During my trip home, I had a layover in Paris and decided to take a day trip around. After une quiche and café, I walked to Notre Dame… and was utterly disappointed by what I saw. I blame it on Petra.
I met Jon (yon) in a hostel. We climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed and ended up looking down at the treasury. Not on the tourist map, very dangerous, but few get to see this.
The Nabataeans not only carve majestic facades into hard rock, they carved stone steps and aquifers all over Petra. We happened to climb on top of the Palace (which had running water inside for parties back in the day… insane) along a path when we got curious and decided to follow some more steps. Off in the distance we saw some steps going up about half a mile in front of us. So we headed toward them. 15 minutes later, the terrain got rough and we were worried about the sun setting. We pushed on forward anyway out of stupid curiosity because I happened to hear sounds of a crowd echoing in the distance. We pushed forward closer to the steps and all of a sudden saw that there was a valley between us and the steps. There, in front of us, was the Treasury, the first monument you see walking out of a crack in the rocks called the Siq. Being this high made me appreciate what these fools did because as I type this, I get a feeling of nausea. A couple of times my partner and I tripped on the rocks near the edge and there was no hope if we fell. As I tripped I remember holding my breath and I felt the adrenaline pump. I need to move on because I keep having thoughts of falling off a 1000 ft drop to my death and its making me dizzy.
The Treasury from below. The amount of detail... amazing.
They call it the City of Red. No kidding.
Rocks can be beautiful
There are hundreds and hundreds of tombs carved out in Petra. It’s a hikers paradise.
I don't know what the repetition of the steps mean. Homage to their ridiculous step fetish or something deeper?
Indiana Jones filmed at the treasury and Transformers 2 filmed at the Monastery. Contrary to both movies, the inside of these buildings are actually… really boring. Nothing is hidden inside.
Inside the Treasury. No grail here.
The Monastery is huge. It’s so big taking a picture of it is actually really difficult. After 1.5 hours of hiking you get to the middle of the town. From there, its probably another good 45 minutes of climbing to get here. I happened to do this on the hottest day of the year in pants. I think I drank 7 liters of liquid that day. The next day it was dramatically cooler and I only drank about 2.5 and I did more climbing and hiking… You can get a donkey ride up for about 7JD. That takes about 20-30 minutes.
Go watch Transformers 2 for this part. This is NOT easy to access but its HUGE. The ledge to get in is as tall as me. Inside that hole... pretty boring. Yellow rock and stupid tourists defaced it with years of names. Nothing inside here either, sorry Shia. You can climb to the top of this and stand where that middle circular thing in the middle is. I regret not trying, though I hear its very dangerous.
The Palace, like I said above, has running water inside. Climbing to the top was the beginning of my exploration.
The palace. A place for entertaining guests. look how small that guy is.
The romans turned many of these into tombs. Now, Jordanians try to sell you stuff and rip you off with Soda that costs 5-7 times as much as soda in non-tourist areas in Amman.
2 sides of a tent. Sand bottles with Petra written on them.
Part II to come. Grand Canyon of Petra.
