Petra is immense in size, which makes sense because it was more a civilization than a building like the Taj, or a city like Machu Picchu. I was awestruck standing next to the intricately carved buildings like the Treasury, because it’s enormous and how the heck did people build that with tools of that time? So well-crafted and amazingly well-preserved.  I thought the buildings would be close to each other, but they are not. It’s easily a 2-day trip to see all of Petra. On my first day, I kept walking in the heat and stumbling upon buildings from a lifetime ago.

 

Day two is where I felt the magic. I went later in the day since I had seen a lot the previous day. I climbed up on a building, which was probably 6 stories high and not on the tourist route, so it was empty. I just sat for a couple hours and looked out and was able to comprehend the vastness of Petra. I saw the Bedouins riding away on their horses. They were getting smaller and smaller. In that moment, I got a teeny sense of what life was like in Petra. The sun was setting, so the red rocks and desert were glowing a soft pink hue. Tourists were leaving and it got really quiet and peaceful.

I started my walk out during sunset and everything looked and felt vastly different than when I had arrived a few hours earlier. The narrow natural tunnel passage to leave Petra was cool to the touch and dark for a second. It’s as if you were leaving a different place than you entered. Magical.