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Walk the Siq until the Treasury appears through the rock

Dust rises with every footstep, and somewhere ahead a donkey's hooves click on stone worn smooth by two thousand years of sandal leather. The walls close in until the sky is a thin blue seam overhead. In places the Siq narrows to barely three metres across; its walls climb as high as 80 metres. The walk runs for over a kilometre before the rock opens. Buy the Jordan Pass before you arrive — almost everyone wishes they had, once they see the queue for a same-day ticket. Arrive before seven, before the tour groups catch up, and the light is still low and gold when the Treasury's façade appears, pink stone filling a crack in the earth.

Practical

Cost
$70–115 (multi-day pass cheaper/day)
Best time
March–May and September–November, for cooler walking weather
Difficulty
Moderate
Time it takes
20–30 minutes to walk the Siq one way; half a day for Petra's core sites
What people get wrong
Riding a camel or horse through the Siq to save time, which means missing the scale of the walls and arriving too fast to feel the arrival at the Treasury. Buying a single-day ticket then trying to rush the whole site in one go, when a two-day pass costs little more and lets you go back at sunrise.
With
A group

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