had got was indeed local. His grandfather had stayed in old city of Petra.

Have you been Petra? Or some other sites that stand out for you? Let me know as comments to this post.