Gully Wells was not a natural candidate for a tour—the bus, the guide, the forced marches, the togetherness. But all that changed in Jordan

Is there any better way to learn about a new place than to travel there in the company of a man who can answer your every question, however naive or convoluted, as you explore the country together? And if, in addition, he can meet you at the airport, organize your entire trip, fill you in on the finer points of sixth-century Byzantine mosaics, take you to a restaurant where the lamb is pink and the tabbouleh infused with wild mint, and remain polite and attentive at all times, then you are in heaven. But such men are not easy to come by. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever, in a long and well-traveled life, met such a paragon. Recently, however, I came across the next best thing. Admittedly, he was actually two men, and I had to share them with thirteen fellow travelers, but even so, it worked out perfectly.

Touring in a group has never appealed to me. The thought of being herded onto a bus, having to follow somebody else's schedule, sitting down for every meal with total strangers, and never, ever being alone is not my idea of how I want to see the world. I imagine it as a mix of nursery school and the cocktail party from hell. But then last year, I found myself at dinner in London with a gentleman whose taste in all things (Baroque opera, claret, Italian Renaissance bronzes, wives, French literature) is, shall we say, way, way beyond impeccable. It's not that he's fussy or demanding; he is simply cursed with knowing the difference between what's truly great and what isn't. So when he told me he'd just come back from a ten-day trip to Sicily, organized by a company called Martin Randall Travel, I sat up and listened. The next day, he sent over a large and very beautiful book with a Piranesi print of a picturesque Roman ruin on its cover. This was their catalog.

Mozart in Salzburg, the Greeks and Romans in Libya, the Golden Ring in Russia, Al-Andalus, the art and architecture of Isfahan, the Palladian palazzi of the Veneto—the seductive list continued, page after page. The only way I could think to narrow down the choice was to pick a place I had always dreamed of seeing, in a country where a woman might not necessarily want to travel alone. Which is how I found myself at Queen Alia International Airport in Amman just after midnight early last April, feeling quite tired and very hungry.

"Right," said our leader, Hugh Kennedy, professor of Arabic in the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. "It's about a forty-minute coach ride to the hotel, where you'll find a boxed snack waiting for you in your rooms. And then we'll make an earlyish start tomorrow, because we have lots of exciting ground to cover. Is nine okay for everyone?" Professor Kennedy, who has geniusy hair, English teeth, and snappy red-framed glasses, looked as though it might take something a bit stronger than a boxed snack to revive his spirits.

But at eight forty-five sharp the next morning, there we all were in the hotel lobby—rested, watered, and fed, and eager to embark on our eight-day magical mystery tour of Jordan. In addition to the professor, we had a local guide named Houada, who spoke perfect English, having studied engineering at the University of Cardiff, and whose knowledge of everything Jordanian, from Neolithic sculpture to the doings of the royal family, was all-encompassing.