Small country, enormous days
Jordan is barely 400 kilometres top to bottom, and yet it packs in a Roman city, the lowest point on earth, the rose-red ruins of Petra and a desert that stood in for Mars in half a dozen films. Ten days is enough to do it properly. The essential first move is the Jordan Pass, bought online before arrival for 70 to 80 JD depending on how many Petra days you choose: it waives your 40 JD visa fee and covers Petra, Jerash, Wadi Rum and most other sites, which means it pays for itself before you leave the airport.
Amman and Jerash
Give Amman two nights. It is a hilly, likeable capital where the downtown souks still sell to locals, the Citadel looks over a bowl of white buildings, and a Roman theatre sits in the middle of the traffic. Eat where the queues are: hummus and falafel at the famous downtown institutions costs 2 to 3 JD and is some of the best in the Levant, and knafeh, hot cheese pastry drenched in syrup, is the mandatory dessert for about 1 JD a slab. Day one out of the city, take a service taxi or local bus from the North Bus Station to Jerash, about an hour and 1 to 2 JD. The colonnaded streets, plazas and theatres there are among the best-preserved Roman cityscapes anywhere, and you can still see chariot ruts in the paving stones.
Down to the lowest place on earth
From Amman, we shared a taxi via the mosaic town of Madaba, worth an hour for the Byzantine map of the Holy Land on a church floor, then dropped 1,200 vertical metres to the Dead Sea. Public beach access at Amman Beach costs about 20 JD; some travellers instead buy a day pass at a resort for the showers, which you will absolutely want, since the water is a slick, stinging 34 percent brine. Floating in it is genuinely hilarious, reading a newspaper without trying to. Do not shave that morning. You will only need thirty minutes in the water, and the sunset over the Judean hills across the sea is the real show.
Petra deserves two full days
Buses and the reliable JETT coach run from Amman to Wadi Musa, the town at Petra's gate, in about four hours for around 12 JD. Enter at 6 am when the gate opens: walking the Siq, the kilometre-long crack in the mountain, in early light and near silence, then having the Treasury facade reveal itself through the final slot, is one of travel's great entrances. Day one, go deep: the Street of Facades, the Royal Tombs, and the 850-step climb to the Monastery, which is bigger than the Treasury and far quieter. Day two, take the back trails, Al-Khubtha for the view down onto the Treasury from above, or the High Place of Sacrifice route. Carry more water than seems reasonable and small notes for Bedouin tea stalls along the paths.
Wadi Rum, sleep in the desert
Two hours south, Wadi Rum is the emotional peak of the trip. Book a Bedouin camp ahead (25 to 45 JD including dinner, breakfast and usually a half-day jeep tour) and let them collect you at the village. The afternoon is spent rattling between sandstone mountains, climbing dunes and scrambling to natural arches; dinner is zarb, chicken and vegetables buried and roasted in a sand oven; and then the generator cuts and the desert hands you a sky so thick with stars the constellations get hard to find. It gets properly cold at night from October to March, so take every blanket offered.
Finishing up, costs, timing
End an hour south in Aqaba for a Red Sea snorkel day and cheap shawarma before flying out or crossing to Egypt or Israel. March to May and October to November are ideal; summer is brutal at the Dead Sea and Rum. Beyond the Jordan Pass, we averaged 40 to 55 JD a day, with dorms in Amman and Wadi Musa at 8 to 15 JD.
