Enter the sandman
		Jordan will make your desert heart sing Arena 90, August 1999 As you career down a sand dune in your growling 4x4, skirting round the red rock formations that tower into the air above you, you realise why getting lost in Jordan’s Wadi Rum desert would be a very bad idea. This isn’t desert like you see in the cartoons – a row or two of gently undulating dunes followed by a welcoming oasis handily signposted by a waving palm tree. This is desert that could eat you alive, where the landmarks all look the same when it’s time to head for home, where you need more than your half-litre bottle of Evian to keep you going through the summer heat. The Wadi Rum was Lawrence of Arabia’s stomping ground, and you can bet he never ventured more than a few feet from the front door of his tent without his trusty Bedouin guide. Luckily, Bedouin guides are aplenty in Jordan and, water supply permitting, you can spend days trekking the desert like the Arabs do, swaying gently back and forth on the back of a camel and taking in some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world. And you might begin to understand why Lawrence gave himself over to the desert so completely. Jordan is a country defined by journeys. Bounded by Israel, Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, it has always found itself on the way from A to B. Spice traders carrying frankincense and myrrh (ring a bell?) crossed it on the way from Arabia to the Mediterranean and pilgrims from Damascus would spend a couple of months travelling by camel train to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina. At the turn of the century, the Ottomans built a railway for the pilgrims which ran the length of the country. For a while it was the pride of the Islamic world and even had a rolling mosque carriage with a 2m minaret. But Lawrence blew it up during the Arab Revolt of 1917-18 and now it shunts long trains of phosphate up and down the desert. More recently Iraqi goods came in and out of the Jordanian port of Aqaba during the Iran/Iraq war. Most people pop into Jordan on some whilstlestop tour of the Middle East, but savvy travellers will go out in the spring or autumn and travel the length of the country by road – from Umm Qais in the north, home to nostalgic Palestinians looking out over Israel and the Golan Heights, to Aqaba on the Red Sea, with its almost unbeatable coral reefs and heart-stopping scuba diving. You can cover the journey if you put your foot down (something most Jordanians don’t), in about eight hours. But you would be better advised taking a week or so, if for no other reason than Jordanians are some of the nicest people you could meet. Jordan is Middle East Lite. People approach you in the street with something to sell. But if you say no, they’ll smile and go away. The country has signed a peace treaty with Israel and Islamic fundamentalists have been kept under control through the age-old strategy of giving them cushy jobs in the government. And muggings are virtually unheard of. Still, Costa del Dunes this is not. Dress codes are fairly Marks & Spencer and no Jordanian would be seen dead in shorts and a T-shirt. If you go the idiot-on-holiday route, no one will laugh – well, not to your face anyway – but you won’t see the real parts of the country that Jordanians like to keep for their special guests. And forget dreams of wild nights fuelled by the finest Arabian black. The strongest stuff you are likely to find in the ubiquitous hubble-bubble pipes is apple-flavoured tobacco. If they don’t see anything else in Jordan, tourists traipse in their thousands to Petra. And whatever you have heard, whenever you last saw Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, the place will astonish you. Nestling among the forbidding Shara mountains, Petra is made up of hundreds of ornate tombs painstakingly carved into the pink rock about 2,000 years ago by a secretive community known as the Nabateans. You could probably spend three or four days exploring the city (now uninhabited), but whatever you do, don’t skip the two-hour hike up into the mountains themselves towards a tomb known as The Monastery. The path winds through more tombs and natural crevices before delivering you on to a windswept outcrop with a head-spinning view across harsh, black peaks. If you’re lucky, a local water seller will play his flute and, with the gentle breeze the only other sound, you will be transported back to the time of the children of Israel, Moses and his brother Aaron – who is buried on the next-door peak. It’s an unforgettable experience, a moment when your heart is at peace and one that not even pushing through the hordes of Italian tourists on the way back down can take away from you. Jordan has about a million other ancient sites – including Jerash, an amazingly preserved Roman city complete with 2,000-year-old shopping arcade. But for getting away from the crowd, there are some achingly beautiful landscapes that call you to pack your survival kit and head off on a three-day trail. And the country’s pride and joy is the Wadi Dana nature reserve, just north of Petra. Dana itself was a reasonably thriving agricultural village for most of the twentieth century, but the arrival of electricity in nearby towns and the opening of a cement factory nearby offering much higher wages meant that most of its inhabitants abandoned their smallholdings and headed for the bright lights. In the early Nineties, in a fine piece of eco-planning, the Jordanian government turned the whole area into a natural park. The locals (those presumably who weren’t ensconced at the cement factory) returned to grow olives, grapes and herbs as before, but any money made went back into building the national park and providing employment. Now the place is flourishing and it has become a bit of sustainable development that would make any Californian green with envy. Dana is spectacular walking country. The terrain varies from steep, lush mountainside, 1,500m above sea level, through oak and juniper woods to arid desert where only the hardiest plants can make it. It is also home to a dizzying list of flora and fauna that will make even the most hardened city dweller fall in love with the land, the fresh air and the chance to sleep out under the stars. Even if you only have time to spend an afternoon in Dana, spend a day there. The place to end your trip is in Aqaba on the Red Sea. Unlike Eilat, half a kilometre away on the Israeli side, Aqaba isn’t overrun by lobster-coloured tourists and it also has miles of unspoiled coral accessible to snorkellers and scuba divers. The hotels aren’t hot on service (the reception in ours was unfazed when I was almost electrocuted by a standard lamp), but Aqaba, with its warm sun and deep blue sea, is a great place to shake the desert sand out of your boots, sip a gin and tonic and watch the sun go down. Lawrence would surely have approved.