Once-forgotten Petra includes intricate temples; obelisks honoring pagan gods; etchings of snakes, lions and eagles; cave dwellings; a theater; and more than 600 massive burial chambers.

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In Jordan’s extraordinary rose-red “Lost City” of Petra, I have just huffed up 700 zigzagging stone-carved steps to the ancient mountaintop High Place of Sacrifice with its sacred altar and goat-blood drain. And now, along a dirt trail, I rest in a rug-draped souvenir stall while an octogenarian Bedouin woman — who is traditionally clad in a long embroidered madraga dress and grew up in a cave — deftly strings a fragrant necklace of dried cloves to sell me.

Way down below, camels with tasseled bridles emit rumbling, dinosaurlike roars while being led by robed Bedouin tribesmen whose eyes are rimmed in jet-black kohl liner. Other indigenous Bedouins, headscarves atop their flowing ringlets, strangely resemble Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow as they trot on donkeys (“you want air-conditioned taxi?”) past monolithic, 2,000-year-old tombs.

Mystical, mind-blowing Petra literally rocks. Around the first century B.C., the now-extinct Nabatean people ingeniously chiseled the capital of their Arab empire from sheer sandstone cliffs; at times 30,000 inhabitants bustled about the affluent metropolis that was a major trade stopover for incense- and spice-toting camel caravans. Stretching across harsh desert terrain (Petra’s archaeological park encompasses 102 square miles), the once-forgotten marvel includes intricate temples; obelisks honoring pagan gods; etchings of snakes, lions and eagles; cave dwellings; a theater; and more than 600 massive burial chambers, all hewed from soaring rock faces that bewitchingly glow in swirling hues of terra cotta, apricot and blush pink.

Place of mystery

“Petra is one of the world’s biggest mysteries,” says Omar, my Jordanian guide with Exodus Travels (exodustravels.com). “There is no record of history. And 65 percent of Petra is still underneath our feet, hidden by dust.”

For almost two weeks, I traverse much of Jordan by bus with Exodus, an adventure company that also brings us 16 intrepid voyagers to the less-visited far reaches of this Middle East nation. Petra is Jordan’s primo tourist draw, but elsewhere we’re the only ones clambering over archaeological ruins of a mosaic-splashed Roman fort and a Muslim dynasty’s frescoed castles in no man’s land.

With Exodus, I also retrace exploits of Lawrence of Arabia, the dashing British officer who gained fame in World War I for leading the legendary Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Turks.

Another day, I’m bouncing in the blanketed bed of a Bedouin-driven Toyota pickup tearing across the UNESCO-listed Wadi Rum desert, nicknamed “Valley of the Moon” for its rippling peach-pink sands pierced by titan sandstone and granite peaks.

Because Muslims avoid alcohol, tea is a main social drink in Jordan, and you’re constantly offered a cup in friendship. In Wadi Rum, I sleep inside a goat-hair tent in a rustic Bedouin camp set against wind-buffeted cliffs on the desert floor until at 4 a.m. I am awakened by a distant muezzin’s melodic call to prayer and, after that, a rooster’s shrill cock-a-doodle-doo.

Next I wake up the entire camp shrieking as I clumsily mount my ride. “Yalla, yalla,” urges the camel handler, meaning “Let’s go,” and soon with just one other traveler, we have the pre-dawn moonscape to ourselves.

Atop cud-chewing Aliya, I hypnotically watch the flaming sunrise turn the unending vastness a radiant gold. For 90 beyond-belief minutes, the only sounds are the camels’ feet softly sinking into the powdery dunes and the chirping of Sinai rosefinches.

Every day of our itinerary, we hit an archaeological treasure. I feel like I’m in Italy as I wander the immense 2,000-year-old Roman city of Jerash, dubbed the “Pompeii of the Middle East” for its well-preserved ruins buried by blown sand for centuries.

Surprising Petra

Petra, though, is the jackpot. Abandoned in the seventh century, it was rediscovered by a Swiss explorer in 1812 and became a UNESCO heritage site in 1985. To get to the ancient city, you have to trek through the dramatic narrow Siq, a nearly mile-long slot canyon sandwiched by 24-story-high veiny rock edifices and at times only 10 feet wide. Nature-created formations stare down in the shapes of elephants and skulls. At the end, the Siq cracks open to reveal the grandstanding, rock-whittled funerary-urn-crowned Treasury, likely a former temple. Harrison Ford galloped up to the fantastical facade in the 1989 movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” in search of the Holy Grail.

Over two days I walk 23 miles in Petra because the scenes won’t quit. On the High Place of Sacrifice climb, I smell the pungent smoke of juniper branches, and soon a Bedouin man is hawking me a morning shot of Arabic coffee heated by a campfire teetering on a killer-view ridge.

Petra’s most jaw-dropping high place is the Monastery, accessible by hoofing up nearly 1,000 Nabataean-cut steep steps. After the path’s last bend, this mammoth stone temple — it’s 155 feet wide — magically pops out of a remote mountainside towering over my puny presence. From the Monastery, I continue ascending a boulder-strewn trail until next to a grazing gray donkey I see a piece of scrap wood lying against a pile of rubble and hand-scrawled, “Welcome to Top of the World Cafe.” Up further, I reach the “cafe,” a tattered, tented platform precariously perched over a rocky ledge in the heavens. And there, a 17-year-old Bedouin named Lost (“because you’re always found,” he smiles) offers me another cup of tea, this one with a sprig of mint.