We’d been going for a couple of hours when we rounded a corner and saw the monastery. Starting in the 8am cool, we’d kept an easy pace with our two guides, Khaled Bedual — a fortysomething mountain Bedouin who was born in a cave nearby — and the less troglodyte Ahmad Abu Hanieh. Walking fine sandy trails and cliff paths through the fantastical rock formations and juniper trees near Wadi Musa in southern Jordan, my husband, son and I resisted donkey-hire. We did, however, accept sage tea at a couple of opportune stalls along the way — beneath a sandstone bluff, overlooking the knobbly canyons and mountains that stretch west towards the Jordan Valley and Israel’s medjool date farms.
“Mountain life is hard but simple,” said Khaled, pointing out a distant dent in the rock where he’d lived for six weeks in tourist-free January. “I had dates, yoghurt and fire to make tea. You can’t herd goats without tea — it’s romantic!”
We’d seen imaginary faces in the crags blushing pink as the sun rose, 2,000-year-old Nabataean water tanks cut into the feet of cliffs and fairy houses formed in the rock with child-friendly holes to climb through. All a delicious prelude to the two-millennia-old, 50m-high monastery, Ad Deir, with its pillars, capitals and pediments carved top-down into the rock. This was the back entrance to the world heritage site of Petra, so we had the main event, the iconic Treasury, ahead of us. But still, this was quite the support act. From our vantage point in the shade of a tea shop opposite, its seats arranged around a cave beneath portraits of the king, we had a clear view of the decorative metopes and triglyphs — Nabataean symbols that look like a dinner plate framed by cutlery — and the giant temple-top urn. A few long-haired, kohl-eyed Bedouin men skittered around on horses like desert Jack Sparrows; stray dogs and cats outnumbered the tourists.
“October is peak season; this time last year there were thousands of people here,” said Ahmad. “We wouldn’t have got a seat.” The devastating conflict in the region has seen tourism in Jordan nose-dive, despite the fact it has remained, Switzerland-like, uninvolved. “Jordanians aren’t scared of missiles overhead,” said Ahmad. “Just the economics.” Undertourism, not overtourism. In the circumstances it felt crass to congratulate ourselves on seeing one of the new seven wonders of the world crowd-free, but at least in being there we could make some financial contribution. For once I didn’t mind the widespread tipping culture or my own feeble haggling skills.
We had thought carefully about travelling to Jordan — when I told people our half-term plans, a “wow” in response was generally less “gosh, how cool” and more “gosh, how brave/stupid/both”. Hadn’t I noticed that the country shares borders with Israel and the West Bank, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia? What was I thinking?
Advertisement
Well, what I was thinking when we booked in September (horribly last-minute by usual standards of availability; again, the Jordanians’ loss was our gain), was chiefly that we’d get to see a country new to all of us, one with culture and history and swimming, that would offer a sunny mid-haul counterpoint to British autumn drizzle. And with enough epic seen-on-screen locations to satisfy the 11-year-old. It would be an adventure, featuring Petra (the third Indiana Jones film) and Wadi Rum (The Martian, Lawrence of Arabia, some Star Warses), as well as Dead and Red seas and the capital, Amman.
We went with Stubborn Mule, a family-travel specialist with Jordan expertise; the managing director, Liddy Pleasants, reassured me that she wouldn’t wait for a Foreign Office travel ban to cancel the trip if she had wind of trouble via their own network of contacts. Israel and Iran exchanging fire across Jordanian airspace in October certainly gave us pause, and BA cancelling our direct flights last-minute was annoying (since other airlines were still flying from the UK I put that down to its spare-parts issues). The uncertainty reminded me a bit of Covid times, when plans were only ever aspirations. But really, once we were rebooked onto new flights, I was more worried that we might feel tension during our trip — our own, or others’ — or that hotels and sights would feel eerily empty.
