In Jordan's extraordinary rose-red "Lost City" of Petra, I have just huffed up 700 zigzagging stone steps to the ancient mountaintop High Place of Sacrifice with its sacred altar and goat blood drain. And now, along a dirt trail, I rest in a rug-draped souvenir stall while an octogenarian Bedouin woman — who is traditionally clad in a long embroidered madraga dress and grew up in a cave — deftly strings a necklace of dried cloves to sell me.
Way down below, camels with tasseled bridles emit rumbling, dinosaurlike roars while being led by robed Bedouin tribesmen whose eyes are rimmed in jet-black kohl liner. Other indigenous Bedouins, headscarves atop their flowing ringlets, trot on donkeys ("you want air-conditioned taxi?") past monolithic, 2,000-year-old tombs.
Mystical, mind-blowing Petra literally rocks.
Around the first century B.C., the now-extinct Nabatean people ingeniously chiseled the capital of their Arab empire from sheer sandstone cliffs. At times 30,000 inhabitants bustled about the affluent metropolis that was a major trade stopover for incense- and spice-toting camel caravans. Stretching across harsh desert terrain (Petra's archaeological park encompasses 102 square miles), the once-forgotten marvel includes intricate temples; obelisks honoring pagan gods; etchings of snakes, lions and eagles; cave dwellings; a theater; and more than 600 massive burial chambers, all hewed from soaring rock faces that glow in swirling hues of terra cotta, apricot and blush pink. It's bewitching.
"Petra is one of the world's biggest mysteries," says Omar, my Jordanian guide with Exodus Travels. "There is no record of history. And 65 percent of Petra is still underneath our feet, hidden by dust."
For almost two weeks, I traverse much of Jordan by bus with Exodus, an adventure company that also brings me and 15 other intrepid voyagers to the less-visited far reaches of this Middle East nation. Petra is Jordan's primo tourist draw, but elsewhere we're the only ones clambering over archaeological ruins of a mosaic-splashed Roman fort and the castles of a Muslim dynasty.
History mixes with the present here. Driving through the parched desert, we pass a sprawling Syrian refugee camp housing 36,000 in rows of white shelters; Jordan has taken in about 1 million people who have fled the war-torn nation to its north.
Before joining the tour group, I spend two days in the vibrant old quarters of capital Amman and clearly stick out; locals repeatedly ask where I'm from. This is a Muslim country, and when I say "America," they all warmly reply, "Welcome to Jordan," often with their hands placed over their hearts. I'm probably welcomed 100 times — in taxis, cafes while I eat mezze plates of hummus and falafel, shops, hookah bars, streets lined with bowing worshipers outside a minaret-topped mosque.
Following Lawrence
It's the start of a cultural odyssey. With Exodus, I also retrace exploits of Lawrence of Arabia, the dashing British officer who gained fame in World War I for leading the legendary Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks. Pre-trip, I re-watched the 1962 Oscar-winning epic "Lawrence of Arabia," so it's eerie to stand in the gravely quiet courtyard of Qasr Al Azraq, the storied black basalt fortress where T.E. Lawrence and his Bedouin troops plotted attacks during the winter of 1917.
Another day, I'm bouncing in the blanketed bed of a Bedouin-driven Toyota pickup tearing across the Wadi Rum desert, nicknamed "Valley of the Moon" for its rippling peach-pink sands pierced by sandstone and granite peaks. Lawrence and his guerrilla rebels made their base here 100 years ago, and decades later director David Lean filmed the cinematic classic in this otherworldly locale. (Planetwise, Wadi Rum also subbed for Mars in the 2015 Oscar nominee "The Martian.")
Near a commemorative rock carving of Lawrence's face, we stop at a rectangular tent woven from black goat's hair and occupied by hospitable Bedouins who offer us cardamon-and-sage tea. First, one of them has us stick out our forearms and rolls on a soaplike perfume. "It's gazelle innards," Omar says afterward.
Most of the Bedouins I meet speak only Arabic, so Omar translates. "He says, 'You are a camel.' "
A what?
