You step out of Queen Alia’s arrival hall into a warm, citrus-scented breeze and a driver holding your name on a small sign. The road to Amman climbs through a patchwork of stone houses and olive groves; the city sits at roughly 760 meters, a crowd of minarets and modern hotels that feel like a gateway to a much older landscape. Over the next five days the trip compresses Jordan’s geography and history into a tidy loop: mosaic-strewn Madaba, the prophetic ridge of Mount Nebo, the buoyant flat of the Dead Sea, the carved sandstone of Petra and the reddening moonscape of Wadi Rum.