Two days in Petra, because one is not enough to see half of it.
Most tours give Petra one day. That means you reach the Treasury, take a photograph and walk back. The Treasury is roughly a tenth of the site. We spend two days there so you can also climb to the Monastery, 850 steps cut into rock, and reach the ridge tombs, where there are no crowds.
Petra covers about as much ground as a small city, except it is in the desert. You enter through the Siq, a canyon 1200 metres long and in places two metres wide, at the end of which the Treasury appears. The effect works even when you know it from the films. There is a lot of walking: about 22 kilometres over two days, most of it in sand and on steps. Water and a hat are essential even in March.
Wadi Rum is another planet. Literally, since The Martian and Dune were shot there. In the afternoon we take jeeps between the rock towers and in the evening zarb is cooked, lamb baked for six hours in a pit in the sand. We sleep in a Bedouin camp where the tents have beds and the showers have hot water, which is not a given. Our guide Andrea has been running Jordan since 2018 and knows Salem, our Bedouin host, personally. The trip ends at the Dead Sea, 430 metres below sea level, where sinking is genuinely impossible. Do not get in with a freshly shaved face. You learn that once and never forget it. The group is capped at twelve, because the desert camp takes no more vehicles than that and a larger group falls apart inside Petra. Jordanians are hospitable to the point of awkwardness: you will be offered tea five times a day and refusing is close to impossible. Drink it. It is as sweet as syrup and after a day in the desert it is exactly what you want.
Flight from Vienna via Istanbul, landing at 20:40 local time. A twenty minute transfer to a hotel in central Amman, check in and a short briefing. If you still have energy, have a mint tea on the roof terrace, which looks across at the citadel.
The Roman city of Jerash in the morning, better preserved than most ruins in Italy. The colonnaded street runs 800 metres and the hippodrome still stages chariot races for visitors. In the afternoon, the Amman citadel and the market, which sells the best falafel in the country.
Madaba, with its sixth century mosaic map of the Holy Land set into a church floor. Mount Nebo, from which Moses is said to have seen the promised land. In the afternoon, the King Highway to Petra, 220 kilometres past the Wadi Mujib canyon. Petra by Night in the evening.
We enter at seven in the morning, while it is cool and the Siq is empty. The Treasury, the street of facades, the Roman theatre and the royal tombs. In the afternoon, the climb to the Monastery: 850 steps and two hours up and back. There is a café at the top where tea costs three euros and is worth it.
On the second day we come in by the back route through Little Petra and descend to the Monastery from above, which saves the steps. In the afternoon we take the path to the viewpoint above the Treasury, off the main trail. Anyone who has had enough can stay by the hotel pool.
An hour and a half drive, then the whole afternoon by jeep across the desert. The Burdah rock bridge, Lawrence spring and dunes turned red by the iron in the sand. Sunset from a ridge. Zarb for dinner at camp, tea by the fire and a night in a tent under the stars.
Sunrise over the desert, then four hours north to the Dead Sea. In the afternoon you swim, or rather you do not swim, you float. Smear on the mud from the shore and let it dry. The hotel has a freshwater pool to rinse the salt off.
Breakfast, one more hour at the Dead Sea and a shower, because the salt only really comes off on the second rinse. Airport transfer at 11:00, an hour on the road, climbing from 430 metres below sea level to 750 above. Departure at 15:20 via Istanbul, landing in Vienna at 21:50.
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