FROM ITS UNDULATING DESERTS TO ITS GODDESS TEMPLES, JORDAN is full of surprises. Where else can you trek in the tracks of Lawrence of Arabia in the morning and indulge in the beauty regimen of Cleopatra in the evening? The most accessible nation in the Middle East, Jordan warmly welcomes travelers, and women can wander about with relatively little hassle.
• Start your journey in capital Amman’s artsy districts, which are lined with cafes, bars, and galleries. Not to be missed is the Darat al-Funun on Nimer bin Adwan Street. Housed in three buildings alongside the ruins of a sixth-century Byzantine church, this cultural center includes a contemporary art gallery and library and holds workshops, films, musical and theatrical performances, and lectures by Arab artists and critics. Ask about their monthly literary events, where poets recite verses beneath illuminated Roman columns. Then stroll about, ducking into teahouses for puffs on water pipes and cups of hot yansoon, an aniseed-based drink. To experience a traditional hammam, stop in Al-Pasha on Al-Mahmoud Taha Street between ten A.M. and midnight for some rigorous body scrubbing followed by a steam bath and forty-minute massage. Wind down at the upscale Blue Fig on Abdoun (a gallery, café, bar, and restaurant with world fusion music), Books@Café on Jabal Amman, First Circle—a hotspot popular with expats and young Jordanians. On Fridays, hit the Souk JARA, an open-air flea market of pottery, crafts, and antiques by the Jordan River Foundation showroom near the First Circle.
• Next, head to the Dead Sea for a 2,000-year-old beauty and health treatment. Located 1,300 feet below sea level, these sacred waters are loaded with bromine, magnesium, iodine, and calcium, and are considered so healing for asthma, arthritis, skin diseases, and hypertension, some European Union countries—namely Austria and Germany—cover extended stays in their health insurance plans. Before you go, pack a kit of soap, shampoo, a washcloth, and a towel, and ensure you have no open wounds (which will sting like hornets in the heavily salinized water). Within a few dozen steps out to sea, your feet will magically levitate to the surface, leaving you floating like a cork. Have a blast turning somersaults, but try not to swallow—just one drop will induce gagging if not retching. Scrub off the salty slime as soon as you emerge and proceed to a mud hut, where you’ll pay a small fee to slap mud all over your body and bake in the sun. The Dead Sea is an easy day trip from Amman; most budget hotels and travel agencies offer outings.
• Though it’s been called “the rose red city half as old as time,” Petra actually contains stones of many colors. The Nabataeans carved this magical city right out of the cliffs in the third century B.C.: temples, palaces, tombs, banquet halls, even a theater. For eons, its locale was ideal, smack where camel caravans from the Silk Road crossed paths with spice routes. But Petra began to decline during Roman rule and was severely damaged in an earthquake in A.D. 363. For centuries, it was known as the Lost City until a Swiss explorer rediscovered it in the 1800s and Harrison Ford sauntered about it in the 1900s (indeed, that is Petra you see in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade). Enter it through a canyon so narrow, you can almost touch both sides, and visit the many temples built in honor of Allat, the pre-Islamic Arabian goddess. (The Nabataeans equated her with Athena.)
• Best known for the exploits of Lawrence of Arabia—who was based here during the Arab Revolt of 1917—the Wadi Rum is a dramatic valley cut into sandstone and granite rock. It has housed many a people who left behind grand temples and rock paintings—some of them prehistoric. Bedouin tribes live here today and offer camel-trekking and rock-climbing expeditions.