Petra Day 2

For our second day at Petra we decided to make the climb to the Monastery (Ad Deir) today. This is one of the harder to reach locations in Petra. The primary way to get there is from the main part of Petra and involves climbing 850 natural rock steps. The other main way to get there is to get to Little Petra (there is a free shuttle from Petra) and climb up the back way. This is what we chose to do. This is a 5 mile walk/hike. You can pay to be driven the first portion (to where you begin hiking), which I recommend doing. That initial walk is up and down small hills along a weaving road.

The hiking portion from this side has stairs that are in good condition and at least some of the time there is a small wall on the cliff edge side. That said, it involves a series of stairs up and then back down again along the mountainside with occasional level areas. There are locals with booths where they sell drinks and souvenirs along the way.I’m not sure it saves you much from the 850 stairs the other route. The views, however, are great!

Snacking donkey.

We were originally told that we would walk to the flag and then we would be there. This is one of 4 flags before the one they were talking about. I kept getting so excited that we were nearly there, only to find out we weren’t.

Another flag.

Almost there! (really, you can see part of it over the hill on the left) The hike took us about an hour.

The Monastery (Ad Deir). This is very impressive measuring 154 ft high and 157 ft wide. It was likely carved in the 1st century AD. There is no agreement as to its purpose.

Proof we made it!

Surrounding view

There are some really interesting erosion patterns on this sandstone.

I actually managed to get a picture of the Monastery with nobody in it.

Paul for size comparison.

The inside.

View of the area looking out from the Monastery. There’s a snack shop and various places you can climb to have good landscape views.

As usual, we spent time with some of the kitties.

After we spent some time there we headed back down the other way, walking towards Petra and the 850 stairs. This route was much more difficult, although shorter, because many of the stone carved stairs are very worn, if not nonexistent. There also isn’t anything on the cliff side unless a local has a shop on that edge. We felt that this route was more difficult and hazardous than the back Little Petra route (take the jeep!).