Middle East

Inch for inch, Israel surely delivers more cultural pileups and now-vs.-then collisions than any country on earth. The nation has enough diversity, from Bedouins and religious pilgrims to beach goers that frolic in Tel Aviv, to be its own continent.

Still considered somewhat of a traveler’s secret, Jordan is home to a number of the world’s most extraordinary historical and natural sites, including the “Lost City” of Petra, the Roman ruins of Jerash, the desert of Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea.

Surrounded by the United Arab Emirates, this exclave of Oman in the Musandam Peninsula features dramatic landscape of craggy mountains at the edge of the gulf. Oman’s capital, Muscat, is a five-hour drive south, with a huge section of the...