After a few weeks of procrastination (and late nights at work), it is time for some posts from my Jordan visit. This first post is about the highlight of the entire trip and it happened the first day. On our inbound travel day, we arrived in Aqaba, Jordan around 8:00 am. The downside is to get there that early, the travel process started in the very early morning. The bonus was that with no planned conference events that day, we had a golden opportunity to knock out a little sightseeing (after a quick stop at McDonald's).
Heading down into the valley to the site, you walk through a dark and narrow gorge called the Siq ("the shaft") that is naturally cut through the sandstone rocks. As you come to the end of the narrow gorge, Petra's most well-preserved ruin, Al Khazneh (popularly known as "the Treasury") peeks through the gap between the walls of the gorge.
There are hundreds of caves/tombs/temples/buildings throughout the "city" of Petra as you wind down the gorge. Each of them has multiple chambers cut into the rock, some with additional tombs built inside and underneath the larger ones. All through the gorge are also the remains of stone-carved stairways cut into the beautifully colored, striped sandstone - paths to access the higher places.
We did a ton of climbing and exploring in four hours, but you could easily spend days here and not see everything. This site is easily one of the most amazing things I have ever seen, definitely worth a return visit. I have merely brushed the surface of all that is here, so please check out the web-link above to learn more.
1 comment:
I'm so jealous
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