Petra takes a morning. Jordan takes a week.
Which Petra day leaves you time to climb to the Monastery. What a night in a Wadi Rum camp costs once dinner is in it. Whether the Dead Sea deserves a whole day or half of one. Reviews of every tour you can book in Jordan.
Petra, a night in Wadi Rum, the Dead Sea, and the Roman north.
The four bookings a first Jordan itinerary gets built around. What each one costs, and what the travellers who took it say.
01The one you came forAmman Petra Full-Day TripA full day out of Amman: the Desert Highway south, the Siq on foot, and the Treasury standing at the end of it.
02The night in the desertWadi Rum Full Day Jeep Tour + Overnight & Dinner in Bedouin CampA jeep across the sand all afternoon, dinner and a bed in a Bedouin camp, and a sky with nothing in the way of it.
03Four hundred metres downDead Sea Day Tour with Optional Entry Fees and LunchThe Dead Sea from Amman with resort entry and lunch offered as extras, so you float and eat without hiring a car.
04The Roman northJerash, Ajloun Castle or Umm Qais Private TourNorth of the capital to the colonnades at Jerash, the castle at Ajloun or the hilltop at Umm Qais. One of them fills a day.
Wadi Rum sells three different days. Pick the one you have time for.
Sandstone jebels standing out of red sand, tracks running between them, and a quiet that catches people off guard. Half a day in a jeep, an hour on a camel, or the whole thing with a camp and a dinner at the end of it.
Petra is one of six ancient cities you can reach from Amman in a day.
The Nabataeans carved a capital into a canyon. The Romans laid a chariot street at Jerash. Crusaders put castles on the ridge above the King’s Highway, and the Umayyads painted hunting scenes across a bathhouse out in the eastern desert.
Six places in Jordan, and the day out each one is really for.
A city cut into a canyon wall, a desert of sandstone islands, water nobody sinks in, a Roman street that never fell down, a capital spread over its hills, and a reef at the very top of the Red Sea.
Jordan by price: what $40 gets you, and what $300 buys.
The whole site by price per person. City walks and reef trips sit at the bottom; the multi-day loops with a driver and a camp sit at the top.
Walks through downtown Amman, an hour in the Rum, snorkelling off the Aqaba shore, the short transfers.
- 1Morning or Sunset Jeep Tourfrom $46
- 2Bedouin Camp Stay,Full-Day Desert Tour with 3Mealsfrom $39
- 3Stargazing Adventure in Jordanfrom $30
The full-day standards: Petra out of Amman, the Dead Sea with entry, Jerash and Ajloun in one run north.
- 1Petra & Wadi Rum Private or group Day Tourfrom $126
- 2Petra and Wadi rum Full day Tourfrom $99
- 3Petra Full-Day Private Tour from Ammanfrom $78
Private drivers, overnight camps, the two- and three-day loops, and the crossings from Israel.
The Jordan days more travellers book than any others.
Every tour we have reviewed in Jordan →Combined runs dominate here. Most people land with a week and want Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea settled in one booking, and these are the ones they settle on.
1
Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea 2-Day Tour
Travel south from Amman to Petra, sleep in a Bedouin camp at Wadi Rum, ride through the desert by 4WD, and float in the Dead Sea. You get a private or shared tour option, dinner, breakfast, and drivers such as Jaffar, Qutaibeh, Majd, and Khader.
Read our review →2
2-Day Tour: Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea from Amman
from $249
3
Petra & Wadi Rum Private or group Day Tour
from $126
4
Petra and Wadi rum Full day Tour
from $99
5
2-Day Petra, Wadi Rum and Dead Sea Tour from Amman
from $275
6
3-Day Private Tour from Amman: Petra, Wadi Rum, Dana, Aqaba, and Dead Sea
from $349
7
Petra Full-Day Private Tour from Amman
from $78
8
Wadi Rum Full Day Jeep Tour + Overnight & Dinner in Bedouin Camp
from $107
Below sea level: salt water, a hot waterfall and a canyon you wade up.
The road drops off the Amman plateau and keeps dropping. Water you float in rather than swim, thermal falls at Ma’in you can stand under, and the Mujib gorge, where the walk goes upstream and stays wet the whole way.
