Jordan (Amman, Wadi Rum)

Country visited: Jordan

Places visited: Amman, Wadi Musa/Petra, Wadi rum, Dead Sea

Dates: 3rd week of September 2015 for 4 days.

General tips:

(1) There is no problem getting vegetarian food anywhere.

(2) Jordan is just as expensive as the US. The Jordanian Dinar is in fact more expensive than the US dollar. 

Getting to Jordan: visa requirements

If you hold an Indian passport like me, you may not be required to get Jodanian visa beforehand. Although, if you want (and don't have good judgement - you'll see why later) you can apply for a visa before landing in Jordan. We didn't have a great experience with this however. We applied for a visa more than a month before our travel dates. You will have to mail your request for a visa to the Jordanian embassy in Washington DC. There is additional fee if you want to expedite your request. The website will tell you that if you don't pay the expedite fee, they'll take months to process. So, of course we paid the expedite fee. But even after paying the expedite fee and following up with them multiple times on the phone (which btw they almost always answer and answer very politely) we got a response from them only after 1.5 months that we will be granted a visa if we wish to apply. Yes, the first step is to send in your application to request for a visa, they'll let you know if you are approved to get a visa and if you are approved you can then proceed to send your passport in to get the visa stamped. We were already in Jordan when we received the call that our visa request was approved. So long story short, don't try to get visas before hand. Just land in Jordan and get visa on arrival. To get visas on arrival however you need to have with you (1) alteast $2,000 USD in cash. (2) confirmed flight reservation for your return ticket and (3) all reserved hotel bookings. If you don't have hotel bookings you'll need $3,000 USD in cash. Phew! Yes, getting Jordanian visa is quite a process.

Flight to Amman

If you book well in advance you can get flights to Amman from a place like San Francisco for less than $700 round trip. But since we flew from Cairo to Amman, our flights were much cheaper (<$200). 

Amman to Dead Sea and Petra/Wadi Musa 

Get a taxi to go from Amman to Dead Sea which is somewhat on the way to Petra/Wadi Musa. Taxis are the best option to get around Jordan. There are some taxis outside the airport in Amman. You should be able to get one for between 35 and 40 JD. Dead Sea is a must-see place if you are visiting Jordan. It is this relatively long stretch of sea between Jordan on one side and Israel on the other. where you can effortlessly float  in the water, If you are a person who does not know to swim at all, you'll appreciate it a lot. There are a number of resorts in the Dead Sea area that have their have leased portions of the Dead Sea. I highly recommend getting entry passes at one of them instead of using the public beach at Dead Sea which is very crowded and also quite dirty. The resort entry fees can range between 20 to 50 JD. The expensive ones usually have a meal included too. We visited the Moevenpic Resort. Although it was on the more expensive side (~45 JD per head) and the walk from the entrance of the resort to the Dead sea beach was quite long, we liked this a lot more than a another local and cheaper resort we visited on our way back to Amman. The cheaper resort was extremely crowded and the toilets and bathrooms were horrible. Additionally, at Moevenpick you could eat at one of the resort hotels for upto 20 JD (I think) per head. They have a great buffet and several other options for food  and we were quite hungry after spending our time in their swimming pools and the Dead Sea beach that we didn't mind paying the extra $$$. The cheaper resort didn't have food included in the entrance fee.

Dead Sea to Petra/Wadi Musa

Taxis are a bit hard to find around the resorts. I recommend that you first take a talk just outside the resort to see if there are any taxis, if there are none you may have no other option but to have the resort arrange one for you. If the latter is the case, you are guaranteed to pay an extra 10-20 JD. In our case, the resort manager who arranged the taxi for us took some money from the taxi guys right in front of us. He then told us  that he had bargained a very good deal for us which was a lie we couldn't do anything about. We paid 100 JD. The ride from Dead Sea to Wadi Musa is quite long. It took our taxi driver (who drove quite well) about 3.5 hours to get to Wadi Musa. The drive was very pleasant on the eyes and I didn't mind the long commute.

