How to plan ahead?
When you travel a lot, it is always easy to arrive at your destination and sort out accommodation on arrival and explore the area as you wonder around. For more touristic destinations, I prefer to do some research ahead of the arrival time to figure out the best ways to experience it differently or simply to skip the crowd. And I did it for Petra. Before even getting the visa, it’s good to know, how many days we want to allow for Petra, because the cost of the Jordan pass varies based on Petra visits!! This is the most expensive touristic spot in Jordan and Jordan government knows how to make money from it. For more information on Jordan Pass and why it’s better than buying on arrival visa separately from the Petra ticket, visit this post
We planned for two days in Petra and also planned to arrive a night ahead to be able to visit Petra as early as possible in the morning.
The other thing to consider and think about ahead of time is what to see in Petra. It’s not obvious looking at the photos of the Treasury and the gorgeous canyon leading to it, the actual size of the Petra as a city and how many tombs, structures, stairways and other interesting stuff are awaiting for you there to be explored!
It is also a good idea to watch few documentaries and Vlogs on Youtube to get the sense of the size and the geography of the place and come up with a must see list!
Where to Stay:
All the hotels from cheap hostels to fancy 5 star hotels are all located in the Wadi Musa. We decided to stay in Umm Sayhoun a villages on the hilltops overlooking the Petra, where Bedouins are living and by 10 minutes drive from Wadi Musa, you can hardly see any tourists and it feels really authentic. For more details on the village and where we stayed, read the first part of our Petra blog here.
The other positive side of it, is the fact that it is easy to park the car in the village comparing to the chaos of the Wadi Musa. We however were going to Wadi Musa for eating and the grocery shopping which is only 10 minutes drive and it definitely worth to stay up in the village and commute to the town. If I couldn’t find this option, we would definitely stay in one of the Bedouins caves in the mountains for at least one of our nights at Petra.
How to Enter Petra:
First of all start early. The gate is opened at 6:00, so try to be there by 6:00 am.
Here is the trick that we didn’t know (We just learned about it the night before our visit). If you have a Jordan pass, you still need to go and get the actual ticket from the main ticket office!! It means you still need to stay in the queue for the ticket even if you already paid for it. So bearing that in mind, be there early.
The other point is to pick which entrance to enter. In our case we wanted to enter from the informal gate on top of the hill in Umm Sayhoun, but with our Jordan pass, we had to drive down to Wadi Musa and to the main entrance to get the two day ticket and then get back up to the village gate to enter. So If you walk to the any gate rather than the main one with your Jordan pass, you lose lots of time.
If you don’t have a car and you stay in Wadi Musa, then the main gate is the most practical one but we definitely recommend the village entrance especially if you plan to visit Petra more than once, try this entrance at least once.
There are pros and cons to each gate. The main gate entrance is flat and takes you through the famous Petra canyon with 20 minutes easy walk through a nature master piece which reveals the Treasury at its end, most of peoples’s visit to Petra, starts from the main gate and ends in the Treasury. There’s no way to miss this walk and it’s best to be done around 7:00 am in the morning to feel its real charm.
The other gate, however starts from the uphills overlooking the whole Petra city and it leads you through an asphalt windy road downhill to the city. It takes almost half an hour to get to the Petra CBD!!! Walking down, we kept thinking, how on earth we can climb this road up later during the day on a hot day!! but we particularly had a plan for the return so we were sorted that day.
As we were the first by the gate, we managed to park the car next to the ticket office and had to wake up the doorman who was sleeping at the back of his ute. He wasn’t happy about the early customers 😉
Where to start at Petra:
Well, starting from the main gate, there’s only one way, walking through the canyon to the Treasury and it’s the dead end to go straight or left, then you have to turn right toward the Petra CBD 😉 In the image below, main entrance is the the beginning of the windy passage starting at bottom right corner of the map.
From where we started, the road took it right to the CBD! It is the white road starting from the top middle part of the map, right to the middle of the white area, the CBD!
What Tine, our host told us the night before, after spending years in the area, was that the best views of Petra are from above. One is the end of Al-khubtha trail and the other one is the high place of Sacrifice, each one requires climbing between 600 to 800 stairs to get to the right spot to enjoy the view though. We decided to go to Al-Khuntha trail to have a unique view over the treasury for the first activity of the day.
We passed amazing set of tombs on the green route on the map, after passing in front of all these tombs, the route takes a sharp turn and the staircases begin to appear!! Even the texture and colors of stone stairs are incredible. We were surrounded with so much beauty that we almost forgot that we are climbing up! Few people were climbing up the same track but 90% of the time, it was only us and random donkeys 😉
At the end of the stairs, the track kind of disappears and you need to follow your instinct to find the way. We walked for another 10 minutes to the direction which we thought will lead us to the top of the Treasury and when we started to think that we are lost, we got there!!!
