GO JORDAN: Petra, a city carved from rock at least 2,000 years ago, is an unmissable stop on a visit to Jordan. And you have to give the Dead Sea a try, too, writes ROSITA BOLAND
EVEN IF YOU know nothing else about Jordan you’ll have seen images of Petra, the rose-red city that lies in the desert. It’s the country’s outstanding attraction and a Unesco World Heritage site.
Jordan: so which country is that? Sandwiched in the middle of the Middle East, Jordan shares borders with Israel, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia, a geography of political flashpoints that tells its own story. The country is itself politically stable, but tourism has suffered because of Jordan’s proximity to volatile areas. The country’s image is always going to suffer when tension explodes in nearby countries, such as during the conflict between Israel and Lebanon.
This is probably reflected in the visitor numbers. Last year 600,000 people visited – a fraction of what nearby Egypt receives. So the good news is that you’re likely to be able to see the country’s magnificent key sights without being swamped by other people all eagerly jostling for their first sight of Petra. At least, that was my experience when I visited this month.
Amman, the capital, is where international flights arrive. I didn’t see much of it, as we landed late at night. I did see a lot of cars, though. The traffic was like rush hour in Dublin, as it was Ramadan and people were making the most of Iftar, the meal that breaks the daily fast once the sun goes down. Families were going out to visit one another to eat, bringing their children, who stared wide-eyed out of car windows as we drove alongside on the highway from the airport at midnight.
Petra, about four hours south of Amman, was carved from sandstone by the Nabataean people, then added to at different times. Nobody is quite sure how old it is, but it dates from at least two millenniums ago.
Oddly, for such a spectacularly visual place, and one on such a large scale, Petra has never featured in the Bond films, those cinematic showcases of world sights. Indiana Jones got there, though, in The Last Crusade, which is why so many of the tourist stalls at the entrance have the name over their shops – right next to the Titanic Snack Shop.
There is only one way to enter Petra, via the Siq, a kilometre-long canyon whose walls reduce the sky to a bright blue slit. As you walk in, look out on the left for the eroded forms of camels once carved into the stone, bellies, humps and legs bulging strangely out of the red rock.
Nobody will forget their first sight of Petra’s most famous landmark. You round a corner to see the fictional-looking Treasury in the distance, sandwiched between the canyon walls. It’s the scale of it that makes such an impact: a vast facade that soars skywards.
Petra, a hot and haunting place, is a city of tombs and amphitheatres you walk past rather than through, as almost everything is carved into gorges and cliff faces, fronted by extraordinary facades of colonnades, pediments and obelisks.
You can see the highlights of the site in a day, but two days would be better, especially so you can rest during the hottest time of the day. However long you’re there, though, you should gather your energy and climb the 800 stairs to the monastery on top of Ad-Deir, where another stunning carved facade, on a huge scale, is all the more surreal for being perched so far off the valley floor.
It’s not just Petra that is so visually remarkable. The surrounding countryside is also composed of rose-red stone hills and mountains, and at sunset and dawn the entire landscape glows.
If at all possible, find a hotel with an outdoor pool, so you can swim and simultaneously look at this stark and memorable place while the light changes. We were at the lovely, understated Marriott a few kilometres out of town, up at a height that ensured a fabulous view. I almost spent more time in the pool than I did in my room, and when I wasn’t I was looking at it longingly out of the window in the moonlight. After a miserable summer in Ireland I couldn’t get enough of the sunlight or of that shimmering lozenge of bright blue water.
Jordan’s most precious resource is water, and the lack of it makes for compelling vistas of stony grey desert throughout the country. If you look carefully as you travel along the near-empty roads you can see Bedouin tents scattered through the desert, with camels and herds of goats and donkeys roaming nearby.
Bizarrely, you can also see four-wheel drives parked outside almost every canvas structure. Less than 1 per cent of the population are Bedouins, and to support their disappearing way of life the government gives them a tax-free grant to buy vehicles if they maintain herds of more than 100 animals.
The Jordanian way of eating is to bring out very many dishes, usually first as a cold course and then a hot course, when the meat appears. The Haret Jdoudna, in Madaba, is reputed to be one of the best restaurants in Jordan. (Check out the photographs in the entrance of well-known people who’ve eaten there.) It’s a beautiful, atmospheric place in an old family house, where a canopy of fig trees provides welcome shade for the courtyard tables, and pink geraniums in old oil cans line the steps. After an absence of anything green or growing in the desert, the fig trees seem as exotic as the jewelled trees of Aladdin.
Out came the stars of Middle Eastern food: the best hummus I’ve ever had, fresh, creamy and golden, tabbouleh, Arabic salad, lamb kebabs, grilled chicken, goat’s cheese infused with sage, sheep’s cheese, tomatoes with chilli and, my favourite, a falafel-shaped ball called kibbeh. Inside is not chickpeas but an unexpected and delicious cinnamon-spiced minced-lamb mixture.
