Moses didn't make it, but I did: Simon Calder took advantage of the outbreak of peace to cross from Jordan into Israel and back

So this is what the signatures on the peace treaty actually mean: a mass of barbed wire and a huddle of Portakabins parked in the desert. When Israel and Jordan talked peace in July, they opened up a new world of travel possibilities. Walking up to the prefabricated frontier post between Eilat and Aqaba, you feel like an extra in a spy movie. But after some brisk passport-stamping and cursory luggage-checking, you are free to make the most of the Holy Land.

By combining the border crossing with the bridge over the River Jordan, halfway between Jerusalem and Amman, you can do a circular tour of Israel and Jordan. A misleading sign in the Jordanian embassy in London says, 'No visa will be issued for a passport with an Israeli stamp'. This is no longer the case, but travellers will not have an entirely comfortable ride.

To reach the King Hussein/Allenby crossing, you drive along the wrong side of the road since at 6.30am the line of vehicles waiting to cross is half a mile long. Eventually you queue-jump your way to a customs complex which is only slowly and reluctantly being built. Foreigners are segregated into a waiting room where the air is thick with fly spray and thicker with flies. Once a bus-full has collected, you are ushered aboard a coach, charged 1.50 dinars ( pounds 1.50) and taken on a disjointed journey across the frontier.

The King Hussein Bridge is not the majestic span across the River Jordan that you might imagine. Painted military green, it is no longer than 30 yards and looks as though it has been built from industrial-strength Meccano. It traverses something that seems no more than a creek.

Across the bridge and into Israel, the tight security is stepped up a notch. Machine- guns stare you in the face, and troops concealed behind sunglasses snap their orders to the bus driver with a flick of the rifle. Tension still runs high in parts of the Middle East.

But last week I realised how much the region has changed when I found myself floating towards Jill Dando. I was bobbing about in the Dead Sea, proving the theory that you really can lie back in the water and read the Independent. Suddenly the presenter of the BBC's Holiday programme appeared with an entourage of production staff and began filming the huge, salty puddle in the middle of the Middle East. The Dead Sea is a live possibility for Britain's travel programmes and tour operators.

Bethlehem is good place to start a tour, at least in the biblical sense. But rather than a pretty little town, it is a big and ugly sprawl in the hills below Jerusalem. The Church of the Nativity marks the spot where Christ is said to have been born; a tacky tableau of the Nativity has been constructed in the crypt. The tourist coaches park in Manger Square, a squalid patch of concrete. Wise men and women will, instead, wander the back streets of this firmly Palestinian settlement. A wailing muezzin, calling the Muslim faithful to prayer, drowns out the pealing bells of churches devoted to a dozen different denominations.

The ecclesiastical confusion gets much worse a few miles up the road in Jerusalem. Constrained within ancient walls, the old city is sacred to Islam, Judaism and Christianity in all its divergence, and the level of activity reflects a place trying to function on many different levels. But Jerusalem's main business is business: it is basically one big souk, with thousands of traders crammed into a maze of alleyways.

If you need a breath of fresh air, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the place to be. The location of Christ's crucifixion and resurrection has been fought over by rival faiths for a millennium, and the conglomeration is a mess. A much more sublime experience can be found at the Dome of the Rock, a sacred Muslim site where a graceful hemisphere has been built around the boulder from which Mohamed is said to have ascended. The trinity of divergent faiths is completed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, built by Herod 20 years before Christ was born. Day and night, Jews slip prayers on papers between the ancient stone and utter soft invocations.

Herod's Gate leads out of the old city into some crass new developments, but eventually you move into a disturbing natural landscape. The terrain makes you thirsty just to look at it. But the drab dryness ends and the fun starts at the Sea of Galilee. There, Tiberias sounds like a collection of ruins, but it turns out to be a lively place. The water on which Christ is said to have walked is alive with bathers and jet-skiers. Cafes along the promenade sell loaves and fishes by the thousand, and diners turn down water in favour of the excellent Holy Land wine.

