Petra day 1: the treasury and the royal tombs

No need for the alarm today, the muezzin got us spot on at 5:55 am, 5min before our intended time.

I had a terrible night, it was so cold and my head was freezing that I ended up putting a hat on. I think we are both getting a cold. Alexis fared better. Considering our state this morning, we review our departing time and decide to take it easy: Breakfast, showers and a little time to pack our lunch and get ready. We are not efficient.

This being said, by 7:30, we started the walk to the site and had passed all the ticket gates.

You have a horse ride included in the ticket to the entrance of the Siq ( the canyon ), but a tip is expected. There are a few sites to see on the way before entering the Siq itself, so we decide to go on foot and slowly.

The first thing we see are a lot of carved openings in the rocks around and then the Djinn blocks. There are tombs made of one big carved block. 

A little further away is the obelisk tomb with its big cones on the top.

I must say, this walk is a good way to build anticipation as you approach the high cliffs of the canyon. We are alone so far, only some staff and tourism police officers pass us by riding electrical vehicles.

At the start of the Siq, there are some Nabatean dams and tunnel. One is 18m long and entirely carved into the rock, it’s a diversion channels for the heavy flooding that could enter the city. It’s fairly impressive to see the systems in place already 2,000 years ago.

We enter the Siq proper, and it’s an impressive canyon, some parts are carved with votive alcoves at some areas. You can also see the water channels cut within the rock itself. I think walking through this natural corridor is really preparing you to enter the city. It’s beautiful on its own, like walking through time. It really helps that we are alone, and I can’t wrap my head around how lucky we are.

Finally, after a particularly narrow section, we get our first view of the Treasury. The most famous building in Petra. I am so excited, we finally we in full view. And it certainly doesn’t disappoint. It’s impressive, massive and I am in awe. I am sure that the Nabateans built it there to inspire all these feelings, and they certainly succeeded – El Siq is the perfect tool to prepare you mentally for being astonished.

We stay there and enjoy the view. In total, we were probably 6 in this (very very) cold morning. Friendly cats were around, looking for pets. 

After we had our fill, we continue our walk. It pass in front of the avenue of facades, which are tombs. They have monumental facades. And through the opening, the rooms  completely carved into the rock are not that small  at all ! Again, this is gorgeous. I am totally sold by Petra just with these two sites and we have probably been inside for an hour ( yes, walking from the visitor center through Al Siq is quite a long distance ). 

Some of these tombs are open, so you can enter to see the inside.

As we continue along the main trail, we arrive through a wider opening and the plain area between the mountains where the ancient city lies. On the slope on the left is a lot of holes and more smaller carved tombs. But on the right is a larger mountain and it’s riddle with carved holes and houses. These were a first part of the residential area. Above this, the first royal tombs can already be seen. We climb up to see Unayshu tomb and then explore this little “hill” before backtracking a little on the main trail. With our wandering we passed the theater. 

As we walk up, we get the first tourist trinkets vendors and a few more friendly cats to pet.

Petra has beautiful monuments and friendly cats, I am totally sold.

We get close to this big huge semi-circle and it’s been completely carved into the rock, every row of seats. It’s impressive !

By this point we have reach a crossroad to various trails. We could continue into the main trail to the city center in the plain; or circle around the right hill on the Al Khubtha trail which goes through all the royal tombs and then up the mountain for a few viewpoints of the theater and the treasury. We decide to do this one.

Again, we enjoy all these fantastic tombs alone. We may have crossed one other traveler and that’s it. The first tomb we walk in is the Urn tomb, which was converted into a church at some point. The room inside is massive with extremely high ceiling. 

Then we walk in front of the silk tomb with distinct different marble colors. It’s pretty.

The last two tombs are monumental : the Corinthian and Palace tomb. Their facades are complex with a lot of decorations still distinguishable. It’s the size that is unreal, these are really tall structures.

For all their exterior grandeur, what is left of the inside of these rooms is very bare. From the museum, I gathered that they were not buried with any treasures. Most of these tombs belonged to a whole family. In front, you should have triclinium, or funerary hall, were ceremonies would be regularly held.  Of these ceremonial structures, very little is left.

We walk the little detour to see Sextius Florentinus tomb, which has a distinct roman style. It’s being renovated or consolidated. A team was working on it, so we enjoyed the outside.

On the way back to the main trail, we get our first offer for a donkey ride for the rest of the trail. Indeed everything beyond this point is just stairs ( and a lot of them ). We have to walk on the top of the Siq canyon to get the best views. We decline and start our ascent along very old, smoothen steps. The rock is a distinct pink shade and on these steps, it’s made even more clear. The donkey follows at a distance for about half way. And then when the next uber long flight of steps is in view, offers again ( especially to me ). We decline politely and we pushes along getting up there with his rider at speed.

At the top, the first view point is for the theater and is beautiful.

But it’s not over, we continue along the path that now looks more like a trail. It continues up before reaching some sort of Bedouin settlement and then we go down until the edge of the Siq. We reach this point a little after 9:30. Another two travelers are there, they said that they waited 30min to get the sun on the monument below. We arrived just on time.

