Jordan: From Amman to Aqaba

When to go

March to May and October to November. In summer the Dead Sea, Wadi Rum and Aqaba pass forty degrees, and the walk through Petra in the midday sun is hard. In winter Amman, Kerak and the high road can be cold and rainy, and once every few years it snows on the King’s Highway; Aqaba stays warm all year.

The stops

Interactive map of the route on our site ›

1. Amman3 nights

   The Rabbath Ammon of the Bible: here Joab, King David’s commander, besieged the city of the Ammonites, and Uriah the Hittite fell at its walls. The Romans called it Philadelphia, and their theatre of the second century, cut into the hillside of the old downtown, is still used for performances.

2. Jerashstop on the way

   Gerasa, one of the cities of the Decapolis, and one of the best preserved Roman cities in the Middle East, entered through the arch built for the visit of the emperor Hadrian in 129 and 130. Among its churches is one built in 530 over a synagogue, whose floor mosaic of the animals leaving Noah’s ark was found beneath it.

3. Dead Seastop on the way

   The lowest place on dry land, more than four hundred metres below sea level, and its water falls by about a metre a year. The water is so salty that you float without effort; do not put your head under, and wash in fresh water as soon as you come out.

4. Mount Nebostop on the way

   In the Book of Deuteronomy Moses climbs Mount Nebo, is shown the whole land he will not enter, and dies there. On a clear day the view from the summit reaches the Jordan valley, Jericho and the hills of Jerusalem.

5. Madabastop on the way

   The Medeba of the Bible, a town of mosaics. On the floor of the church of St George lies the Madaba Map, a mosaic of the sixth century found in 1884, the oldest surviving map of the Holy Land, on which Jerusalem appears with its colonnaded main street, the Cardo.

6. Wadi Mujibstop on the way

   The canyon of the Arnon of the Bible, the border of Moab, which the King’s Highway crosses by hairpins down to a dam and up again. The road takes its name from the Book of Numbers, where Moses asks the king of Edom to let Israel pass: we will go along the King’s Highway.

7. Kerakone night

   A hill town crowned by its crusader castle, begun in 1142 on a ridge over the road from Damascus to Egypt. Its lord Reynald of Châtillon raided Muslim caravans from here; Saladin besieged it, and in 1188 it surrendered. Bring a torch for the long vaulted halls under the walls.

8. Danastop on the way

   A stone village of the Ottoman period on the edge of the Rift, above the Dana Biosphere Reserve, the largest nature reserve in Jordan. From the village the land falls from about 1,500 metres down to the sands of Wadi Araba, below sea level.

9. Shobak Castlestop on the way

   Montreal, the first crusader castle east of the Jordan, built in 1115 by King Baldwin I of Jerusalem on a hill over the King’s Highway. Saladin took it in 1189 after a siege of many months; a staircase cut deep into the hill led down to a spring.

10. Petra2 nights

    The city of the Nabataeans, carved into red sandstone and entered through the Siq, a narrow gorge more than a kilometre long that opens onto the Treasury. The Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt, disguised as a Muslim, brought it to the knowledge of Europe in 1812. On the mountain above it, Jabal Harun, tradition places the grave of Aaron, the brother of Moses.

11. Wadi Rumone night

    A desert valley of sand and sandstone mountains, a World Heritage site since 2011, where T. E. Lawrence rode with the Arab Revolt and where parts of Lawrence of Arabia were filmed in 1962. Ordinary cars stop at the village; the desert itself is seen with a Bedouin driver in a four-wheel drive.

12. Aqaba2 nights

    Jordan’s only port, at the head of the Red Sea, looking across at Eilat. The forces of the Arab Revolt, with Lawrence among them, took the town from the Ottomans in July 1917, and the fort of the sixteenth century in the old town is where the story is told; the coral reefs south of the town begin a few metres from the shore.

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The moai, the Nazca lines, Göbekli Tepe and more.

To the mystery world

What it costs

Eighty dollars a night is the room. The car, the fuel and the entrance tickets are yours: Jordan has no road tolls. The car is rented in Jordan, in Amman, and returned in Aqaba, and the rental company charges a fee for the one-way drop. The Jordan Pass, bought online before you arrive, covers the visa fee and the entrance to Petra, Jerash, Kerak, Wadi Rum and dozens of other sites; it comes in three levels, by the number of days at Petra, and Petra alone costs a large part of its price.

What to know

Three things. One: the border. An Israeli rental car may not be driven into Jordan, at any crossing, so the car is rented on the Jordanian side. Israeli citizens cross at the Jordan River crossing (Sheikh Hussein) near Beit She’an or at the Yitzhak Rabin crossing (Wadi Araba) by Eilat; the Allenby crossing (King Hussein Bridge) serves Palestinians and foreign passports, not Israelis. A privately owned car may cross only at those two crossings, under the Airports Authority’s rules and with Jordanian insurance bought at the border. On this route the simple way is to cross at the Jordan River on foot, take the car in Amman, return it in Aqaba and walk back over the Yitzhak Rabin crossing to Eilat. Opening hours change; check them on the day. Two: the Jordan Pass. It waives the visa fee only if it is bought before you enter Jordan and you stay at least three nights. Three: safety. Israel’s National Security Council publishes a travel warning for Jordan; check its current level and guidance before you book and again before you go. On the roads, police checkpoints are common — keep your passport and the rental papers at hand.

Roads, tolls and rules

Jordan drives on the right. Two roads run from Amman to the south: the Desert Highway, fast, straight and full of trucks, and the King’s Highway, the old road along the edge of the plateau, slow and beautiful, which drops into canyons and climbs out again. This track takes the King’s Highway in short days, with a night in Kerak on the way to Petra and a night in a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum before Aqaba; no day is much over 150 kilometres. Speed bumps in the villages are often unmarked, and outside the towns there is no lighting at night; drive the King’s Highway by day.

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A guide in your headphones, stop after stop.

To the walks