In late December 2019, we spent one full day in Petra. We were the first through the gate at 6 am, spent about 6 hours walking the grounds (Tons of walking), riding on donkeys, and taking photos.
We returned at night for the Petra at Night experience. Most tourists may not be as familiar with this option and it was very difficult for us to understand if this would be a worthwhile excursion. Here is all the information we hope you will need to guide your decision!
Please note, Petra by Night is only offered on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Make sure you plan accordingly if this is something you want to do. There are also no flashlights allowed to avoid distracting from the overall experience. The path is lit with candles so you will still be able to see where you are going.
Getting tickets:
The ticket cost is 17 JD (or 24 USD) and they are available at the Petra By Night Desk inside the Ticketing Building.
Note: The day we were there the tour was still not confirmed until 5 pm due to a chance of rain in the evening. To save you some time, you can try texting this What’s App number (The number of the guy working the desk) to confirm this excursion is still planned that night.
Desk: +962777454345
Arriving:
There are two group slots for the evening excursion, the first one going from 7-9 pm and the second from 8-10 pm. As of writing this, the official website only mentions one group starting at 8:30 pm. While we were there we were told by the tour guide that they opened up an additional group slot since this event had become too popular and they were getting overwhelmed by the large crowd.
Everyone wants to be the first inside to get the best photos of the grounds without other people around (More on this later). Because of this, there is a large line at the gate for the 7 pm group (the one we did). We arrived around 15 minutes before opening and were close to number 25 in line, but after 10 minutes there were at least one hundred people.
Gates Open:
Once the gates open, they let you in one by one and people begin to start walking quickly. After a few minutes of walking, we ended up at the front and were walking with the tour guide for the opening stretch. You are not allowed to walk ahead!
Once you get to the Siq (the narrow passage through the rock formations that takes you to the Treasury) the tour guide waits for the rest of the group before presenting the ground rules.
Most people began standing towards the Siq so they had the best chance of getting to the Treasury first.
This time allows for those who arrived later to catch up to the rest of the group.
Main Event:
Once the tour guide finishes the announcements you are free to enjoy the experience. At this point, it becomes a passive-aggressive free for all speed walking competition to get to the Treasury before the group to get photos without other people in them.
Once you arrive there will be a few minutes where you can take photos before most people arrive. Once the tour guide makes it to the Treasury, he begins to place down mats at the edge of the candle formation with the help of other workers. You will want to be ready so you can get a seat on one of these mats. This ensures you will get a front-row seat to the presentation as well as receive tea. Another huge advantage of getting a seat here is that you can set up a tripod and continue to take photos without anyone in the shot. We sat on the right side which gave a good angle without the presenters directly in the way as they were mainly in the center. If you have ever seen beautiful Petra by Night photos, the right side is the best angle to do this since it allows part of the night sky to be in the photo.
While seated (some people who walked slowly were standing in the back, there may have been 200 people in the first time slot) there were two performances of music that last about 6 minutes total and then the tour guide gives a speech for about 4 minutes. After this, they turn on a few colored accent lights to illuminate the Treasury. For 90% of people, this is the best part since before this you are unable to get a photo of the Treasury from an iPhone or normal camera because it is too dark. Flash photography by an amateur photographer does not help.
After 10 minutes of people getting closer and closer to get pictures of themselves, people start to head out when they announce everyone should leave (around 8:15 pm). We decided to stay a bit longer and realized nobody was stopping us from staying. It became too dark and at this point the second group is on their way so nobody knows which group you belong to. This is the main reason the second group is a bad option because when you arrive there will most likely already be people from the first group still there.
Once the second group arrived, we started our peaceful walk back and reflected on the experience. Here are our thoughts……
Review of the Experience
Because Allison was prepared with a nice camera, tripod, and has years of photography experience she was able to capture some pretty amazing photos, like the two highlighted in this post.
I on the other hand, just had a Go-Pro and an iPhone, so we can provide a perspective from both points of view. Here is a photo taken from an iPhone with flash right as I arrived before anyone else was there (the non-flash version was even worse)…..
And here is an example of a photo you will be able to capture with just an iPhone once the accent light turn on.
For an amateur photographer or anyone with an iPhone and Go-Pro, you must know your experience may be underwhelming. To get there first and ensure Allison got a good place upfront with her tripod setup, I ran the last leg of the walk to make sure I was first (Yeah I know, I committed to being “that guy”). Other tourists tried to keep up, and I was even told to slow down from other workers making sure nobody gets hurt along the way, but when I arrived and tried to get Go Pro footage and iPhone photos with no people in the shots, I realized it was useless. It is far too dark and the candles provide a unique ambiance but do not illuminate the Treasury enough to provide even a half-decent photo. This means you have to wait until the colored lights turn on to give yourself a chance at a nice photo, but since everyone there is waiting for the same thing it becomes way too crowded and you are all but guaranteed to have random people in your photos. Setting up a tripod with a camera that can take long exposures is the only way to capture this experience adequately.
You may be wondering, but what if it’s not about the photos, what if I want to go for the experience? They do try to market the whole event as a spiritual and enlightening experience, but because it has become a main tourist attraction you can guess what I am about to say…..
They do a nice job of lining the whole walk with candles which makes for a very unique atmosphere, but with a large majority of the crowd speed walking, nobody on the walk there thinks twice about this. If you decide to walk slowly you will not be able to get a good seat and will be standing in the back for the presentation.
The main musical performance is a nice soothing flute solo, but when disrespectful tourists are talking, stray dogs are barking, or babies are crying it’s not hard to imagine any potentially meaningful moment being ruined. The speech is meant to make you have deep thoughts about the experience, but given the diverse audience, it is hard to avoid offending someone so it ended up coming across shallow. At this point, this whole event felt like a money grab.
Conclusion:
For us, it was worth the experience because Allison was able to capture great photos that we will be able to look back on and appreciate, not to mention laugh at this whole experience. For those who are not as into photography and have already seen the Treasury during the day, you may want to reconsider repeating this long walk (at least one hour total) now in the cold for what appears to be a tourist trap.