The restaurant deserves its excellent reputation, but one of the reasons it’s so well known is that Madaba is a town with a famous mosaic map. Or, rather, a large fragment of a famous mosaic map. Many ancient mosaics were created not only for decoration but also to display information about surrounding places.
What’s left of the Madaba mosaic map is on the floor of the town’s 19-century Greek Orthodox church. The map dates from the sixth century, and various churches were built over it in the intervening centuries, after earthquakes claimed the previous buildings. It contains the first cartographic image of the Holy Land, and even today researchers are searching for locations depicted in the map.
Not far from Madaba is Mount Nebo, where, according to the Bible, Moses was given a view of the Promised Land. In the heat haze at the top you look down and see Israel in the distance, and the Dead Sea, shining as if it were alive.
The Dead Sea is a very strange place. At 400m below sea level, it’s the lowest place on land in the world. It’s really an extensive lake, with Jordan to the east and Israel to the west.
As every schoolchild knows, you can’t sink in the Dead Sea. And while you’re here, forget that phrase about the existence of plenty more fish in the sea. In the Dead Sea, there aren’t any. The water contains 10 times more salt than the real oceans and seas, due to the peculiar mineralogical make-up of the surrounding land.
So the drill when you arrive at a waterfront hotel here is to pass all the pools, trek over the stony beach and insert self with caution into the water. It is the oddest sensation. The abundance of salt keeps you on the surface like an aquatic astronaut for whom gravity has gone out of the shuttle window.
Once you’re horizontal it’s mighty hard to get vertical again. Make sure you float on your back, because floating on your front, or attempting to swim, results in being flipped over again by the water as persistently as a chef barbecuing a kebab.
If you have even the tiniest nick anywhere in your skin, or have recently shaved any part of your body, the Dead Sea will soon let you know all about it. Try not to get water in your eyes or in your mouth. My eyes remained free of water, but I copped a mere splash around my mouth – and it was an entirely unpleasant experience.
I would not recommend bringing in young children, especially unsteady toddlers, who will be knocked from their feet and either swallow half the Dead Sea or have it in their eyes, and then nobody will be happy.
Finish your day with a sundowner or two as you watch the sun set on the unique sea where the fish don’t swim.
Rosita Boland was a guest of BMI, Marriott Hotels and the Jordan Tourism Board
Go there
BMI (flybmi.com) flies to Amman via London Heathrow from Dublin and Belfast. Royal Jordanian also flies from London Heathrow.
Where to stay, where to eat and where to go
Where to stay
Marriott has a presence in a new part of Amman, on Shmeissani Issam Ajluni Street (00-962-6-5607607, ammanmarriott.com); a few kilometres out of Petra in Wadi Musa, with a beautiful pool and gorgeous view (00-962-3- 2156407, petramarriott.com); and, with a very large, family-friendly resort, on the Dead Sea in the Jordan Valley (00-962-5-3560400, marriottdeadsea.com).
Mövenpick Resort Petra (00-962-3-2157111, movenpick-petra.com), which has some impressive Arabic-style wooden interiors, is the priciest hotel in town, but no matter where you’re staying, anyone can use the charming candlelit rooftop bar.
Where to eat
Haret Jdoudna. Madaba, 00-962-5-3248650, romero-jordan.com. You’ll pay about €20 a head for a lunch of excellent hot and cold meze, main course, Jordanian pastries and mint tea. A lovely, relaxed place that’s hard to leave.
Petra Kitchen. Wadi Musa, 00-962-3-2157900, petramoon.com/cusinetours.htm. Some people love it, others, including me, could take it or leave it. At €30 a head it’s pricey for a simple dinner you help prepare yourself. It’s a good idea: a cookery lesson where you learn to make Jordanian dishes, then eat the result. In practice I chopped chillies, garlic and tomatoes for half an hour, then had no idea what happened to them next until they reappeared, cooked, when we sat down to eat. The kind of evening you have probably depends on the direction in the kitchen on the night.
Where to go
Petra (petrapark.com) is the unmissable stop. The absurdly picturesque ruins are still being excavated. Entry costs €20 for one day, €25 for two days and €30 for three. Guides cost €15 for two and a half hours or €34 for six. You can also hire donkeys, camels, and horse-drawn carriages to transport you around if you’re done in by the heat or find walking difficult.
At St George’s Greek Orthodox church (visitjordan.com) in Madaba you can see the remains of a sixth-century Byzantine mosaic map. Entry €2.
Mount Nebo (visitjordan.com), a few kilometres from Madaba, is one of Jordan’s most important Christian sites, where Moses was given a view of the Promised Land. Pope John Paul II visited in 2000; Benedict XVI visited this May. Entry €2.