demanding pace | 9 nights | from $2,870 per person
Jordan Vacation Package: 9 Nights at a Demanding Pace
Long days on stone and sand in heat that does not let up. This is the most physically honest trip on the list and the one people most often underestimate.
What the days ask of you
This trip is filed as demanding. Everything below is measured, not adjectives.
- Walking on an average day
- twelve to eighteen thousand steps on four of the nine days
- Longest stretch without a seat
- seven hours on the back route into the carved city, four of them descending
- What is under your feet
- rock cut stairs with no rail, sand, and polished stone worn by two thousand years of feet
- Climbing
- nine hundred steps to the monastery, and the back route descends further than that
- Altitude
- mostly under four thousand feet, which is not the difficulty here
- Heat
- this is the difficulty. Shade is scarce and the stone holds the day's heat into the evening
- Times you move
- five by vehicle, and two nights under canvas with no vehicle access after dark
- Who this is not for
- there is no shortened version that keeps the point. If the above reads badly, choose another trip
What is included
- Seven nights in hotels and two under canvas in the desert, with shared facilities on those two
- All breakfasts, four lunches and five dinners, including both desert nights
- A vehicle and driver for the whole route, maximum twelve travelers
- Two full days at the carved city with a local guide, which is one more than most itineraries give
- All site admissions, which in this country are substantial
- Airport transfers at Amman
What is not included
- International flights, quoted separately
- Meals not listed, and there is little choice on two of the nights
- Any entry document, which is yours to arrange and on which we do not advise
- Gratuities for the guide, driver and camp staff
- The horse or donkey at the site entrance, which we ask you not to use and do not book
- Anything medical, including the salt tablets you will be glad of
What it costs
from $2,870 per person, on two people sharing.
That is the lowest figure we have actually placed this trip at in the last season. It moves with the month, the room or cabin grade, whether you travel alone and how far ahead you book. Flights are not in it unless this page says they are. The figure is confirmed in writing, with the operator named, before you commit to anything.
When this is worth doing, and when it is not
March, April, October and November. May already reaches the temperatures that make the long site days genuinely hard. June to September we do not sell this trip at all, and we will say no rather than let somebody try it.
You will walk between twelve and eighteen thousand steps on four of the nine days, much of it on uneven rock, some of it on stairs cut into stone with no rail. There is no shortened version that keeps the point of the trip. If this is not comfortable reading, take the Sicily trip instead and we will not think less of the choice.
What gets settled when you confirm
Whether you are doing the long back route into the site, which is four hours of descent and the best part of the trip for those who can do it. The desert camp category, since a private washroom changes the price. Single supplement, which under canvas is handled differently. And your departure date, because the shoulder months fill first for exactly the reason above.