Roughly 800 rock-cut steps up Jabal al-Madbah, starting behind the Roman theatre. Most people take fifty minutes with stops, and the last stretch is exposed, with a long drop on one side and no railing. If heights bother you, or if the forecast is above 35C, tell us when you book and we will move you to an early morning slot instead. At the top: two obelisks eight metres high, carved not by building them up but by quarrying the entire mountain away around them, and a levelled courtyard with a rectangular altar, a circular basin and a drainage channel cut into the rock. What ran down that channel is still argued over - libations, animal blood, and one nineteenth-century theory involving human sacrifice that nobody credits any more. We will walk you through the evidence and show you exactly where it runs out. Coming down we take the Wadi Farasa route past the Lion Monument, the Garden Tomb and the Roman Soldier's Tomb, which is longer than retracing your steps and far less trafficked. Bring two litres of water each. There is one drinks stall near the summit and it is not always open.
Three of us, all ex-excavation. Rana logged pottery for six seasons on a Department of Antiquities dig on Petra's north ridge and can still date a sherd faster than she can parallel-park. We walk Petra slowly and we point at things: the channel cut into the Siq wall that made the whole city possible, the Roman soldier's graffiti above the theatre, the Neolithic house plans at Beidha that look like nothing and matter enormously. We don't sell camel rides, we don't do drone packages, and we cap groups at a size where everyone can actually hear the answer to a question. Wear real shoes. Petra is eight kilometres of sandstone before you climb anything, and the site does not care about your itinerary.
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