EXCLUSIVE | LoAnn's Life-Changing Trip: Egypt and Jordan

The Out Traveler staffers are addicted to great journeys and we take good destination tips seriously. So when editor-at-large Matthew Link starting talking about 10 Trips That Will Change Your Life for our Fall 2008 issue, it gave me pause -- and then I started packing for Egypt.

Yes, I did take his advice and ride a camel around the 4,500-year-old pyramids of Giza, one of those "pinch me, I must be dreaming" moments when you truly comprehend that the images from your childhood history lessons exist beyond the pages of textbooks. But then an unexpected thing happened: I planned my trip to see the pyramids, and found that after 16 days of traveling throughout Egypt and Jordan, they had paled in comparison. These are countries of such great visual riches (and, in Egypt, extreme poverty), it's impossible to pin the life-altering experience on just one day, one excursion, one monument.