Wadi Musa/Petra

Hotels in Wadi Musa are quite average. The one we stayed at (Al Rashid) where we pais about 100 USD a night was functional. There is nothing more to it. Jordan was very very hot at the time we visited, so we were very happy to just find a good bed and a working air conditioner. The hotel's buffet had a lot of great reviews on tripadvisor, but we didn't find anything exceptional. The spread was alright. It was mostly pita, hummus, eggs, type spread. Right outside our hotel, there were a couple of small restaurants where the food was very tasty although the kitchens it came from looked quite questionable. We braved it and had a couple of meals in those restaurants. There was a decent sized grocery/convenience store where we picked a few items for a sandwiches  for a couple of meals. If you are willing to spend a little more $, there are a few good restaurants right outside the entrance to Petra. You can walk to them after you are done seeing Petra or right before starting your day in Petra. Moevenpick also had a hotel right outside Petra's entrance which I am sure is much better than Al Rashid - but everything comes at a price. Al Rashid worked just fine for us.

The best time to visit Petra is early in the morning (~7 am) or late in the evening (~5 pm). The treasury appears somewhat orange in the morning and pink in the evening. So, its worth saving your entrance ticket (which you can purchase right outside the entrance and costs slightly more for 2 day than 1 day entry; even the 1 day entry will get you in multiple times within the same day) and visiting Petra at a few different times. There is anyway nothing else to do in Wadi Musa so you might as well use your time admiring the beautiful treasury among other things at Petra at your own pace and in different settings. They also have a Petra by night show every night where they light candles in the night all the way from the entrance leading upto the treasury.

You can choose to walk to take a horse ride to the treasury to the entrace or from the treasury to the rest of Petra (like the Roman amphithetre, etc.). There is also a monastry which is quite a hike within Petra. You can take a horse to the monastry or walk. There was a few small tea shops along the way where you can stop for some fresh hot tea and pay whatever you think the tea is worth. We stopped less for the tea and more to strike a conversation with the vendors. They could speak very good English. The hike to the monastry was quite strenuous and the monastry or the view from top was very average. I would't recommend it to anyone I like.

Going from Petra to Wadi Rum

Again, taxi is probably the best option. They have one bus that leave to Wadi Rum from Wadi Musa everyday but this is very early int he morning. We didn't mind paying the extra $ for the comfort of conveinece of spending a few extra hours in bed and leaving a bit late so we took a taxi to Wadi Rum.

At Wadi Rum, I recommend taking one of the dessert camps tours and tents. We took a 6 hour tour of the dessert and a night tent with dinner and breakfast included with Bedouin Lifestyle camp. There is also a 4 hour tour for a cheaper price where they will skip a few stops that you can choose too. The tour guide may badger you to take a camel ride too - don't give in to pressure and sign up. The camel will cover a very small distance and the ride will definitely not be worth your money unless getting on a camel is what you really care about. The dinner was good and was accompanied by some singing and lounging time which I really enjoyed. The tents are extremely dark inside. They are fitted with a small bulb that hardly illuminates anything. The women's restrooms were pretty good, although I didn't feel like using it for a shower in morning.  The men's bathrooms had absolutely no light and the toilet flushes were not working for quite sometime till they fixed it later. In the morning, we were given a  humble breakfast of some pita bread, eggs, jam, coffee/tea and fruits. We absolutely love the desert camping experience and recommend everyone visiting the Arabian countries to sign up for it.

Going from Wadi Rum back to Amman

The camping tour company with drop you back in the Wadi Rum town from where picked you up.  It's recommended to have the tour guy set you up with a taxi just in case there aren't any available when you get to the town. Since we had a taxi waiting for us when we got back to the town, we were able to get back to Amman earlier than we had anticipated and had some time to go around the city to explore some restaurants before heading to the airport to get our flights back to the US.

Please feel free to leave comments or  ask questions.

-S and S