[Travel] The Road to the Pink City

Monday 6th July
Time - 10:11am
Location: Arajan, Jordan

So yesterday we had a cousins only trip to...PETRA!!! Oh. My. Gosh! This is one amazing place! I've been wanting to visit it ever since I saw Transformers 2 xD. It's such an amazing, beautiful place that photos won't do it justice.

We rented a mini-van and al hamdulellah it was perfect for 10 people (even though it was just an 8 seats van lol) . My favorite uncle came with us to drive us there...we specifically chose him because it was like he's one of us. He totally made the trip even more fun with his lovely personality and sense of humor. We were 4 girls and 5 guys (not including uncle). We got picked up around 5am and headed on the road to Petra. We were all very excited and crazy (that early in the morning eh?! xD). It takes around 3-4 hours to get to the Red City, but it didn't feel that long because we were talking, singing, and eating.

The road to Petra is a pretty desert-ee road but it was still very nice and mashallah the weather was perfectly amazing! I asked my uncle if he can just stop, anywhere basically, so we can take some pictures. And so he did. We fooled around a bit and one of my cousins taught us how to do the Dabka so we all ended up doing it. It's pretty easy actually...thought it'd be more complicated than that lol.

Back on the road!

The nice thing was that the road was completely empty...but who goes out that early eh? When we came close to reaching Petra we were able to see how huge it was:

When we finally got there and entered, we were welcomed by a long, open and, again, desert-ee road. If I remember correctly I think we walked a total (going and coming) of at least 10K's. It was uber tiring!

So we started our walk taking pictures here and there.

Oh! The smell...was absolutely horrific xD There were horses that took people, who wanted a ride, to a certain checkpoint before entering the actual walkway to Petra. So imagine all the poo lying around lol.

After bit of walking, we finally reach the main path to Petra.

This was a long walk too. Longer than the desert road at the beginning. But it was a nicer and cooler place.


Finally we reached Petra. It was an awesome feeling, like you've achieved something and it's as if you're in a movie - like how you turn the corner then you find what you were looking for - like that lol.


It was pretty amazing. Very fascinating also. Loved it a lot! There were a lot of tourists there, mostly Asians and Americans. I wonder how they stood the sun. It wasn't hot but the sun was totally out there.

We started getting hungry so we went to find a place to sit and eat. My uncle ended up taking us up this scary, rocky mountain...it was pretty dangerous if you ask me, but we made it and it was a good, beautiful spot to have a picnic.

After getting energized with food we continued our walk deeper into Petra.

We reached a point where we were practically dead. We hadn't had much sleep, due to the excitement, so one can imagine how sleepy we were. All the walking we did just took it's toll on us. It was so hot, that time of day, the sun was way up in the sky, hitting us with it's rays. Plus we were really sweaty and stunk so bad lol...actually I think it was the animal "droppings". All of that and we still had the walk back to the car. Nobody had energy.

The walk back took us twice as long as the walk going...plus we ended up riding horses the last half-hour of the walk because that's it...we were done! My horse seemed to feel the same way as we did lol...poor thing. He just couldn't walk. As we neared the getting off place he made this really loud scream-horse sound and actually stopped in it's tracks. The owner gave him a tug and the horse gathered itself and moved.

I ended up apologizing to him saying something like "I'm so sorry for making you carry me all the way here"...he just looked at me like in the picture lol. *cute*

We all slept on the ride home. We ached so bad to get home and have a cool shower lol. I couldn't stand myself. Oh! I was wearing white boots, they came back pink xD so we were very sandy as well.

All in all, it was the most amazing trip ever!!
Never to be forgotten!


p.s. all pictures from Petra will soon be uploaded to flickr =)