Jordan - Part 2

I knew visiting Petra would require a lot of steps. We opted for the two-day visit and one day we arrived early for the free shuttle to Little Petra about 15 km away from the main entrance. Once there, we set off using an All Trails map to traverse the whole site in reverse. Most visits to Petra start and end at the main entrance, but to visit both of the main sites, the Treasury and Monastery you would be looking at nearly 20km of walking and at least 800 steps up to the monastery. Entering from Little Petra we’d be saving steps and starting on higher ground.

Soon after we started on the trail, which is about 6km from the Monastery, there was no one else around. We were on the trail according to All Trails, but it was taking us over the mountain. It was just the two of us for quite a while, but soon a herd of goats joined us. We could see glimpses of the main trail far below in the valley, but it seemed a long way from where we were. After we reached the top of the mountain, we started down the rocky path, but soon we were at a dead end. About 20 meters up and has no apparent way down. Just a few goats below curiously looking up at us.

We carefully made our way down, step by step and soon we were down to a tricky last few meters. This was no place for a fall or a twisted ankle as there wasn’t anyone around, we were still a few km from the main trail. I carefully planned the next few steps and after about 10 minutes of assessing the risk/reward we made it down. Soon we were passing Bedouin camps and more goat herds before finally reaching the main trail.

Another hour or so and we reached the Monastery. An impressive site to say the least. I guess there is a reason Petra is among the world's wonders. It would be another 10k back to the car, but first, we made our way down to the Treasury and many other sites along the way. There are Roman, Byzantine, and Nabataean ruins throughout as Petra has at least two thousand years of history.

We finished the first day with just over 17k of walking and were back the next morning for another 8 as we entered from the visitor centre and walked past the Treasury as far as the Roman theatre and explored some of the tombs in that area before heading to our next destination.