A rental car, a Roman city, a rose-red city and a night in the Martian desert.
I flew from Mumbai to Amman one way, picked up a rental car at the airport, and drove the country from north to south. Jordan is small enough to cross in a day, and dense enough that you’d need a month to see it properly.
From Aqaba at the bottom, I crossed the Red Sea into Egypt, which turned this into one long trip.
Stories
Amman is built over hills, with a Roman theatre carved into one of them and the ruins of the Citadel on top of another. From the Citadel you can see the whole white city spread out, with…
Stayed at Battuta Hostel Stop 2 · Late SeptemberJerash is one of the best-preserved Roman cities outside Italy: colonnaded streets, temples, a hippodrome and Hadrian's Arch, built for the emperor's visit in 129 AD. Walking its main…
Stop 3 · Late SeptemberPetra is a city the Nabataeans carved into rose-coloured cliffs more than 2,000 years ago. You walk a narrow canyon, the Siq, for over a kilometre before it opens onto the Treasury. Most…
Stayed at Rafiki Hostel Stop 4 · Late SeptemberWadi Rum is red sand, sandstone mountains and silence. Films use it to stand in for Mars. I stayed in a Bedouin camp in the middle of it. Camps here cook zarb, a feast buried in hot sand…
Stayed at Mohammed Mutlak Camp Stop 5 · Early OctoberAqaba is Jordan's only coastline, a short strip on the Red Sea where four countries can almost see each other. It's also where the ferry leaves for Nuweiba in Egypt, the start of the second…
What it taught me
The best night of the trip cost less than a hotel dinner: a camp in the desert, a fire and the stars.