A Desert Adventure in Jordan

All desert roads lead to elegant, youthful Amman, gleaming like an opal in the sand. World-class museums showcase treasures from this corner of the Middle East, while the Citadel is the capital’s crowning glory, holding seventh-century Umayyad ruins high above the city’s minarets and markets. To the north, ancient Jerash beckons, triumphant pillars and arches hinting at the city’s glorious Roman heyday.  

Though its name evokes one single, iconic sight, Petra is more than just Al-Khazneh (The Treasury). It is an entire city of 800 monuments, temples and tombs carved into coral-pink sandstone canyons in the third century BC. The ancient capital of the Nabateans was unknown to the West until 1812, but even after all this time, it still awes; nothing prepares visitors for the sight of Al-Khazneh emerging at the end of a narrow gorge like a glorious, golden, ornately chiseled dream.  

Mysterious petroglyphs, fire-red desert sands and vast rocky canyons: Wadi Rum is the poster child of desert escapes, in no small part to its role as the backdrop to 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia. Explore the dramatic, almost-Martian landscape by day, and brave the chill of dusk to see it transformed by night, when Bedouin campfires crackle in the dunes and stars become ancient tools of navigation.