missing landmarks in petra

To be a tour guide in a popular city typically means resigning oneself to a Groundhog Day-esque loop, but this is really quite obvious in Petra, where guides and tourists alike enter into a tacit agreement of the following pattern:

1. Rooftop breakfast in lodging
2. Shuttle bus to entrance of the official World Heritage site and buy a one or two day ticket
3. Haggling over the price of a weary horse to walk you to the first landmark, even though its included in your ticket (a facet of Petra so deeply embedded, even the official Jordan tourist site advises you to just pay to avoid “aggressive operators”)
4. Marvel at the Treasury and Monastery; hike to the High Place of Sacrifice should your feet be up to it
5. Purchase felt camel, scarf or bowl from one of the vendors
6. Do the same thing the next day, or head to Wadi Rum

None of this is wrong, of course. Petra has set up an efficient, fairly stress-free way to take in one of the Seven Wonders of the World. So naturally I decided, on one holiday weekend, to make things as difficult as possible for myself and experience Petra without ever stepping foot into its entrance gates.

The trouble with being an equestrian tourist is you often find yourself sacrificing comfort, safety and any sort of cultural learning in your hunt for a “good ride”. After seeing videos of the horse riding available within the archaeological site it was obvious that a “good ride” was not to be found there, with most horses looking overworked and too small for their riders. But I knew that there was a strong tradition of endurance riding and good horsemanship in Jordan. It was just a question of finding it.

I hesitate to give Facebook as a recommendation, as operators are not vetted and bad faith actors can slip through the net, but it has historically been one of my most widely-used tools when finding riding in foreign countries. With some exceptions, stables can be slower to adapt to newer forms of social media such as TikTok, or even Instagram. The other advantage, of course, is cost – booking directly through a stables rather than an operator will cut costs significantly