8-Day Jordan Petra and Desert Road Tour with Two Days in Petra

Arrive at Queen Alia International and transfer to Amman, a city built across nineteen hills in pale limestone. The afternoon starts at the top: the Citadel on Jebel al-Qala'a, where the Temple of Hercules, an Umayyad palace, and a Byzantine church stand on the same hill above the whole city, and where the Jordan Archaeological Museum holds the Ain Ghazal statues, among the oldest human figures ever made. Continue down to the Roman theatre in the old downtown, then head to Rainbow Street for dinner and a first plate of mansaf or a very good mezze.

Travel north through the olive hills of Gilead to Jerash, and spend a long morning in one of the most complete Roman cities in the world. Pass through Hadrian's Arch, past the hippodrome, into the oval forum with its ring of columns, then follow the length of the colonnaded cardo, chariot ruts and all, to the Temple of Artemis and the north theatre. In the afternoon, visit Ajloun Castle, the Ayyubid fortress Saladin's commanders built to watch the iron mines and the road to Damascus, with a view that on a clear day reaches the Jordan valley. Return to Amman for the night.

Head south to Madaba for the sixth-century mosaic map in the floor of St George's, the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land and still legible enough to find Jerusalem's cardo on. Then continue to Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have looked out over a land he would not enter, and where the view still runs to the Dead Sea and beyond. In the afternoon, the road drops, and keeps dropping, to four hundred and thirty metres below sea level: the rest of the day is the Dead Sea itself, the float, the black mud, and the sun going down behind the hills of the West Bank.

Take the old road south instead of the fast one, and it is worth every extra hour. Wadi Mujib comes first, a gorge of Grand Canyon proportions that the highway crosses on a long descent and climb. Then continue to Kerak, the great Crusader castle on its ridge, with vaulted galleries and a keep looking out over the country Reynald of Châtillon terrorised until Saladin took it. In the late afternoon, reach Dana, a stone village on the edge of a cliff above a reserve that drops fifteen hundred metres to the Rift Valley, and stay there with the whole gorge below the terrace at sunset.

Enter Petra early, before the buses. The Siq takes twenty minutes on foot, a kilometre of gorge narrowing between two-hundred-metre walls with the Nabataean water channel still cut along the side, and then the Treasury appears in the gap the way it is supposed to. Beyond it, the city opens: the Street of Facades, the theatre carved out of the rock, and the Royal Tombs on the eastern cliff in the late morning light. In the afternoon, climb the eight hundred rock-cut steps up to Ad Deir, the Monastery, a facade fifty metres across on an empty summit.

The second day is the one most itineraries never have. It starts at Siq al-Barid, Little Petra, a miniature Nabataean suburb up the valley with a painted ceiling still visible in one of its biclinia. From there, a walking route drops over the hills into the main site from behind, arriving above the Monastery in the morning cool with the ordinary crowd still an hour away below. Continue back down through the city, and for those who want it, take the climb to the High Place of Sacrifice, the best single view over the whole bowl. Evening free in Wadi Musa.

An hour south, the highlands stop and Wadi Rum begins. Transfer into open Bedouin 4WDs at the village and spend the afternoon crossing the valley: Lawrence's Spring on the flank of Jebel Rum, the Khazali canyon with Nabataean and Thamudic inscriptions cut into its walls, the red dunes below Jebel Umm Ulaydiyya, and the rock bridge at Umm Fruth for anyone who wants to climb it. Take sunset from high on a sandstone shoulder, then spend the night at a Bedouin camp under the cliffs, with zarb out of the ground and a sky with nothing in the way of it.

Watch sunrise on the desert from camp, when the rock goes from grey to orange in about ten minutes, then have breakfast and begin the drive north. The Desert Highway returns to Amman in about four hours, and the timing is arranged around your flight; if there is room in the day, stop at Shobak, the first Crusader castle in Jordan and the least visited, standing alone on its hill. Transfer to Queen Alia.