I rented a bike and cycled around the Sea of Galilee. A few miles out of Tiberias, a sign announces the site of the town of Magdala, where Mary Magdalene was raised; only a stray sarcophagus, desolate by the roadside, shows evidence of human settlement.

Halfway round, the highway begins a steep climb and you suddenly find yourself ascending the Golan Heights. This is austere moorland, dotted with a few sparse pines.

Across the border, Jordan cannot boast a more welcoming terrain, but this is more than made up for by the warmth of its people.

Everywhere in Jordan I was struck by the gentle grace with which visitors are greeted. Even in the capital, Amman - a gruellingly hot and crowded city - local people murmur 'Welcome to Jordan' and politely enquire about your nationality. As I was negotiating the steepest of the seven hills over which Amman is scruffily draped, a man in full bedouin regalia was descending. He paused for long enough to find out I was British, exclaimed delightedly 'Then we are very good friends]', and shook my hand.

You can make a stomach-churning slalom along a highway which swerves recklessly around the hills north of Amman. The bus drops you in a quivering heap by a pile of stones. These are the first signs of Jerash, a fine and miraculously preserved Roman city.

Having ticked off the first of Jordan's sights, and suffered the bumps and bruises of getting there, you may be relieved to find there are only two to go. But what the country lacks in quantity of monuments, it makes up for in astonishing quality. A bunch of policemen, who did not appear to be over-exerting themselves in guarding the ruins at Petra, ordered me to join them for tea before letting me into the ruins.

You have to walk for half-an-hour through a narrow gorge, nudged by donkeys bearing less energetic visitors, before you enter this astonishing city. Petra is a jumble of ruddy-faced mountains from which a city has been hewn. Three centuries before Christ, the Nabateans cornered the market in incense and built a city in the middle of the trade route - even though this was also the middle of the desert. All the grace of classical architecture has been imposed on a wild and beautiful landscape. The greatest is the Monastery, a giant of a structure carved out of the highest peak of all.

As the sun's final flourish showers the red rock with scarlet shafts of light, it is easy (and alarming) to conclude that nowhere on earth can match the almighty arrogance and excellence of Petra.

So, try beneath the surface of the water. Aqaba, on the tongue of Jordanian soil which touches the Red Sea, sounds like one of those mysterious old Arabian ports. Its streets should be populated by wizened old pirates, and its port should be full of fishing boats. In fact it is a grim container port, pinched between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Its saving grace is a few feet offshore. You plunge off the pier and are confronted by a garden of elegant coral, fluttering in a gentle current. Fish - some almost transparent, some multi-coloured, all friendly - swim past your amazed expression.

Back at the Dead Sea, I float 1,300ft below actual sea level. The water is intensely dark and stings bitterly; one- third of it comprises a concoction of salts, which conspire to raise the specific gravity to a level where humans are supported effortlessly on a sensuous cushion of water. The hills of Jordan rise moodily behind you, while ahead the mountains of Israel lift up through the haze.

FACTFILE

Getting there: Simon Calder paid pounds 234 for a scheduled Heathrow-Tel Aviv flight on the Israeli carrier El Al, booked through Major Travel (071- 485 7017). Charters from London and Manchester to Tel Aviv and Eilat are available for about pounds 200.

Getting around: in Israel, bus services are cheap ( pounds 10 to travel the length of the country) and frequent except during the Sabbath, which lasts from dusk on Friday to dusk on Saturday. Within Jordan, buses are even cheaper but more erratically scheduled.

Visas: not required by British visitors to Israel. A Jordanian visa can be obtained from the embassy at 6 Upper Phillimore Gardens, London W8 7HB (071-937 3685), pounds 33 to British passport holders.

Further information: Israel Government Tourist Office, 18 Great Marlborough Street, London W1V 1AF (071-434 3651). Jordan Information Bureau, 11-12 Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6LB (071-630 9277).

(Photograph omitted)