Jordan

Jordan is one of the most efficiently extraordinary countries in the world for a first-time Middle East visit — Petra and Wadi Rum alone justify the flight, and the Dead Sea and Wadi Mujib canyon give it the depth of a full week without any sense of overreach.

Petra's Siq is a slot canyon one kilometre long and in some places only two metres wide — and it opens, at the end, onto the Treasury's carved facade with such theatrical precision that every visitor has approximately the same wordless reaction. The crowds are real in peak season but can be almost entirely avoided by arriving before 6:30am, when the site is yours. The full Archaeological Park beyond the Treasury is enormous and largely empty; most people turn around too early.

Wadi Rum is Mars. Not metaphorically — NASA used its landscape to test rover logistics and its rock formations have doubled for the red planet in multiple films. A Bedouin camp night in the canyon, dinner cooked in a sand pit, and a sky of extraordinary density after dark is one of the finest camp experiences in the Middle East. Combine it with the Dead Sea's strange sensory experience of floating without effort and Jordan is three completely different Jordans in a single week.