Gleaming the the desert: Ruins at Palmyra, SyriaQueen Petronella, take your throne, says my guide Abdul, while gesticulating wildly, his baggy pantaloons flapping like sails in the breeze. It is sunrise and I'm standing in the ruins of the ancient city of Palmyra in Syria.
The light flickers from ochre to gold then rose. Abdul has been telling me about the beautiful third-century Queen Zenobia, who chased the Romans from Palmyra before being defeated and dragged to Rome in golden chains. The remains of her throne are just a few feet away from me.
'She loved Palmyra,' says Abdul. 'She killed herself when she was taken from it.'
The morning finally reaches its full splendour and the columns, which once adorned the main street seem to whisper exotic secrets, while a lone eagle wheels overhead.
There is something about Syria and neighbouring Jordan which is catnip to women.
Ancient Palmyra: Men on camelback at the UNESCO World Heritage SiteAnd not just to exotic eastern Queens. For hundreds of years it has held an extraordinary lure to upper-class English women. The 18thcentury Lady Hester Stanhope, niece of William Pitt the Younger, was the first society gal to hop off to the desert.
The Hon Jane Digby, a Regency belle, left her husband Lord Ellenborough to marry a Bedouin sheik, becoming reputedly the first European woman to wed a Muslim. (They honeymooned at Palmyra.)
She divided her time between the desert and Damascus. Every day, she washed her husband's feet with her hands, as one horrified English visitor exclaimed: 'Glorying in it!'
Then there was the Victorian, Isabel Arundell, niece of Lord Arundell who, as a young girl, read Tancred, Disraeli's novel about the Middle East, and confessed to having a ' hopeless craving for Bedouin Arabs and all thing Eastern'. To assuage that craving she married explorer Richard Burton, whose translations of erotic Eastern works made him infamous, and moved with him to Syria.
I am here to discover the inexorable appeal of the desert - and doing it the plush way.
Desert charm: Young Beduin and camel in Palmyra desertDamascus has been called 'the pearl of the desert'. Its fragile white minarets yearn towards the sky. The old town has seven gates and is beyond the ruins of a Roman wall. There are white and pink marble palaces with mosaic floors. I see the remains of the house where St Paul converted to Christianity.
The town has the oldest souk in the world - a shopping centre that's 2,000 years old.
I repair to the Four Seasons hotel. It has a lobby out of the Arabian Nights, sumptuous rooms and wonderful Syrian restaurant.
In the morning I visit Jane Digby's house. There are still two perfectly preserved rooms, right down to the European wallpaper. Her husband, Sheik Medjuel, couldn't get used to houses and slept in a tent in the garden. Nearby is the street where Isabel Burton lived. 'Damascus has my heart,' she wrote. 'Oh, the glorious nights we spend looking at the clear sky and swapping tales of heroism.'
When I see some Bedouins, I immediately understand why upper-class misses fell like dominoes. Shorter than the average Englishman, they have classical features, questing eyes, slim figures and charming manners.
They all seem to speak good English. One is riding a white horse. It rears and he laughs carelessly, pushing glossy hair from his forehead. 'Will you kidnap me?' I plead. ' Tomorrow morning at dawn,' he says obligingly.
Almost everyone I meet is friendly and polite. One night I eat in a Bedouin tent, made from goat hair, as in Biblical times. The men do a strange, swaying dance for me and rush to refill my plate with sweet cakes
Indulgence: Taking it easy in the Dead SeaThe following day Abdul drives me into Jordan, leaving me with another guide. After a few hours we reach Petra, 'the rose red city half as old as time'. Lady Hester Stanhope was so captivated she lived in a nearby cave for two months. Petra has appeared in numerous films, including Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade, but its reality surpasses them all.
The path to the city is rocky. It's night and the way is lit by candles. All at once I see the Treasury building, built in 500BC.
It is surrounded by caves where the Arabs once lived, and also used as tombs. More Bedouins ride by and I catch a lift. Jane fell in love with her sheik after she rode pillion on his mare, and Isabel Burton rode for weeks from here to the desert of Wadi Rum (where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed.)
The Wadi Rum looks like a delicious banoffee pie. The population used to be 25 per cent Bedouin; now it is only two per cent. This is partly because King Abdullah provided cheap housing.
A Bedouin in a concrete mansion block loses half of his appeal. 'Do you miss your tent?' I ask one man. 'No. Now I have TV and a toilet,' he replies disappointingly.
The Four Seasons in Amman, Jordan's capital, apple-white with its limestone houses, improves my mood. Instead of an umbrella by the pool you get your own tent. I have a facial, using 1,000-year-old methods, that leaves me looking Bedouin-ready. (I had looked 1,000 years old when I arrived, but now I look a youthful 500.)
Exotic delights: Bazaar in the old quarter of Damascus, SyriaI've two days left at the Dead Sea. Hester Stanhope is said to be the first Western woman to float on its crust of salt. I'm staying at the Kempinksi Ishtar, an extraordinary edifice 'inspired by the Hanging Gardens of Babylon'.
It has swimming pools that look like natural lakes. Verdant gardens are literally suspended above. The hotel is so huge you need a map, which I am given. My room is more like a private cottage. From the terrace I can see Jericho on the other side of the glassy sea.
The Russian finance minister and his entourage are staying here.
They drink Champagne for breakfast and have their own private entrance to the spa, which is the largest in the Middle East.
Lady Hester said sunsets on the Dead Sea were worth 'a hundred English summers'. The hotel has a minaret with a terrace bar, so I sit and watch as the sky turns from peony to aquamarine and emerald.
At night, myriad fountains come alive with tiny lights. Flares throw the lemon trees into relief. I sit outside the Italian restaurant with the Russian oligarchs. They order lobster. There is no camel meat here - it's not standard fare any more, so I have a pizza. When I go to bed, I dream of Bedouins dancing wildly until they drop with exhaustion. Would I follow the example of those other English women and wash their feet? Just try to stop me.
Travel factsAbercrombie and Kent has a ten-day itinerary in Syria and Jordan from £3,682pp based on two people travelling together, including economy flights with BMI, transfers, guide and driver (0845 618 2213, abercrombiekent.co.uk).
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