We let them take all their pictures and they leave. We are now alone ( with a super cuddly cat !) enjoying an exceptional view of the Treasury below. I think we soaked it all up for a good 15min before leaving the spot.

The way back is the same way in – and we finish this entire section around 11:30 am. From there, we see a path going directly to the Byzantine churches. Next to them, the map indicates a picnic spot, sounds like the right timing.

As we get near, we see that the picnic spot is attached to a small tea vendor. We wouldn’t mind a hot tea with our picnic. I tell Alexis to ask for the price first before ordering. And it’s a whopping JOD 2 per cup ! ( when for reference, it was about 0.25 in Amman and in other super touristic places JOD 1, which we found was already too much ). We do not order tea. But no one bothered us either when we started our lunch on one of the many tables there. We had our picnic and a good break under some trees for shade.

It was freezing this morning, especially around the Siq, but now under the sun it’s really hot. We started with gloves, beany, scarves and 3 layers – we are slowly removing each one of them.

Once lunch is done, we visit the 3 churches around us. The byzantine church has two massive and well preserved mosaics that are definitely worth checking out. I liked that the giraffe was pictured as a spotted camel.

The blue chapel has 4 blue marble columns that came from Assouan in Egypt. Just imagine the wealth needed to bring these kind of luxury materials. They were recycled from a Nabatean structure to build the chapel.

From there, we are above the temple of the winged lions, and close to the great temple. We have covered a lot of sites this morning. More than we anticipated, but we are also getting quite tired. We decide to finish the center and then walk back to the main entrance.

The temple of the winged lions was dedicated to the Nabatean female goddess, al Uzza ( later associated with Venus/ Aphrodite and also Isis, she was an important pre-Islamic deity ). The name come from the columns that used to have winged lions at their corners, the intact ones are in the Petra museum. They also found an idol with a female face inside, which is also in the Petra museum.

Frankly, the most interesting pieces of this temple are in the museum, the rubbles that are left are not that impressive.

We start our descent from this point to Qasr al Bint, which is the massive temple which was found mostly intact. The walls are very thick and resisted the successive earthquakes that took down a lot of the ancient city. On the side beautiful carved stone in the shape of flowers can be seen. It was the city main temple and dedicated to Dushara. 

These gods are so unknown to us – there is an entire antique pantheon to discover from the Arabic world. 

The temple is under restauration and you can’t walk inside anymore, so we continue on to its very impressive neighbor, the great temple.

While it has the name of temple; the explanations say that it was most probably a palace, with a section that looks like a council chamber ( a very small amphitheater is in the upper terrasse ), so public functions. Next to it is a very large flat area with what used to be a massive pool to swim and a garden for the wealthiest of the Nabatean society. To show so much water for leisure in a desert landscape is certainly the epitome of wealth.

This temple is on at least 3 levels, making use of the natural terrain and built in terrasses. It is assumed to have been standing 34m above the street level at its highest. As you climb the monumental staircase to the last remains of the upper level, you already get quite high. It’s the diameter of the base of the pillars that are left that impresses me.

We now get back to the main street, which is a roman street, built on top of the Nabatean one. It has the same characteristic as in Jerash: lined with columns, straight, some shops along it’s southern edges remains. At the start a pile of rumble used to be the Nymphae ( public fountain ).  The Temenos gate ends it just before entering the Qasr el bint area.

By this time, it’s about 2:20pm and we decide to call it a day. We start the walk back to the main entrance of the Petra.

You have the option to take a free shuttle behind the Basin restaurant but we decided that we were well enough to get back on foot.

We walk again in front of the royal tombs, the theater and the street of facades then the treasury. But this time with the afternoon sun, and we see them under a different angle.

But by half way through the Siq , our feet are getting a little heavy there. And we are starting to second guess our decision. Still, we marshal on and ignore the offer of horse ride back. The way back is up and a long gentle slope, but up nonetheless.

As we get to the car, we check our watches and we have walked 19km today. No wonder we are tired. I am so happy we went in there with our hiking boots and properly prepared with a lot of water and snacks. 

We reached the car park by 3pm. But our day is not over yet. We have grocery shopping to do and find a pharmacy for some cold over-the-counter medicine.

Our first stop is a larger supermarket outside of town and we get 90% of what we need there. Except fresh produces: vegetables and fruits ( even meat ) are sold by the road side or in the smaller stores in their smaller parts of town. We stop on the way back to downtown for medicine and then go at the same little stores of yesterday for vegetables.

Once we arrive at our Airbnb it’s 4pm and we are DONE ! We switch on all the heaters to full blast, because we do not want a freezing repeat of yesterday. While now, it’s alright, the temperature plummets when the sun goes down.

Diner is kofta with tomato sauce and pasta. We need carb and heavy food for the amount of calories that we burnt today between the hike and the cold.

Tomorrow, we will go to little Petra, then enter from the back of the side to walk the opposite direction from the Monastery back to the entrance. We will probably do one of the side trails as well depending on how long little Petra takes to visit.