For all the years, that I always wanted to get to Petra, I always imagined myself, walking through the mystic canyon waiting for each turn to reveal the treasury to me but I would have never imagined myself to see the treasury from the point that we saw it that morning, thanks to Tine and her tips.
And above of all, the view point, was a kind of cave with open endings on both sides, and a covered roof where we could sit on the edge of the cliff in the cave and watch the sunrise over the Petra.
There’s a bedouin cafe there, the owner and his relatives and sons (4 in total) brought tea and coffee by mules up there as we arrived. It’s a cute cozy spot with less than 5 to 6 people there in total. We were almost the first, so we sat by the cliff and Amir went down the cliff to install the Gopro for the time lapse of the sunrise and then we had the whole day to sit and enjoy.
It is the most amazing spot of all Petra that we explored over the two days time frame. At the beginning, I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea to sit in the cafe and if they are going to be pushy to buy something to eat and drink but no one ever asked us anything till we decided to order some tea and coffee while we are enjoying the view.
The tea and the coffee, in the middle of nowhere, were the best that we have tried in Jordan ( With fresh mint in the tea!!) and they only charged us the same as we got it in the middle of the town. Hands down to the Bedouins in the treasury view cafe ( Don’t know the actual name), but if ever get there, definitely try their hot drinks. We sat there for two hours and had few drinks 😉
After feeling fulfilled, we decide to walk back down and explore the rest of the city. By the time we got down to where we started by the tombs, we could definitely feel the difference in the vibe. Tourists started to get there and the bedouin souvenir stalls were all set up in every corner.
The best part of Petra is its size!! Because of its massive size and too many hidden gems to explore, there’s always a secluded spot to find and explore. We walked from the tombs through the main road to the Treasury and back, before starting the second part of the first way, climbing to the Monastery!!
How to continue visiting Petra in a long hot day:
Well, Petra is big and going from one spot to another requires lots of walking but Petra is not flat too, it’s in the mountains so getting from A to B, needs climb up and down and mainly through stone hand carved stairs which looks fun early in the morning when there’s a cool breeze and sun is not right in the middle of the sky and the air is not covered in dust and you haven’t already climbed more than 1000 stairs already.
But we had a plan!!! We planned the night before to ride to the Monastery by mules rather than climbing ourselves.
When Tine offered us this solution, the night before, I was so against it!!! I felt like a lazy tourist to use animals for the sake of her comfort but spending time with her and listening to her reasons, we decided to do it!!!
For centuries, Bedouins were using mules and donkeys to go up and down these mountains and these animals, made life possible for them. In modern days, their main source of income is moving tourists around and mainly tourist related jobs as the government pushed them out of the Petra and settled them in Umm Sayhoun. There are still some of them living in the caves up in the mountains out of the preserved area. Using these animals to do what basically Bedouins always did, to climb the mountain is the second nature for these animals and it helps locals with income. Besides that, she assured us that there won’t be any pressure on mules going up. They go on their one on cruise control, without even touching them.
We decided to give it a go and see how comfortable and smoothly this ride will go on and arranged with a trusted Bedouins the night before and decided to meet him and his mules around 11:00 by the theater.
We were both confident riding the mule, after having horse for a long time in our twenties and we knew that we will find out soon if we are putting pressure on the mules and we can pay the local and carry on climbing up as we intended to.
But climbing the narrow steep staircase with sharp turns and people walking the same stairs was a mission!!! The most amazing thing was the fact that the mules were climbing effortless and were too smart and picked the best way to cut the corners and go up!!! I never ride a mules in my life but by the time we got to the top, I think I respected them as much as horses!! They were just as sweet, gentle and intelligent as horses as far as I learned climbing 850 stairs with these guys.
We are definitely happy that we tried it. We helped locals in a sustainable way and enjoyed an epic ride and tried something that we never tried before and above all, we got to the Monastery!!!!
We have spent few hours there, enjoyed the view, took photos and watch locals and tourists life passing by. Then climbed the same staircase back with our mule friends. And as I told you earlier, we had a plan for climbing up the windy road to our car park!!! Yes, our mule friends took us up to the village gate by 3:00 pm and just like that we finished our first day at Petra.
Well I though, I can squeeze both days of our Petra visit and the tips in one post but it looks like, I have to split it in two. Please read more about what to eat in Petra and what to wear and the story of our second day in Petra, in the next post.
Michael Chernishov
February 8, 2020 at 7:26pmWow! This is an excellent post! I would love to go to Petra one day. 🙂 (And I have been fascinated with it for a long time)
akhodaparast
February 9, 2020 at 12:38amHi Michael, Glad you liked it. It’s fascinating indeed!!!