Every Dead Sea day →
Three things this country has that the ones next door do not.
Desert and ruins run the length of the Middle East. A kilometre-long crack that opens onto a temple, a camp on the floor of a sandstone desert and a gorge you climb through moving water belong to Jordan alone.
The Siq
The way in is a fault in the rock about a kilometre long and in places barely three metres wide, with the channel the Nabataeans cut to carry water into the city still running along one wall. You walk it for twenty minutes seeing nothing but sandstone, and then the gap opens on the Treasury. Two thousand years on, nobody has improved on that entrance.
- 1Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea 2-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,173 reviews
- 22-Day Tour: Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea from Amman★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,141 reviews
- 3Petra & Wadi Rum Private or group Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 750 reviews
The Bedouin camps
Rum is less dunes than islands: sandstone jebels rising straight out of red sand, with jeep tracks running between them. The camps sit tight against the rock, dinner comes out of a pit dug in the ground, and once the generator is switched off the sky does the rest. Most people book one night and spend it wishing they had booked two.
- 1Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea 2-Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,173 reviews
- 22-Day Tour: Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea from Amman★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,141 reviews
- 3Petra & Wadi Rum Private or group Day Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 750 reviews
The Mujib Siq Trail
The gorge cuts down to the Dead Sea and the trail goes the other way, upstream, through water that reaches your chest in places and over rock worn smooth as tile. Ropes are fixed at the waterfalls. It opens for the warm months only, closes the moment the flow comes up, and you finish it soaked and grinning.
- 1Wadi Mujib Siq Trail with Amman Panoramic&Optional Dead Sea Visit★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 46 reviews
- 23-Day Tour to Petra, Wadi Rum, Karak, Mujib, Aqaba, and Dead Sea★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 40 reviews
- 3Wadi Al Mujib Adventures From Amman, QAI Airport, Deadsea or Madaba★★★★★★★★★★ 4.0 · 38 reviews
Four Jordan bookings that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this country can be arranged the night before over a glass of tea. These four cannot. They run on set evenings, a season, the air at dawn, or a camp with eight beds in it.
- 01Petra by Night Tour with Optional Day VisitIt runs on set evenings only and the candles are lit for that night alone. Arrive on the wrong evening and the Siq is closed.
- 02Wadi Mujib Siq Trail with Amman Panoramic&Optional Dead Sea VisitThe Mujib trail opens for the warm months and shuts the moment the water rises. Out of season there is no walking it.
- 03Hot Air Balloon Flight at Wadi RumBalloons over Rum fly at first light and only in still air. There is one slot a morning, and the wind decides whether it goes.
- 04Wadi Rum Full Day Jeep Tour + Overnight & Dinner in Bedouin CampThe good camps are small. In spring and autumn the beds go weeks before the jeep that takes you out to them.
By noon at Petra the rock is throwing the heat straight back at you.
June to September the sandstone holds forty degrees and the valley floor holds more. The answer is the one the Bedouin have always used: move at either end of the day and spend the middle of it in water or under stone. The reef at Aqaba, the thermal falls at Ma’in, a long lunch, somebody else’s kitchen.
By place — from the capital down to the Red Sea
By kind of day — desert, ruin, water or table
Amman to Aqaba the slow way, down the road the caravans used.
KarakThe Jordan tours we reviewed most recently.
Keep going through the new ones →
Cooking outside in little Petra between the Mountains.
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Wadi Rum Full Day Jeep Tour + Overnight in Bedouin Camp & Dinner
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Aqaba Shore Excursion: Private accessible Petra Tour
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Private Short Tour: 2 Days Madaba, Mt Nebo, Dead Sea, Petra from Amman
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Half Day Cooking Class Experience with Amman Panoramic Tour
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Private Full Day Crusader Castles of Karak & Shobak, Kings Highway from Amman
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Madaba, Mt Nebo, Dead Sea, Petra & Wadi Rum 3 Days 2 Night
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5-Day Private Tour to Amman Jerash Madaba Petra Wadi Rum Dead Sea
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5 Day Tour: Amman Petra Jerash Mount Nebo Shobak Castle Wadi Rum Red & Dead Sea
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3-Day Journey Through Shobak Castle, Petra, Wadi Rum& Dead Sea
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