(gentle mysterious music)
(faint footsteps thudding)
- How is life here?
Because this is one of the most iconic places.
You literally live by The Treasury,
where everyone comes.
(calm mysterious music)
This is the beginning.
It's gonna take probably six to eight hours
to have a good flavor of the site.
You can choose your horse if you wanna do it faster,
but we're gonna start walking,
and exploring this iconic site of Petra.
Here, we split parts, we're not taking the traditional way.
If you remember from history,
everything has been carved by the Nabataeans.
They were this tribe,
living here for centuries and centuries.
And then the Romans came.
How did they conquer this place?
Cut the water and they just let them die.
But the difference between Petra and other cities,
is that this one has been completely carved out
from the sandstones.
You can see the stone has this rose color
and this is the stone that they used to carve this place.
(gentle playful music)
This is the onion of the desert.
(laughs) Cannot eat it.
I don't know if you get sick of what,
but it's probably super hard.
This was like a big stone.
And look at this.
All the steps that these people made to open the roads.
(calm inspirational music)
Who needs an art exhibition when you have all this?
How do you even do this?
Such a long time ago.
(dog paws faintly tapping)
- [Muhammad] Good boy.
- It's interesting you have dogs here,
patrolling in the area to make sure everything is fine.
There's no risk.
(dog paw tapping) (dog barking)
They used to put this kind of marks,
kind of a sign, somebody buried nearby.
But it's not so obvious when you're walking,
probably you see nothing.
(gentle ethereal music)
You can only find these in the desert.
Really, right?
And it smells like a type of mint.
Mint, but (inhales deeply) I don't know how to describe it.
But it's very nice (inhales deeply) smell.
So you get sick, you prepare tea.
Look at Muhammad, clearly he's from here. (laughs)
Yeah, I don't know if I can eat it like that,
but for sure this will be nice with a tea.
The way is very narrow,
(exhales sharply) like you say in the UK and London.
Mind the gap,
here, mind the super gap.
Before, we were saying this is a rose city,
because the way they carved the city with those sandstones.
But we also see yellow here.
See how many different colors?
(bird cawing)
So you see that's all we did so far.
(bird cawing)
(dramatic suspenseful music)
We Are approaching The Treasury.
Really, really very close.
(dramatic majestic music)
Do we have the herbs for the stomach?
(dramatic majestic music continues)
Are you part of a tribe or something?
- We are Bedouin.
- How is life here?
Because this is one of the most iconic places.
You literally live by The Treasury,
where everyone comes.
- Beautiful life, my friend.
- How is it a day in your life?
- I wake up... - Have some tea?
- I make tea.
I make myself relaxed.
- What do you normally eat here?
Because I see tea, I see Shisha.
- Maqluba, chicken sometimes.
- When you come to the Treasury,
when you come to Petra, there's so many people around,
but it's really good to take a break, enjoy some tea,
have this iconic view.
- Life is cool. - Life is cool.
There's no reason to stress.
- Keep everything behind you.
- Yeah, actually where do you go to the toilet here?
There's no toilets.
- [Muhammad] Nature. - Nature.
- Nature.
- When is your friend waking up?
(light airy music)
- I don't know.
Well I think, my friend died.
- What do people do wrong in Petra,
or what they should not do?
- [Muhammad] Don't leave the rubbish.
- Rubbish.
- [Muhammad] Yeah. - True.
We were coming and we saw some bottles, and-
- [Muhammad] Yeah. - Some kind of things.
- When I see the rubbish...
- You take it. - I bring like this bag,
plastic bag.
And when I go down, I clean.
I come tomorrow and fine
- [Muhammad] because it's our place.
- You were doing the same, Muhammad.
- [Muhammad] I do the same.
So, it's our place, you know?
- Yeah, that's the one thing they should not do.
Like rubbish, don't throw it-
- [Muhammad] Yeah. - Keep to yourself.
(gentle relaxing music)
All right, so let's talk about The Treasury.
Probably the most iconic and beautiful site
that you normally see on Instagram.
So this place in reality, was for afterlife.
This was a crypt.
The Nabataeans were coming here
and putting some kind of afterlife,
objects, and symbols, and decoration,
because they believed in the afterlife.
And then the Bedouins took over,
and then later the locals.
The Bedouins, they believed this place had treasures.
This place was wealthy.
If you see on top, there's kind of a little crown.
So they were shooting at that
to see if (chuckles) the treasure was coming out.
And obviously at the end, they put the name, The Treasury.
But in reality, this was more like a crypt,
more of a place for the afterlife.
This is the true story.
We don't wanna go to The Treasury yet
'cause apparently there's a spectacular view from the top.
Another quick stop.
That was the little camp that we were before,
where, you know,
you sometimes see some iconic pictures
all the way down, The Treasury.
So where most of the people are taking photos,
and with animals, camels.
(gentle inspirational music)
Over there, you see plants growing.
