Jordan fits in a week. Spend it well.
Which two-day loop actually reaches the Monastery. What a night in a Wadi Rum camp costs. Whether the Dead Sea is worth a whole day. Every tour in Jordan, reviewed.
Petra, Wadi Rum and the Dead Sea, in one run.
All multi-day tours →
Almost every visitor covers the same three places, and almost every operator sells the same loop out of Amman. What separates them is how long you actually stand in front of the Treasury and whether the desert night is included.
Petra, then a night in the sand
The Siq and the Treasury on day one, red dunes and a camp dinner on day two, the Dead Sea shore on the drive home. The version most people book.
Room for Jerash, Dana or the reef
The extra day is what buys you the Monastery climb, or the Roman streets at Jerash, or an afternoon on the Red Sea before the flight out.
Petra and back before dark
Three hours down the Desert Highway, four or five hours inside the site, three hours back. It works, and it is the only option if the week is already full.
The six places a Jordan trip is planned around.
A rose-red city carved into a cliff, a desert that doubles for Mars, water you cannot sink in, a Roman city with its paving still down, coral an hour from the sand, and a capital everything else runs out of.
Nobody comes back from Wadi Rum quiet about it.
Two hundred square miles of red sand under sandstone towers, reached by pickup and crossed at ten miles an hour. The day tours are good. The night is the reason to stay.
Jordan’s most popular tours.
Open every review →The tours more travellers take than anything else in the country, and what each one is really buying you.
1
Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea 2-Day Tour
Amman to Petra, Wadi Rum Bedouin camp, and the Dead Sea. 2-day tour with 2-hour jeep ride, dinner, and breakfast.
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
Petra is two days pretending to be one.
The Siq alone runs the better part of a mile before the Treasury appears through the last crack. Behind it sit the tombs, the Roman street and 800 steps up to the Monastery, which is where the day trippers turn round.
All 336 Petra tours →
What a day in Jordan costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. The gap between a shared minibus and a private car with a driver is wider here than almost anywhere.
Half-days out of Amman, the Jerash run, a street-food walk, a morning on the reef.
The full-day classics: Petra and back, a jeep day in Wadi Rum, the Dead Sea with the mosaic towns.
- 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
Multi-day loops, private cars with a driver for the week, and the crossings in from Israel.
Three things Jordan has and nowhere else does.
Roman ruins and desert camps exist across the region. A city carved into a cliff face, water that will not let you sink, and a valley with no light pollution in any direction do not.
The Walk In
You do not arrive at Petra so much as be delivered to it. The Siq is a fault line about 1.2km long, in places three metres wide, with 80-metre walls and the remains of a Nabataean water channel cut along one side. It goes on long enough that people stop talking. Then the rock opens and the Treasury is standing there, forty metres of facade carved straight into the cliff, and everyone reaches for a phone at the same moment.
- 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 Float
The Dead Sea is the lowest exposed land on the planet and roughly nine times saltier than the ocean, which means you do not swim in it, you sit in it. Feet come up on their own. The rule everyone learns the hard way is not to shave that morning and not to put your face in. Twenty minutes is plenty, then the freshwater showers, then the black mud everybody pretends they are above.
- 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
- 32-Day Petra, Wadi Rum and Dead Sea Tour from Amman★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 467 reviews
The Night in Rum
Wadi Rum is a protected desert with no town inside it and no streetlight within an hour, and the camps that took over from the old goat-hair tents mostly leave the roofs open. Dinner is zarb, cooked in a pit under the sand and dug up in front of you. Then the fire dies down and the sky does the thing it does — Milky Way edge to edge, satellites tracking across it, and the temperature dropping faster than you expect.
- 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
At the Dead Sea you go down, not out.
Four hundred metres below sea level, nine times saltier than the ocean, and warm as a bath at the shoreline. Most people give it two hours; the mosaic towns and the mountain viewpoint above it are what turn it into a proper day.
- 1Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea 2-Day Tour
- 22-Day Tour: Petra, Wadi Rum, and Dead Sea from Ammanfrom $249
- 32-Day Petra, Wadi Rum and Dead Sea Tour from Ammanfrom $275
Jordan’s 27km of coast punch far above their length.
All Red Sea trips →
Private Red Sea Diving for Beginner or Experienced
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Glass-Bottom Boat 2-hours Tour and Coral-Reef Viewing from Aqaba
Read our review →
Private Scuba Diving Adventure in the Red Sea of Aqaba
Read our review →Book these before you land in Jordan.
Most of the country can be arranged from your hotel the night before. These four cannot — they run on fixed evenings, a seasonal gate, a small number of beds and a border post with opening hours.
- 01Petra by Night Tour with Optional Day VisitCandles down the Siq on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings only. There is no fourth night to fall back on.
- 02Wadi Mujib Siq Trail with Amman Panoramic&Optional Dead Sea VisitThe Mujib Siq Trail is a summer route. The gorge opens around the start of April and shuts again for the winter flash floods.
- 03Wadi Rum Full Day Jeep Tour + Overnight & Dinner in Bedouin CampWadi Rum’s camps are small by design, and the spring and autumn nights are the first to go.
- 04Petra 1-Day Guided Tour with TransfersThe land crossings keep fixed hours and your paperwork goes in ahead of the day. Nothing about this one is a same-morning decision.
When Jordan hits 40°C, go down, go under, or go north.
High summer in Wadi Rum and the Jordan Valley is genuinely punishing by eleven in the morning. The country has three honest answers: the Red Sea at Aqaba, where the water is the point; the canyons at Wadi Mujib, which run cold; and the northern hills at Jerash and Ajloun, several degrees cooler and a lot greener than the map suggests.
Where you will actually be based
Amman566 tours
Petra336 tours
Wadi Rum265 tours
The Dead Sea240 tours
Aqaba176 tours
Jerash98 tours
Madaba63 tours- All six regions →
What sort of day do you want?
The King’s Highway, one stop at a time.
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