The Bedouins and other Petra, Jordan General Tips

Favorite Thing: I had in mind the classical cliché from Hollywood. I was imagining the Bedouins as a bunch of independent people raiding proudly in the desert. That was maybe true in the past but doesn’t hold true anymore.
They are now settled in a concrete village without any charm located close to Little Petra, 1-2 kilometers away and they are commuting every day to the main site.

They are almost exclusively living from the tourism. In the worst cases, that simply turns them on to beggars trying to sell you their souvenirs or services. This is the annoying part of Petra, at every major attraction; you will almost be harassed by a bunch of Bedouins trying to sell their stuff!

My guidebook doesn’t stop praising their hospitality and it’s true they are friendly but at the end you can never know if they do it for fun or with an interested goal in mind…

At least take your time and try to talk to them, don’t rush through every site to be seen, maybe you’ll have a better impression than the first one…


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Favorite Thing: A visit to Petra can be quite modular :

1) Walk through the siq to the Treasury and come back
-> you could take the classical picture and tell everyone you have been to Petra. Indeed I'm wondering how many tourists are chosing this option.

2) Siq + Treasury + Royal tombs + Theatre+ Roman city
You can easily do that in less than a day. I'd bet that's what most of tourist in a hurry are doing!
You already have a good feeling of the area but you are still missing something.

3) See Point 2) + Climb up to the Monastery
If you arrive early, you can eventually do everything in a single day but that would be a long one!
In this case, you could still rent a donkey to climb to the monastery...

4) See point 3) + High Place
That's slightly less than what I've done. Two days are needed.

5) See point 4) + some more hiking
More than 2 days. A classical add-on would be to walk to Aaron mount (1 day hike)...

Also note that two half-days in Petra are not the same as 1 day:
- first, 1-2km walk through the Siq to arrive to the Treasury
- around, Roman Theatre and Royal tombs
- the roman city is still 1-2km away
- the path to the Monastery is located close to this city.

This would be more relaxing to do it in two half-day but assuming you are climbing to the Monastery, that means you would have to walk again to the end of the site on the second half-day...


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