Petra

Abou and Umm Lucy, J and I set off to Petra on another windy day last week. As the dust storm grew more and more fierce I wondered whether our trip to the ancient capital of the Nabatean kingdom had also been mistimed.

We were pulled off the road at one point, and asked to sit in a police hut - Umm Lucy and I in the ladies' room, Abu Lucy and J with the men - while the storm passed. We were relieved we'd left the Lozenge and Rashimi in our flat with the Glammy for a couple of nights, with the promise of pyjama parties and the rest (the Lozenge saying before we left: 'there will be miuthic and pyjamas and we'll danth and danth and danth, Mummy!')

We left the police cabin after a while and emerged from the dust cloud luckier than others, as we passed jackknifed lorries and crumpled cars, and stopped for a plate of Jordanain mansaf in Abu Mohammed's brother's Caravanserai restaurant on the roadside and were given free boxes of biscuits and dates through the 'wasta' or connection custom that seems to be at the basis of how this region works.

One of the best/worst things about having children is that often, you have no time to mentally prepare for things. Petra is one of the 7 wonders of the modern world, and is well documented and photographed. So you might presume the first impression would be dulled as a result. But I wasn't prepared for its orange-red impact as we crept, hunched in thin summer clothes, through the stone corridor of the 'Siq' at 7am on a freezing cold, windy morning. The first glimpse of the Treasury, or 'Khazna' through the opening of rock, must be an unrivalled rocky revelation.

And as we climbed around the site all day, up carefully hewn stone steps to places of sacrifice and temples, immaculately designed by some of the first Arabic people over 1000 years ago, we forgot the cold as we were transported to another time. And how good it felt to walk and climb, non-stop for 9 hours, with a short intermission on four 'ships of the desert' as someone once described a camel, who carried us the last couple of kilometres back to the entrance.

The follwing day we went off the beaten track, and were guided by a mute local man up a narrow, red rock couloir, called Wadi Muthlim, carved out by crashing flood water and strewn with boulders, and smaller rocks which had been carried down by it. It was dry enough for us to pick our way through and ended a perfect, peaceful and contemplative break from an urban family life. For J and I to be able to do this with my parents and without our children, was a gift.

As we walked around, I considered the concept of humility. Visiting a place like this can remind you   how small and insignificant you are, and allows you to marvel at the skill employed by humans all those years back. How much more could I be capable of in my life, I thought, if these people could do this?

Then I read this extract by Paul Vallely from the Independent the day we got back:

"Humility:
True humility is not stooping in order to look smaller than you are. It is standing at your real height next to something bigger than you which brings home your smallness. For the religious, that is God. For others, it might be the perspective described by the father of modern science, Sir Isaac Newton: 'If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants. The meek are self-conscious, but the truly humble are other-conscious.'"

And giants they were.