Next stop: Petra.

I clamber into a minibus bound for Wadi Musa, we wait a little while until it is full, and then we’re off. From my window seat, I watch the scenery shift from the dusty, flat, coast to the rust-coloured desert. Miles and miles of redness stretch into the distance, occasionally interspersed with groupings of white buildings and a lonesome, wild camel. Mountains of the same colour rise abruptly and we’re quickly ascending. The land sprawls behind me, the mixture of vivid colours clashing against one another. Bright blue skies, the burning red terrain under the sun’s glare, the fiery shades of the mountains; they meet until we have reached such a height that snow covers the ground, the harsh white adding to the display of colour and radiating against the contrasting warm glow of the rock. The heat leaves a hazy layer over the crags, swirling about the blueing tips that steadily vanish into the horizon. I fill my eyes on this sight, committing it to memory. Then we’re suddenly tipped over the other side, following the road down, down, down as it winds through the orange and yellow buildings that cover the steep hillsides. The rolling landscape could not be more different from Aqaba, its valleys dipping sharply before the jagged horizon, where yet more mountains met the sky.

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