Jordan tour: In the desert

Petra is Jordan’s most popular tourist attraction, and it’s in an area where many poor Bedouins live. So you’re never far from a vendor of some kind, though once you get into the park a ways their wares get a bit tamer.

But neither Indiana Jones tote bags nor simple camel-bone beads can distract you from what you’re seeing in the ancient Nabatean city. You walk through a mile-long narrow hallway of a gorge, admiring both the play of light and shadow on sandstone and the sophisticated plumbing system from the pre-Christian era. Then suddenly you’re at the treasury, the excavated city’s jewel.

Petra has fine ruins from early Christian times as well. We visited Petra Church, a fifth-century nave attached to a large font alongside a cistern (complete with a [rebuilt] rooftop rainwater-collecting system). Later I climbed 800 stairs to see the monastery.