Petra – Fully Siq

The first thing to capture our interest about Petra was not the ruins but our hotel receptionist. Against all odds she was Australian and seemed excited to see some people from her birth country. Originally from regional Victoria she had travelled to Jordan for a holiday and fallen in love with a local man. Dressed in a hijab she had a local name and was pregnant and due to give birth in February. The cultural shift fascinated Jackie and our receptionist came up as a topic during the excellent breakfast and dinner buffets that provided fuel for our days of walking. How would she feel about raising a daughter in an Islamic society, we wondered? Maybe both mother and daughter could be more progressive than many Muslims appear to be about women. It was actually unusual to be served by a woman at a hotel or anywhere other
than as a street seller. The service at the hotel was fantastic. They recommended a good guide and while not five-star it was hard to fault anything about the experience.Petra is a deserved wonder of the world. You approach through a 1.2 kilometre long canyon (although strictly speaking it’s rock pulled apart by seismic activity) called the siq which is 182 metres high in places. The canyon alone is worthy of wonder status. It’s wide enough to accommodate a couple of horses pulling carts (the only non-human powered way to get in after the Bedouin vetoed a plan to introduce buses) and so narrow in places that you only get a glimpse of the sky. The rock is gorgeous with coloured layers of rock polished smooth by water, wind and sand. Sunlight comes in at an angle creating shadows in the soft morning light. Added to this visual splendour are a few additions by the Nabataeans such as a life-sized carving of a camel train with the lower legs all that remain or the handmade water channel carved all the way along the bottom of one side of the siq.

And then when you get to the end of the siq you see beyond the end of the canyon a glimpse of the treasury, one of the most famous facades in the world (the one from Indiana Jones). Once you exit the siq you emerge at a large natural courtyard with the treasury towering above you. It’s an incredible sight even when you know it’s coming and are so familiar with its image. Familiarity makes some landmarks seem like a let down but Petra really does live up to the hype. The treasury, like most of the substantial buildings in Petra, is a tomb. Unlike the impression given in the Indiana Jones movie, it does not extend far back into the cliff. Most of the tombs are just one or two rooms and not designed to be lived in. The name of the treasure is a misnomer. It was only because of the large urn at the top which people later believed to contain treasure that it is so named. You can still see bullet holes where some misguided people tried to shoot the treasure out of the urn.

Petra lay undiscovered by the west until Burckhardt came along, a Swiss traveller who learned Arabic and disguised himself as a Bedouin to bluff his way in. The Nabataeans who carved the dozens of tombs all through the mountains were defeated by the Romans who built a temple and a few other structures, but in time knowledge of the place was lost to all but the Bedouin who continued to live here. His game was up when he could not hide his amazement at what he was seeing.

Muhammad’s facility for the Australasian accent was due to more than just the tourists flowing by. He is the nephew of a famous New Zealand woman called Marguerite van Geldermelsen who wrote a well-known book called Married to a Bedouin in which she chronicles her experience of falling in love with a Bedouin man in Petra in 1978, long before it became the tamed tourist attraction of today. Sarah and Jackie both bought the book on their kindle and it sounds like a great read.

The scale of the Petra site was the biggest surprise. It takes half a day to just to walk to one of the far points of the monastery and back. It is much more than just the one famous building. There are dozens of other tombs, all a similar outlandish size. On the first morning we trekked up to a tomb called the monastery which is up 800 steps through the mountains. Unlike the treasury, which is undergoing renovation, you can clamber up into the monastery to see the giant room it protects. Nearby there are two spectacular viewpoints across the mountains to Israel. It’s easy to see why the ruins were lost to most of the world for so long. They are completely surrounded by mountains with the siq being the one easy way in.

The walk up and down to the monastery is a wonder in itself. It was low season when we were there and we turned up early in the morning, but even so we were overtaken by a large group of English lads, one going up on a sturdy donkey. Hawkers sell stuff all the way up and pounce if you pause to look at something. They are relentless in their pursuit. Sarah stopped to look at one necklace and asked how much, then decided she didn’t really want it. The seller took this as a bargaining point and chased Sarah down the steps until she agreed to buy it for an admittedly cheap price. A lot of the goods look like mass manufactured Chinese stuff rather than locally crafted merchandise, but I guess when you deal with the kind of numbers that Petra does you need to buy in bulk. Jackie got hassled on the way up by a hawker and told her, “maybe later”. The Bedouin echo this a bit derisively they must hear it so often – “maybe later, maybe later”. Another seller (who Jackie had not promised anything to) remembered Jackie on the way down and claimed Jackie promised to buy something from her. When Jackie demurred the woman went into a rage, calling Jackie a bad woman who doesn’t keep her promises. It was a hard guilt sell tactic that might work on some people I suppose but not once you’ve built up a tougher hawker skin. Jackie did buy some camel mobiles from another lady lest you think we (sudder to think) did not buy any trinkets.

Sarah was on a mission to find the best sunset spot in Petra. We thought maybe the treasury would catch some afternoon light but it gets dark in its natural courtyard quite early. Instead we trekked back down to the Royal tombs, a collection of half a dozen amazing carvings in a row that capture the rosy afternoon light making the rock glow even more red and bringing out the opal-like qualities of the stone.

It had been a big day walking and we shelved plans to do the Petra by night tour in favour of an early night. The next day we started later but possibly did more walking. Our first summit of the day was the High Place which goes up an unspecified number of steps (it’s a lot) until you reach the mountain top where there is an ancient sacrificial altar. It is here that animals used to be sacrificed in front of the high priests, and they couldn’t have picked a nicer spot for it.

There is then an unsignposted path down the back of the mountain which took a bit of finding but eventually turned out to lead past the cafe (of course, where else would you put the cafe?). This walk was incredible. There were only a handful of people doing it so it felt more remote than the rest of Petra. It wound down through an amazing valley, past the remnants of a lion fountain and into a small valley
with yet more tombs to climb around in. There are cats everywhere in Jordan, even the waterless landscape of Petra. Near one of the tombs we met a cat who took a swipe at me *after* I had patted it for some
time. Sarah, always looking to do her fellow creatures a good turn, decided that the cat was thirsty and poured it some water into a natural rock bowl. The cat lapped up the water at a furious rate then
turned with a look that asked for more.Towards the end of the day we did another climb (just up and down 600 steps this time) to a spot overlooking the treasury. The views looking down at the treasury seemed to make it look even bigger than from below. The only people at the top were a couple of Bedouin with some lady tourists they had brought up on donkeys. They were entertaining the ladies by putting kohl on themselves. According to Muhammad the Bedouin are chick magnets and get ladies wanting to sleep over all the time. They do have a good sense of humour and the allure of an amazing landscape.

We backed up that night for the tour of Petra after dark. The entire route of the siq is lined with candles and four hundred candles are put outside there treasury where they perform a short concert. It was a bitterly cold night so we had all our layers on. There was a wind blowing through as well which kicked up little sand storms now and then. The coolest part (not wanting to sound shallow or anything) was when the wind made the paper candle protectors blow into the flame and catch alight before the ashes scattered to the wind. The music was atmospheric, a quiet Bedouin violin/cello solo with a vocalist that sounded quite mournful. The next act was a flute, also with a melancholy air. Finally a man spoke about the history of the Bedouin. I misheard him and thought he said that they used to get the horses to drink the coffee when the called on people they didn’t trust, to check whether it was poisoned. Turns out he said that they made the ‘hosts’ drink the coffee first which makes more sense.

We got back to the hotel tired and cold but in no way regretful. It was a mind blowing two days walking.

Full set of Petra photos