Having driven round Jordan to famous sites on the World Heritage Tenative list for a couple of days, including the Roman city of Jerash and Jesus’s baptising site Bethany, it felt good to be on the way out in the desert in order to visit a REAL site.

On the east side of Amman, on the way towards the Iraqi border, you find a number of Caravan Seray’s, known as “desert castles”. During it’s hey-days one could say that they filled they same function as today’s motel or road-side-restaurants. Park your camel over here and join the party, so to say. One of these desert castles is the beautiful Quasir Amra, a place where baths, dinners and probably a “few other things” was enjoyed back in the good old days. Inside, you will find unique – and reasonably well-preserved – frescos, portraying bathing women, animals, hunting scenes and other motifs.

Quasir Amra in itself is not worth a detour but if you visit a few of the other desert castles on the way to Azrac (where Lawrence of Arabia stayed), you could make it into a quite rewarding day-trip. Watch out for the desert heat though…!