We get up at 06:00 for breakfast. Extremely excited, we were quickly on our way towards the ticket office of Petra down the road. In the itinerary of many Middle East travelers, Petra is perhaps the single most important highlight of their trip. It only took us 5 minutes to reach the ticket office from Petra Moon Hotel, and that was pretty much the only reason for us to stay there. After obtaining our tickets, we walked along a winding and dusty pathway to the entrance of the Siq, a narrow gorge that served as the main entry into Petra. At a few points, the Siq became so narrow and dim that I felt like walking in a tunnel no wider than a car’s lane. From aerial photos one can clearly see how narrow the Siq is – a split in the rose-red sandstone plateau no wider than 3m at some points. In early morning, the rock cliffs seemed to glow in a golden colour. I anticipated the change of colour from gold to red as the day went by. A carved water channel, at about 1m high along the sides of the Siq, was still visible as we walked into the desert city. The water channel was a great engineer infrastructure that led water from flash floods into Petra, where it was stored for daily use.
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