"It means you are beautiful, because camels are beautiful with their long eyelashes."
I sit my hump down and enjoy the steaming sweet tea, cooked in a charred brass kettle over a rudimentary fire pit. Because Muslims avoid alcohol, tea is a main social drink in Jordan, and visitors are constantly offered a cup in friendship. (You'll find nonalcoholic beers and nonalcoholic wines on some menus, but the rare place I hoist a glass of Cab is outside Petra's gate at the 2,000-year-old Cave Bar, touted as the world's oldest saloon. Indeed there are spirits; it's a former Nabatean family tomb.)
In Wadi Rum, I sleep inside a goat-hair tent in a rustic Bedouin camp set against wind-buffeted cliffs on the desert floor until at 4 a.m. I am awakened by a distant muezzin's melodic call to prayer and, after that, a rooster's shrill cock-a-doodle-doo.
Next I wake up the entire camp shrieking as I clumsily mount my ride. "Yalla, yalla," Rashid gently urges his herd of five sibling camels, meaning "Let's go," and soon with just one other traveler, we have the predawn moonscape to ourselves.
Atop cud-chewing Aliya, I hypnotically watch the flaming sunrise turn the unending vastness a radiant gold. For 90 beyond-belief minutes, the only sounds are the camels' feet softly sinking into the powdery dunes and the chirping of Sinai rosefinches. A well-fed stray dog joins our pack, funnily bringing up the rear.
In Petra, scenes won't quit
Every day of our itinerary, we hit an archaeological treasure. I feel like I'm in Italy as I wander the immense 2,000-year-old Roman city of Jerash, dubbed the "Pompeii of the Middle East" for its well-preserved ruins buried by blown sand for centuries. Cultures humorously collide: Two Bedouins, head-scarfed with red-and-white checkered kaffiyehs, toot "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on bagpipes in the Corinthian-columned amphitheater near the chariot hippodrome.
Petra, though, is the jackpot. Abandoned in the seventh century, it was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812 and became a UNESCO heritage site in 1985. To get to the ancient city, you have to trek through the dramatic narrow Siq, a nearly mile-long slot canyon sandwiched by 24-story-high veiny rock edifices and at times only 10 feet wide. Nature-created formations stare down in the shapes of elephants and skulls. At the end, the Siq cracks open to reveal the grandstanding, rock-whittled funerary-urn-crowned Treasury, likely a former temple.
After dark, I return for the corny-cool "Petra by Night" ceremony. Even with my flashlight I can barely see as I stumble through the ghostly Siq, lit only by hundreds of luminaria candles, and then sit in the dirt before the shadowy Treasury. Bedouins play a flute and rababa string instrument before the big reveal — spotlights suddenly bathe the Treasury in changing psychedelic colors.
Over two days I walk 23 miles in Petra because the scenes won't quit. On the High Place of Sacrifice climb, I smell the pungent smoke of juniper branches, and soon a Bedouin man is hawking me a morning shot of Arabic coffee heated by a campfire. Later, as my new friend Hammadeh strings that clover necklace in her ramshackle stall, she tells me through interpreter Omar how she once lived in a cave in Petra and still follows the old ways, herding her sheep and goats. Without tourism, she frets, she has no money. "I thank God. I thank God for everything," she says as I buy three more necklaces.
Petra's most jaw-dropping high place is the Monastery, accessible by hoofing up nearly 1,000 Nabataean-cut steep steps. After the path's last bend, this mammoth stone temple — it's 155 feet wide — pops out of a remote mountainside towering over my puny presence. From the Monastery, I continue ascending a boulder-strewn trail until, next to a grazing donkey, I see a piece of scrap wood lying against a pile of rubble with this hand-scrawled message: "Welcome to Top of the World Cafe." Up further, I reach the "cafe," a tattered, tented platform precariously perched over a rocky ledge in the heavens. There, a 17-year-old Bedouin named Lost ("because you're always found," he smiles) offers me another cup of tea, this one with a sprig of mint.