So you see life,
even in these places where you hardly see any water,
you can see green.
So you can see life, the power of nature.
Do you know why it's called Petra?
This comes from Greek petros,
which means stones,
or in Spanish, piedras.
And from here it's very clear,
and you can see stones pretty much everywhere here.
We are just a few minutes away from the very top.
(gentle melancholy music)
You are from here,
this brings memories of something?
- Covid 19, I used to come here,
three, four days, sleep.
Only when the food finished, water,
I'd go back to the city and bring another time.
Come back here.
All my life here, you know,
I know each stone here in the city.
- [Ale] So your childhood was really in the mountains?
- Yeah. - [Ale] Of Petra.
Muhammed was sharing during Covid,
he used to come here to think, to meditate,
to relax because obviously there was no tourism.
Everything was closed.
And this heavily impacted not just Jordan,
I think most of the countries.
You can imagine places like Petra,
where they heavily rely on tourism income.
Not having this from one day to another, it was brutal.
You know, in a way I'm happy that not just him,
all of them, the guides, and the people in the shops,
here they have some income again.
(gentle inspirational music)
Think about this.
Nabataeans, when they lived here,
they believed in afterlife.
They took extra care for the dead people.
This is exactly where they buried all these people.
So in other words, this was like a massive cemetery,
in a different way,
because of the afterlife and all that.
But truly, if I create kind of a direct line,
behind the sun,
facing that place,
I can see approximately it's like 12.
Hey, but it's not that accurate.
But interesting, this was over 2000 years ago.
So this gave us all the principles
for the things that we know these days.
How smart this is.
Let's talk about the irrigation system.
Technically at some point,
this was surrounded by lush gardens.
And when the rain came,
used to come all the way through here,
and go all the way down to those poles.
Very smart if you think about it.
(gentle dramatic music)
So one of the things we were talking before,
with the guys from the tribe and Muhammed,
is about rubbish.
Some people come, they finish the bottles,
and they just drop it here, which is a bit crazy.
(dramatic suspenseful music) (wind whirring)
But hopefully this gets better in the future
because it's really fascinating place.
And people like Mohammed,
they're always trying to help to clean on the way.
But you can only help so much, right?
You only have two hands.
And now we're going down to see The Treasury
and all the other places from a closer distance.
One thing you should probably keep in mind,
when you come here,
is that whenever you get hot,
come to places like this,
where the temperature is actually the opposite
in these caves.
(gentle adventurous music) (faint footsteps thudding)
Okay, finally, we are on the ground.
After five hours, we are on the ground.
So here's where we're gonna meet.
The people, camels, horses.
Pretty much everyone is here right now.
You have four royal tombs.
Petra has one of the most stunning burial places.
We talked about that,
this place has thousands and thousands of tombs.
But behind me, we have the royal ones.
So you only have four royal tombs.
So now we're getting close to The Treasury from the ground.
Before we had different angles,
different shots from the very top.
Now we're going from the ground.
So we can expect some people there.
But also on the way,
you have all these souvenir shops,
in case you wanna buy a gift.
(gentle dramatic music)
This is technically the normal entrance,
where people come for the very first time,
they come through this way.
It's like, I don't know, one half kilometer.
And then you are in The Treasury.
As you know, we did the other way around,
from the very, very, very, very top.
From here you can start seeing The Treasury.
So that's The Treasury.
See, and now you can tell why we did the other way around.
All from the top.
Because let's say you wanna take a picture from here,
you will need to ask everyone.
Please, can you move?
I wanna take a picture.
And there's really a lot of people coming.
You can still get your picture here with your video,
but you will have it with all the people.
That reminds me of kind of the Instagram versus reality.
The Instagram is all the way up
and the reality is all the way down, which is here.
(people chattering in foreign language)
I'm gonna ask you if you want a picture with the camel,
but it's better not to support this, to be honest.
I can get a little bit closer.
Let me show you.
This is the closest you can get 'cause it's closed.
Nobody can enter here.
This is the entrance, but this is also the way back.
(dramatic majestic music)
Okay, after long hike, pretty much all day,
now in the gate, the main gate.
And if you really want to get a good flavor
of what Petra is,
I think you need to allocate the full day.
Some people do it in two hours,
but two hours means go all the way to The Treasury
take your photos, and come back.
Because even to get to The Treasury,
it's at least 20 minutes or 25 minutes.
Really, if you wanna get an idea of Petra,
and see this place from different angles,
talk to some people, enjoy some tea,
and really get a flavor of the different sites
because there's a lot of places to visit inside.
I think you need a full day, minimum.
This is exactly where we started, exactly the place.
It took us seven hours and we're relatively fast.
Maybe we spent like an hour drinking some tea and all that,
and we were super fast.
By the way, if you wanna do what we did,
this is called Indiana Jones Way,
but it will take you a full day.
(dramatic majestic music) (heavy footsteps thudding)
Let's go home.
(car engine revving)
(dramatic majestic music)