Charity trek over the mountains to Petra
Emma Skelton October 31st, 2008
As with any good trek it started with lunch under an acacia tree. We then set off over the desert towards the mountains in the distance. The heat was punishing, but in two and a half hours we had reached our first night’s camp. Green and red tents were spread out along the edge of a steep drop down to the wadi (dried river bed) below. A large black bedouine tent formed the centre of the camp and we were greeted with a big kettle of tea.
The second day started early and we left camp by 7am in the morning, climbing up the side of the mountain to the col at the top. The path rose steeply and before we knew it we were able to look back over the expanse that we had crossed the day before. We reached the top around 11am, and ate an early lunch looking down over a very different landscape on the other side of that first range.
Over the next few days we walked our way slowly towards Petra. It seemed as though every few hours the scenery changed, and when we stopped for lunch each day it was in very different surroundings from the day before. We reached Little Petra on the fourth day of walking, and were almost surprised to see people after not seeing anyone else in the mountains apart from goat herders. The following day brought us to Petra itself, but from the furthest point of the site, at the Monestery. This huge structure was our first taste of the achient city, and it was only as we walked past the Royal tombs and Byzantine and Roman temples to the Treasury that we realised the scale of the site.
Our final day was spent exploring Petra again and a highlight for me was drinking tea at the foot of the Treasury, watchin the sunlight slowly move across the surface of the rock.
The trek was to raise money for two charities, Friends of Conservation and the Al-Hussein Society
- General , Responsible Travel
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All 22 hikers and three donkeys made it ok to the end of the trek, which had seemed far from certain after the first blistering afternoon in the desert…so it was with a sense of achievement that we eventually rounded a narrow traverse to catch sight of the old monastery high above Petra. Things were about to change though. For the best part of a week our little group had had the spectacular landscape to itself and had rather got used to this scheme of things. We had all turned into seasoned hardy hikers, carving our own furrow, camping our way through the mountains (so to speak) - we were the real deal. But now…Petra and, of all things, tourists! Then we remembered, where there are tourists there are usually bars, restaurants and showers and things suddenly seemed not so bad.