I’ll spare you the suspense: neither came to pass. Sure, we focused on the touristy bits, but we found a country of generous, open people ready to talk and laugh. And enough visitors — French, Spanish, Italian, American, Lebanese, Brits — to keep us company at the breakfast buffet. On our first day, as we bobbed lazily in the Dead Sea within sight of the West Bank, it was hard to imagine anything but peace for miles on end. Until, of course, a military helicopter flew over — but it was the only one we saw all week. We told ourselves it was soldiers going home for lunch.
We set off the next morning with Ahmad and our driver, Hassan, who’d stay with us most of the week. We had some distances to cover and Ahmad, a sort of shaven-headed Alfred Molina-a-like, had come prepared to enrich the miles with crash courses on Jordanian politics, the monarchy, marriage, exports, water shortages, immigration and history. He talked us through the different styles of keffiyeh (red and white became popular in Jordan because the late King Hussein favoured it; like Yasser Arafat, Palestinians prefer theirs black and white) and explained the surprising prevalence of Saddam Hussein bumper stickers (a close personal friend of the popular late king).
He told us the story of Jacob and Esau, and brought home to us quite casually that we really were travelling through biblical landscapes: north of our Dead Sea hotel was the spot on the River Jordan where John baptised Jesus; that white building on a distant hill was the tomb of Moses’s brother, Aaron; Ruth? Oh yes, she came from that village. It was like Sunday school come to life.
Advertisement
We didn’t have time for the Greco-Roman city of Jerash (sigh of 11-year-old relief there) or Kerak’s Crusader castle but we still managed to fit in at least one astonishing thing each day. Pleasants had told us she thought Jordan was one of the best destinations for families — before October 7, 2023, it was a Stubborn Mule’s top seller — because “it doesn’t just have the big-hitter sites, it has activities too”.
Take the first stop on our way south after the Dead Sea, a hike along a wadi, or riverbed, our feet in the water. The living walls of the gorge stretched up on either side of us, palms and ferns thriving in the most unlikely nooks and crannies. Crabs too. The thrill came from imagining the wadi in spate; oddly wedged boulders were testament to the force of the water, which Ahmad said could become 10m deep after heavy rains. But the joy for us, knee-deep at most, was something more elemental: the magic of prolonged puddle-jumping. My husband and I wondered how we might apply this lesson at home to generate pre-teen enthusiasm for walking.
Perhaps we simply need to focus our family hiking energies on astonishing landscapes and Unesco world heritage sites, because there were no complaints the following day at Petra either, even though we ended up covering about ten miles. The walk to the monastery was just the start; from there it was down steep steps in the rock, past Bedouin women with their souvenir stalls and collections of Nabataean coins (so numerous, one supposes the ancient traders were horribly careless with their loose change).
The site is huge — it could fill days, not hours — so we whisked along the colonnaded street past temples, the Nymphaeum fountain beneath a wild pistachio tree and the royal tombs. Finally we reached the Treasury, where Ahmad encouraged us to approach with eyes closed, all the better to appreciate the big reveal. Then there it was, soaring upwards in its sandstone frame, not just living up to the hype but surpassing it. That only a handful of other people were there — half of them on a Turkish bridalwear shoot — had us counting our blessings again.
If the wonder of Petra was the man-made rock carvings (also, for our son, the shop selling Indiana-style leather whips), the wonder of Wadi Rum, a couple of hours south, was what nature can do on its own (also, games of football and Jenga with local children). It’s a protected desert landscape and most visitors, us included, tour the same key sites, zooming across the sand alfresco in the back of pickup trucks. It was fine following the circuit — there were maybe a dozen other trucks — and it was fun to scale a dune here, climb a rocky mass there, admire an ancient inscription and dare ourselves to stand on top of a natural rock bridge.
