Sleep under the stars
Everyone assumes Jordan is all desert. The incredible thing about the Dana Biosphere Reserve is that, yes, it’s deserted, but it’s also green. One of few places to stay in the reserve is the lovely Feynan Eco-Lodge. There’s no air-con in the rooms, so after an evening of spotting constellations through the James Bond-giant telescope on the rooftop, ask for your bed to made up right here. Website: www.ecohotels.me
Take the waters
Desert oases are spectacular for so many reasons. The Six Senses Spa is built around the country’s most health-giving oasis: the Ma’in hot springs. Water tumbles from pool to pool in this little sanctuary surrounded by dramatic red rock in the middle of nowhere. Website: www.sixsenses.com
Pose like a starfish in the Dead Sea
Slop the sludgy black mineral-rich mud all over your body and let it dry and crackle up like elephant skin. Then run, in flip-flops (the salt-baked earth is scorching), holding your nose (sulphur levels are through the roof) head-first into the water to wash it off. The Dead Sea is so thick with salt that you can doggy-paddle all you like, but you’ll still end up floating on your bum with your feet up in the air.
Change your perspective
Wadi Rum is exactly as you see on screen in Lawrence of Arabia: an endless moonscape of canyons and desert, canyons and desert… Hot-air balloon flights take off at the crack of dawn when eerie shadows from jagged rock formations fall over the wavy rose-hued sand.
Make friends
Making friends in the desert is surprisingly easy. If you spot another living soul, smile a lot and wave hello. Bedouins are famed for their hospitality – so a chance meeting out here often leads to being welcomed into the community for a glass of mint tea so sweet that many a traveller has lost a filling. Once you’re in the crew, you’re in the crew; invitations to parties in the desert and even weddings should be accepted with the enthusiasm with which they are extended.
See Petra by candlelight
Petra is beautiful, and at night it is hauntingly so. There was a time when you could camp inside the caves, but now there’s something better. At 8.30pm, when all the day trippers have left, a special tour (departing from the Visitor Centre) takes visitors, in silence, through the Siq after dark, with just candles to light the way to The Treasury, which is illuminated with thousands of flickering lights and wistful music. Website: www.visitpetra.jo
Cook your own Jordanian dinner
Classes at Petra Kitchen, in the gateway town of Wadi Musa, are based on home cooking. Working as a group alongside a Jordanian chef, you learn how to make a typical three-course meal of lentil soup, tabbouleh, smoky mutabbal (aubergine dip), and upside-down cardamom-spiced rice with chicken. No dinner guest ever goes home hungry in Jordan – and here the leftovers are so substantial, the entire restaurant team and their extended families are fed. Website: www.petrakitchen.com
Dive into colourful waters
The waters off Aqaba have all the variety and colour of those at Sharm el Sheikh, but without all the package-tourists. Snorkellers can happily bob over the gently sloping coral gardens right off the coast. But for a real show, divers should head further out to King Abdullah Reef in the middle of the bath-warm Red Sea to see turtles, rays and schools of neon-striped fish.
Mindful Travel Club 