Some places live in your imagination long before you ever set foot there.
For me, Jordan was one of those places. I grew up paging through National Geographic magazines, tracing the rose-red cliffs of Petra with my finger. I watched Peter O'Toole cross endless dunes in Lawrence of Arabia and held my breath when Indiana Jones rode through the narrow valley toward the Treasury. I had every inch of the place memorized in my brain for 20+ years.
Then I finally went.
Wadi Rum (The desert in Jordan that TE Lawrence crossed) was as wonderful as the valley with the treasury (Petra). Spending days riding through the ancient land by Camel and sleeping in pretty fancy tents was the adventure I imagined. I was lucky enough to share this trip with a close friend, which changed everything. There's something about experiencing a place you've dreamed about since childhood alongside someone who gets it—it certainly feels more epic than a lot of piles of rocks when you see some old monuments. We spent evenings in Bedouin camps eating zarb (meat and vegetables slow-cooked underground in the sand), scooping up hummus and mutabbal with fresh bread, drinking endless cups of sage tea. I was surprised by the hidden passages to get through the Siq as the walls narrow and then suddenly there it is—the Treasury emerging and without a Disneyland feeling. I dreamt of this place since I was little and always a bit sad to check a place off.
I came via Israel, did the King's road, then Wadi Rum, then Petra.
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