Advertisement
But the real thing about Wadi Rum is the size: a huge sandy arena on a scale that’s hard to comprehend. Its massive echoing cliffs have eroded in such a way that they look like melted wax or abstract carvings; I could see where the Nabataeans got their ideas. Sheltering at their feet are 300-odd camps but you’d never know it as the vastness swallows them up. Waking early, I watched the light develop the rock’s palette from tree-bark-brown to rust and fake-tan tangerine, and the shapes shift with the shadows — an eagle became a frowning man in a hat.
• Is it safe to travel to the Middle East right now?
• 15 of the best things to do in Jordan
The final part of the jigsaw for us was the people; the living, breathing, modern Jordan. From Wadi Rum it’s an hour’s drive south to Aqaba, Jordan’s little slice of Red Sea coast. This is where Jordanians come to treat themselves, he said, and once we were done at the beach, he was going to take us for a night out. Jordan is not a dry country — it makes excellent wine and decent beer — and booze is cheaper in Aqaba than elsewhere. But we weren’t going to a pub, we were going to a café for kunafa, a sweet, gooey-crunchy-nutty pudding, and shisha, the original vape. Anabtawi was the best café, he said, finding us the last table among groups of men, women and families indulging the same vices. It was good to let conversation flow more freely, wrapping up naturally when the shisha coals died out.
Our last slice of life came in Amman. After a dash to the Jordan Museum to see the Dead Sea Scrolls and the 9,000-year-old Ain Ghazal statues, my husband, son and I took to the shops and rooftop bars of Rainbow Street. A Saturday night, it was end-of-weekend quiet, with few tourists. “It’s changed since the war began. We live in the middle of fire here,” shrugged one man in a craft co-operative where I bought woven purses and olive-wood ornaments. But we enjoyed the night-time twinkle of the city theatrically arranged over hills and canyons.
Ahmad showed us the city’s Roman treasures the next morning — an impressive amphitheatre and the hilltop Temple of Hercules — but his pièce de résistance was a whirl through the downtown shops and markets, a blur of herbs, figs, pickles, oven-warm flatbreads, sugarcane juice and just-salted peanuts. The end point was Hashem, a hole-in-the-wall falafel joint that is the king’s favourite and the city’s finest. Delicious.
Advertisement
What a sweep of human existence Jordan has seen — and what a time to see it. I couldn’t be more relieved that we had put our apprehensions to one side. Of course the misgivings will remain too much for some, and that’s fair enough, but if Petra is on your wish list or you’ve a hankering for ancient civilisations and natural spectacle, go now. You’ll be very welcome.
Liz Edwards was a guest of Stubborn Mule, which has eight nights’ B&B from £2,375pp, including flights (stubbornmuletravel.com)
Two more ways to see Jordan
By Ellen Himelfarb
The archaeological tour
See ancient sites including rose-red Petra, the Roman ruins of Jerash, Byzantine churches and a Crusader castle through the eyes of the British archaeologist Graham Philip on this history-focused tour. You’ll meander through 2,500 years — essential for piecing together contemporary Levantine geopolitics. The first three days lead you from your base in Amman into caves and pine woods, before you loop around Madaba, Petra and the Dead Sea, for two relaxing nights.
Details Eight nights’ half-board from £5,810pp, including flights, lectures and guides (martinrandall.com)
The group trek
This trip takes you 75 miles along the ancient Jordan Trail, from the Wadi Rum desert to Petra, with a qualified trekking guide and crew, walking between four and nine hours a day. The small-group journey, good for solo travellers (maximum 14 people), covers cool mountain canyons and sun-trap dunes along unmarked paths. Nearly every meal is provided, along with shared accommodation in Bedouin tents, open-air campsites and hotels. You’ll stop at the Dead Sea on the final day for a four-hour float below sea level.
Details Nine nights’ full board from £1,657pp, including transfers (muchbetteradventures.com). Fly to Amman
Become a subscriber and, along with unlimited digital access to The Times and The Sunday Times, you can enjoy a collection of travel offers and competitions curated by our trusted travel partners, especially for Times+ members
Advertisement
Sign up for our Times Travel newsletter and follow us on Instagram and X
