I am on the modern Desert Highway, on a route, in places disconcertingly straight and swift as an arrow, from Jordan's capital city, Amman, to Petra. The car moves smoothly through a three-hour drive, the desert vistas shifting perceptibly and endlessly from pink to orange to brown with the changing focus of the morning sun. The ancient city of Petra, I have learnt, is one of Jordan's national treasures and a tourist magnet. Petra is today a UNESCO world heritage site and in the eye of a burgeoning cultural storm as it is poised as a favourite in the naming of the New Seven Wonders of the World. This contest, initiated by the Swiss adventurer Bernard Weber, to reawaken interest in the world's cultural history, urges people worldwide to vote for their favourite sites from a list that includes the Pyramids of Egypt, the Statue of Liberty in New York, Eiffel Tower in Paris and Peru's Machu Picchu.

So, recently, the historic site of Petra, a strong contender for the coveted title, saw a revitalisation as Jordan's Queen Rania Al-Abdullah walked straight into the annals of history as an ancient bazaar, bustling with street vendors, children at play, on horseback and with their camels, was recreated with great pomp, costumery and ceremony. As the bustle subsided, Bernard Weber arrived on camel back to present Her Majesty with the official certificate of candidacy announcing that Petra is among the 21 finalists from an original pool of 77. "Petra, I believe, offers an enduring message to all mankind," she said. "In Petra, human beings - ordinary mortals like you and me - saw potential beauty and grandeur in walls of stone. They imagined the possibility of elegance and splendour where others would see only a barren and desolate wilderness."

Today, even as the sun cuts through the cold (mind you, in winter this place is often transformed into a snowy wonderland), I reach the site that has enthralled and drawn me here. The magical rose-red city is spectacular in its setting - situated deep inside a narrow desert gorge or siq. I choose to walk through this amazing parting of the mountain though horse-drawn carriages can also trot you through. I walk into the chasm that tore into the mountain in a prehistoric quake, leaving cliff walls on either side, soaring sharply upto 80 metres high, often in striations of pink, carved lightly in places and amazingly, as my guide points out, lined by deeply engraved channels and cisterns that capture water and guide it into constructive use. At a point, I throw bits of chipped limestone into a carved basin already brimming with slivers of stone. Alas, my bit bounces off, as do my hopes of a wish coming true. But by the time I am at the gorge's end, I realise that this is in fact every traveller's wish come true.

My guide now asks me to shut my eyes and takes my hand in his. "Trust me," he says, in his exotically accented English. In darkness, he guides me a few steps around a bend to what I am to realise is the end of the siq. As I open my eyes, I am struck, through the parting limestone walls, by the sudden dramatic sight of Petra's most famous monument, the Treasury (Khazneh), carved out of rose-pink rock, its pillars soaring, its façade towering into the mountain side. Backdrop of the final sequence of the Harrison Ford thriller, Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, the Treasury is the first (and perhaps the most dramatic) of Petra's wonderful sights and today is particularly exciting with a couple of festively bedecked camels in the foreground. Various walks and climbs (some pretty steep so make sure you are wearing your trusty keds) that lead in various directions from this focal point, reveal myriads of rock cut tombs, temple facades, funeral halls and rock reliefs.

As we stop for a glass of sweet Jordanian tea, black and generously flavoured with mint, in a kiosk selling jewellery (which unfortunately looks like it came straight off Mumbai's Colaba Causeway) my guide points out to me, way in the distance, high atop Mount Aaron in the Sharah range, a modest shrine commemorating the death of Aaron, the brother of Moses, built in the 13th century by the Mameluke Sultan, Al-Nasir Muhammed. I squint at a dot of white in the far distance and realise that this would take me weeks to cover but I only have an afternoon. (In order to preserve the site at Petra, all touristic facilities, hotels and restaurants, including a Pizza Hut and souvenir shops, have been located in the town of Wadi Musa, just outside the entrance of Petra, making a longer stay desirable.)

As I wander, pop-eyed, into the depths of this archaeological treasure trove, I am struck by wonder at the dexterity and skill of the Nabataeans, an industrious Arab people who settled in southern Jordan more than 2,000 years ago. It is obvious to me as I wander through their carved legacy, that the Nabataens were stone masons par excellence, superlative water managers and custodians of a highly developed civilisation. To augment the effects of their work, Petra can be visited on fixed nights every week and viewed through the glimmer of 1,800 candles, a truly soul-stirring experience, my guide assures me.

While most of what has survived in Petra today is the work of the Nabataeans who settled here at the end of the 6th century BC, the area had been inhabited since 7,000 to 6,500 BC by the Edomites. The Edomites were proficient pottery makers and passed this craft down to the Nabataeans with whom they had a peaceful coexistence. By the 2nd century BC, Petra had become a large city of about 10 square kilometres and the capital of the Nabataean kingdom. Adding to its historical layers, the Romans, in 106 AD, annexed the Nabataean kingdom, making it part of the Roman Province of Arabia.

Evidence of the Romans lies in the many additions they made to the city though the carved stone and masonry of the earlier dwellers has better survived the ravages of the centuries. The enlarged 3,000-seat theatre with its broken Roman columns, the paving of the Colonnaded Street and a triumphant arch built over the entrance to the siq. When the Roman Emperor, Hadrian visited the site in 131 AD, he named it after himself, Hadriane Petra. Later when Christianity spread across the Byzantine Empire, Petra became the seat of a bishopric and recent excavations have exposed three churches, one of them paved with coloured mosaics. In 1661 AD, the Muslim Umayyad dynasty established its capital in Damascus, Syria and Petra became isolated from the seat of power. This, together with a series of strong earthquakes, marked the end of this city.

Petra, I am told, was forgotten by the modern world, jealously guarded by desert Bedouin tribes until the Swiss traveller, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, disguised as an Arab, rediscovered it in 1812. As I distractedly wave away a camel driver who urges me to clamber aboard the beast of burden for a majestic tour of the site, a horse buggy carrying a tourist family clatters cheerfully past. And yet, I wonder, where are the throngs one would expect to see in a place like this? Perhaps it is as well that Petra has somehow remained out of the usual touristic circuit.

But the crowds, I realise, will not be long in coming for Petra gains in notoreity and fame even as the world chooses its New Seven Wonders.