nine nights, one vehicle, and a route you can change at breakfast
A Private Guided Jordan Vacation Package With Your Own Driver Across Desert And Canyon
This is a private guided Jordan vacation package for your party and nobody else. One driver-guide, one vehicle, and nine nights arranged so the hardest walking falls before the heat of the day.
Nine nights, from $4,180 per person.
Nothing here counts you and nothing here follows you off the page. One word can be written down, and only the word yes, so this strip stops coming back. What that means in full.
The canyon walk on day six covers about eleven miles from the plateau rim down to the level of the Dead Sea, and it is a descent of roughly 3,900 feet with water in the bottom of it. That single number tells you more about this trip than any adjective can. Almost everything in Jordan sits at altitude that the map does not warn you about: Amman is around 2,500 feet, the desert reserve at Wadi Rum is around 3,300, and the Dead Sea shore is 1,400 feet below sea level. In nine days you go up and down the equivalent of a small mountain range, twice.
A private guided Jordan vacation package exists mostly to make that gradient manageable. The vehicle meets you at the bottom of the canyon rather than waiting at the top. If the descent takes six hours instead of four, nobody is standing in a parking lot being annoyed with you. The guide carries the day's slack in his own schedule, not in a group's patience.
The country is small enough that this works. Amman to Aqaba is about 200 miles of good divided highway, four hours if you do not stop, seven if you do, and everything worth seeing sits within thirty miles of that spine or on the older road that runs parallel through the hill villages. Nine nights is enough to see the ancient rock cut city properly over two full days, spend two nights in the desert, walk one long canyon, float in water you cannot sink in, and still have a day where nothing at all is scheduled.
- What size this is
- Nobody outside your own party rides in the vehicle or walks with the guide, which means the day starts when you are ready rather than when a group is counted, and the per head figure is the highest in the catalog because a driver and a guide cost the same whether two people or twenty sit behind them.
- What is actually included
- Nine nights of lodging in mid range and upper mid range properties chosen by location rather than name; the vehicle and its fuel for the whole route; an English speaking driver-guide who stays with you the entire nine nights; breakfast daily and four dinners where the lodging is remote enough that eating elsewhere is not realistic; site entry fees for the ancient city, the desert reserve and the canyon; the reserve permit and the local desert driver required inside the protected area; airport pickup and drop off at Amman.
- Who else is on it
- Nobody. Not one stranger. The vehicle carries your party and the driver-guide and nothing else, so a two hour stop at the ancient city becomes a five hour stop if you want it, the canyon walk starts at six in the morning if you ask the night before, and the only negotiation about the day happens between the people already at your own breakfast table.
- What it does not include
- Lunches throughout and five of the nine dinners; drinks of any kind, including bottled water beyond what the vehicle carries; tipping for the driver-guide, the desert driver and lodging staff; the departure tax collected at the airport; any flight to or from Amman; laundry, spa treatments and Dead Sea resort facility charges billed to the room; the horse or cart ride offered at the entrance to the ancient city; anything to do with entry documents, which sits outside what this office does; travel protection of any kind, which this office does not sell or advise on.
- Who should not book this
- Anyone who wants the cost per head to come down. There is no version of this where a second party joins and the figure drops, because the whole structure is one guide and one vehicle for you alone. Also unsuited: people who cannot manage two to three hours of walking on uneven stone and loose sand, and anyone who needs a fixed printed itinerary they can hand to somebody at home, because half the value here is that the plan moves.
What one vehicle actually buys you
The obvious answer is flexibility, and the obvious answer is also the least interesting one. The real thing you buy is the ability to move against the crowd. The ancient city receives most of its visitors between nine in the morning and two in the afternoon, delivered by coach from Amman and from the port. Your driver-guide can have you at the gate when it opens, which means the long narrow gorge leading in is nearly empty and the light is still low enough to show the color in the stone. By the time the coaches arrive you are already an hour up the eight hundred steps toward the monastery, going the opposite direction from everyone else.
The second thing it buys is the ability to abandon a plan without cost. Weather in the desert changes the argument for a whole day. If a sandstorm blows through Wadi Rum, the reserve is not pleasant and the sensible response is to drive north a day early and add the time back later. In a group of forty that decision cannot be made. In a party of two or four it takes one conversation over coffee.
What it costs is straightforward arithmetic and worth being blunt about. A guide, a driver and a vehicle are the same money whether one person sits behind them or eleven do. At $4,180 per person the figure assumes two people sharing. Four people sharing the same vehicle brings the per head number down substantially, because the fixed costs split further. Solo, it goes up. This office will quote the exact figure for your party size rather than publishing an average that is wrong for everybody.
from $4,180per person
- Where it comes from
- The lowest figure this office has actually booked this trip at inside the last twelve months.
- Read as
- Two people sharing one room, unless the rows above this say otherwise for your case.
- What lifts it
- A smaller party than the size this trip is filed under, a better grade of room, a peak week, and a late decision.
- When it stops moving
- When an operator puts its own name under it in writing. Until then treat it as the floor of a range this office has seen.
Whatever you settle is settled with that operator, on whatever system it runs. No part of it passes through this office and no card is ever seen here.
The months that work and the months that punish you
Heat is the whole question. Summer in the desert and along the Dead Sea shore is not a matter of discomfort but of what you can physically do between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, which is nothing outdoors. The canyon walk is closed to visitors during parts of the winter when flash flooding is a genuine hazard, and that closure is decided by the reserve authority at short notice, not by this office.
Spring and fall are short and they are the reason most of this catalog's Jordan bookings land in four specific months.
- March to early May
- Wildflowers on the hill route, 70s in Amman, canyon open and the water still cold
- Late May to June
- Workable but hot, days start at 5:30, desert nights still cool enough to sleep
- July and August
- Dead Sea shore reaches 110F, canyon effectively unusable, not sold by this office
- Late September to November
- The strongest window, warm days, cold desert nights, canyon at its best
- December to February
- 40s and rain in Amman, occasional snow, canyon closed on flood risk, but the ancient city is nearly empty
What is fixed at confirmation and what stays loose
The point of this trip is that the route can move, but not everything can. The reserve permit, the desert camp bed and the two nights near the ancient city are named and paid before you fly, because those are the three places where availability is genuinely finite in the good months. Everything else is a preference written down rather than a booking.
- DepositVehicle, driver-guide and the nine lodging nights are held. A written itinerary follows within two to four working days
- Six weeks outReserve permit and desert driver confirmed. Canyon day fixed to a date, since the reserve issues permits per day
- Two weeks outFinal route call with the guide by phone or message, where you say what you actually want more time for
- On the groundDaily start times, lunch stops and any reshuffle decided at breakfast with the guide
Ask the awkward question first
The most useful message this desk gets is the one that names the problem rather than the destination: a bad knee, a fear of heights on the steps, one person who wants the canyon and one who does not. Those are all solvable when there is one vehicle and no strangers, and they are much easier to solve before the deposit than after it. A message is read the same working day; a full figure takes two to four working days.