I spent the morning at the Amman Citadel, walking among the Umayyad Palace's stone arches with almost nobody else around, entry costing about 3 Jordanian dinars (roughly USD 4) at the gate. The view down over the Roman Theatre and the old downtown souks is the kind that makes you stop mid-step, especially with the winter light flat and clean rather than hazy with heat.

By early afternoon I'd walked down into Rainbow Street and then further into the downtown grid, where Hashem Restaurant does no-menu, no-frills hummus, falafel and foul for around 3 to 5 dinars a head, cash only, tables spilling onto the alley. Dinner was at a rooftop spot near Wild Jordan Center, where the Citadel lights up gold against a sky that had gone properly dark by 5:30pm.

The drive south from Amman to Petra took about three hours along the Desert Highway, past Karak's crusader castle silhouetted on its ridge. I checked into the Movenpick Resort Petra, a short walk from the visitor entrance, then went straight in through the Siq, that narrow, winding gorge that opens without warning onto the Treasury's carved facade.

Winter meant I could walk the full loop out to the Monastery, roughly 800 rock-cut steps, without the heat that makes the climb miserable in July. It took me close to two hours up, past the Street of Facades and the Royal Tombs, with barely another visitor on the trail after 3pm. Entry to Petra runs about 50 dinars for a one-day pass for non-Jordan-residents, cheaper if bought as part of a multi-day pass, and it's worth checking Jordan's visa-on-arrival Jordan Pass, which folds the entry fee into your visa cost.

From Petra it's about an hour and a half south to Wadi Rum's visitor gate, where I switched to a battered 4x4 with a Bedouin guide named Attayack for a three-hour jeep circuit through Khazali Canyon and up onto the red dunes near Umm Fruth Bridge. Winter days in Wadi Rum hover around 15 to 18 degrees Celsius, comfortable enough to sit outside without a jacket by midday.

I stayed the night at Rahayeb Desert Camp, one of several Bedouin-run camps offering goat-hair tents and shared fires, at roughly 40 to 60 dinars per person with dinner and breakfast included. Dinner was zarb, meat and vegetables slow-cooked in a pit beneath the sand, and after the plates were cleared the guides put out the fire lanterns and let the desert go properly dark. Without any light pollution, the Milky Way was clearer than I'd seen it anywhere.

The flight from Amman to Muscat runs about two hours on Royal Jordanian or Oman Air, and I landed to a coastline utterly different from Jordan's red rock, a gray mountain wall dropping straight into the Sea of Oman. I spent the morning at Mutrah Souq, one of the older trading markets in the Gulf, threading past frankincense stalls and silver merchants along lanes barely wide enough for two people.

The Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque, open to non-Muslim visitors most mornings from about 8am to 11am, required a headscarf I'd brought along and modest dress covering arms and legs. Its main prayer hall holds one of the world's largest hand-loomed carpets, and the marble courtyard outside was nearly empty in the soft winter light. I finished the day walking the Mutrah Corniche as the call to evening prayer echoed off the harbor, with dinner after at Kargeen Cafe, a garden restaurant serving Omani shuwa and grilled kingfish under strings of lanterns.

The drive from Muscat to Nizwa took about an hour and a half, and I arrived just in time for the Friday goat souq, a loud, fast-moving trade in livestock that starts around 7am and winds down by mid-morning. Nizwa Fort, a 17th-century circular tower with a maze of defensive passages, costs about 1 rial (around USD 2.6) to enter and gives sweeping views over date palm groves.

From Nizwa I drove roughly two hours further to the edge of the Sharqiya Sands, where a desert camp arranged through my guide put me on a camel for a slow hour at sunset, the dunes turning from gold to a deep rust-orange as the temperature dropped fast after dark, down into single digits Celsius by 9pm. It felt like the right bookend to a trip that started in Amman's winter chill and ended, five days and two countries later, on another cold desert floor.