Holy land travel special: Jordan

Time Out visits the best Middle Eastern country for the risk-averse, and finds temples and lots of mud

The 'rose red' city of Petra

The man in the red shorts with the clay urn full of mud laughed as he scooped out another clump of the black stuff and slapped it down hard on my bare white back. I winced. Not because a man in shorts was smothering me with mud (Jordan is a tactile country, and even a twitchy Scotsman can loosen up considerably after four days of enforced hugs and handshakes). I winced and he laughed because, like an idiot, I’d shaved and was now experiencing on my face the full, stinging rage of a 30-per-cent-saline Dead Sea mud pack, applied by my own excitable hands in the moments leading up to immersion in the world’s lowest and definitely strangest sea.

Once the sun has baked dry the mud on your body, it’s time to leave the man in the shorts and push off into the deep. You don’t actually ‘swim’ in the Dead Sea but rather bob fitfully like an astronaut taking a gravity-free bath. Rolling and lolling and spinning, and watching everyone else doing the same as the sun dips, I gaze over at the twinkling lights of Jericho on the far shore. Unquestionably, this is one of the most astonishing locations in the world.

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The Kempinski Hotel Ishtar, which employs the men in shorts on the salt-encrusted edge of the Dead Sea, is actually less a five-star spa hotel than a colossal pastiche of a Babylonian-style temple, carved from Jerusalem stone and arranged around a cluster of olive trees, lagoons and plunge pools. It would be entirely possible to spend four days here being pummelled by Thai masseurs, fed by Jordanian and Italian chefs and, yes, ritually enbalmed in local muds, oils and ointments. However, you must leave the hotel to see the real Jordan – and luckily you don’t have to travel far to glimpse authentic Arab culture: Bedouin camps, donkeys, camels and goats ambling alongside the dusty ribbon of the historic

King’s Highway; pomegranates piled high in crates; painted trucks and cars; mint tea and apple hubbly-bubbly. Forged in 1946 after the demise of Transjordan in the wake of WWII, the dynamic and inexplicably overlooked Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is by some distance the safest country in the Middle East (the 1994 Peace Treaty with Israel ensures the Arab nation plays no part in the ongoing conflict).

Situated at the crossroads of the Middle East, right at the centre of the axis that links Europe, Africa and Asia, Jordan was never the seat of a major empire, but rather a much-trodden thoroughfare. Greeks, Romans, Muslims and Christian crusaders among others have all marched through here, leaving evidence of their conquests and occupations. The ‘rose red’ city of Petra, created by the nomadic Nabataen tribe in the seventh century BC and later abandoned until its discovery by a Western explorer in the early nineteenth century, is the obvious but nonetheless essential first port of call for most visitors. A week would barely do the vast UNESCO World Heritage City site justice, but even a day wandering among the sandblasted temples and thrillingly elevated sacrificial altars (the backdrop to ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’) is enough to leave travellers utterly awestruck.

For pilgrims of all faiths, Jordan is, literally, a godsend. Only a few miles from the Dead Sea lies Mount Nebo, perhaps the single most significant biblical site in Jordan and one with deep resonance for Jews, Christians and Muslims alike. It’s a must-see. Moses led the Israelites here after 40 years wandering through the wilderness and died atop the Mount having finally gazed upon the Promised Land. On the swampy banks of the tantalisingly narrow River Jordan (Israeli guards can easily be spotted patrolling the bank on the other side), you can visit the likely site of Jesus’s baptism. Up the road Lot hid out in his cave. Meanwhile, in Madaba, a small and pleasant market town close to Mount Nebo, you can visit the remarkable Byzantium mosaic map of the Holy Land, composed on the floor of St George’s Church in the second half of the sixth century. And of course, when the vigorous sightseeing has worn you out, you can always slather yourself in mud.

Getting there
British Airways franchise partner BMED (0870 850 9850/www.flybmed.com) flies daily to Amman from Heathrow, from £390 return.

Where to stay
Kempinski Hotel Ishtar, Dead Sea, Jordan (00 962 6 461 5922/www.kempinski-deadsea.com) Double from £125.

Gordon Thomson