Lessons from Petra, Jordan: What Hiking the Back-Door Route Taught Me

Petra, the “Rose-Red” city of the Nabateans

The ancient city of Petra is the legacy of the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled in southern Jordan more than 2,000 years ago. Carved and built into the sandstone mountains and once home to the Nabateans, Edomites and Romans, Petra was a resting stop for trade caravans laden with frankincense, myrrh and spices. “It was admired for its refined culture, massive architecture and ingenious complex of dams and water channels,” according to Visit Jordan.

Devastating earthquakes, plus changes in trade routes, led to Petra’s demise. The “Rose-Red City” was abandoned by the 7th century and forgotten by everyone except local Bedouins. Petra was rediscovered by Westerners in 1812 when Swiss explorer Johann Ludwig Burckhardt dressed as an Arab and convinced a Bedouin guide to take him to the rumoured Lost City.

Three things catapulted Petra onto the world tourism stage. In 1985, it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being “one of the most precious cultural properties of man’s cultural heritage.” In 1989, it starred in the final moments of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And in 2007, it made the cut for the New 7 Wonders of the World list. Now Petra — between the capital of Amman and the Red Sea town of Aqaba — draws around a million visitors each year.

To be clear, one day isn’t remotely enough time to explore this massive complex of tombs and temples that Jordanians like to say is the size of 50,000 football fields. But one day was all I had during a five-night blitz across the country with Magic Travels for an Adventure Travel Trade Association conference.

Landing on Oct. 7, 2023, my first visit to the Middle East coincided with the start of the Israel-Hamas war, but as my family urged me to come home, my guides showed me how this welcoming Arab nation is an oasis of calm in a turbulent region. I rarely spent time alone but felt perfectly at ease on a solo pilgrimage to Hashem Restaurant in Amman for its legendary falafel and hummus.