How to travel around Jordan? No Tour required
Although Jordan is surrounded by countries marked as unsafe, Jordan is a great place to travel by yourself in the Middle East without needing a tour or tour guide. We will tell you our tips on how to travel around Jordan!
Choose one arrival and departure city
To save money and see as much of the country, we would recommend arriving and departing from the same airport. All the destinations worth visiting are in a circle which means it is easy to arrive and depart from the same place. We arrived and departed from the capital, Amman. This gave us a good starting and end point for our roadtrip. There are two international airports in Jordan: Queen Alia Airport in Amman and the King Hussein Airport in Aqaba. Both airports are places to start driving from and to. We chose Amman since there weren’t any flights from our airport to Aqaba.
Rent a car
Although not all the roads are in the best shape, the Desert Highway is well maintained and easy to navigate around. We made the mistake of driving our rental car in the center of Amman, we almost lost 5 years of our life! Traffic rules do not apply in Amman. In the rest of the country we had no problems with traffic and the signs on the road speak for themselves.
Fuel is very affordable! Throughout the whole country the fuel price is the same. It doesn’t matter which fuel station you will go to or on which day, the fuel price will not change.
Buy a local SIM card
To find your way within the country, we purchased a SIM card at the airport. For 5 JOD, we got a SIM card from the telecom provider Zain. It includes 12 GB of internet, 15 minutes free international minutes, 20 minutes free local minutes and 10 SMS messages. It was valid for 7 days and perfect for our trip. We had 4G coverage everywhere (except Wadi Rum) and it was so easy to find spots.
Buy the Jordan Pass
For 70 JOD we purchased 3 days before our departure the Jordan Pass. This includes a 1 days visit to Petra, free entry to over 40 attractions and most importantly: the tourist entry visa fees are included. Entry to Petra for one day costs 50 JOD and the entry visa is 40 JOD. That means that you are already better off by only visiting Petra. Therefore we would 100% recommend buying the Jordan Pass. A better deal does not exist!