Once again, Wadi Rum is a huge desert in its pure state. It’s home to some Bedouins, but it has virtually no infrastructure. This means that you can’t go there alone — only accompanied by people who know the area.

Before reaching the “juicy” part, however, you have to pass through two “checkpoints”. The Visitor Centre is the first one. Here, the staff check your tickets (or the validity of your Jordan Pass, as the entrance fee to Wadi Rum is included), so you won’t miss it. I couldn’t help noticing and admiring the beautiful design and architecture of the complex.

While taking care of these formalities, we were also approached by quite a few guides offering their services. I’m not sure how good they are, but my guess is that it’s always safer to have a pre-arranged tour.

Then, several kilometres farther on, comes Wadi Rum Village, which is basically the main hub for all the 4WD tours and the starting point for them.

Surprisingly, I liked this place. It has the adventurous atmosphere of a base camp for great expeditions, something that reminded me of Franklin’s or Magellan’s expeditions, even though sitting on the bench of a 4WD has nothing in common with a “great adventure”. 😀

First things first: only certified and approved tour guides have the right to organize excursions into Wadi Rum Desert. Beware of scammers who promise you “the greatest Wadi Rum tour” and then simply take you to the area outside the Protected Area, which is accessible to anyone. Don’t hesitate to ask for their certificate.

We had just a tiny glimpse at the number of options, companies and reviews before getting a headache, and on this trip we had already had a decent amount of headaches. So the desire not to make a huge deal out of it won, and we simply contacted a company mentioned in our French guidebook. It was presented as “eco-friendly”, “authentic” and all the other adjectives that Western tourists like ourselves are supposed to look for, so we jumped straight in.

The tours are very flexible – they can be one day/one night, two days/one night, or two nights/one day. It’s a very customizable thing, you just need to check in advance with the organisation.

We chose two nights and one day, which for us meant avoiding two nights in the village and spending them in the desert instead — a perfect option, especially considering that our means of transport was a bicycle.

What was included in the tour: transport (that very 4WD Toyota), meals cooked on the spot by our Bedouin guides, short walking tours, and sleeping equipment. There was also an “eco” touch that promised stories and explanations about the local wildlife, but our guides’ very limited English didn’t really let that happen — a point that had a poor impact on the experience based on our expectations (and, to be honest, on what was sold…) I also wish our guides hadn’t thrown their cigarette butts into their own natural heritage, but I guess that’s a secondary thing in an “eco approach”. On the bright side, our guides were from local Bedouin communities who live in Wadi Rum, so it was fascinating meeting someone who actually knows a huge desert of 720 km² like we know the streets of our cities. And who walks through on the rocks and sand in rubber flip-flops.

All in all, it cost us 210 JOD. A year later, I’m still not entirely convinced it was worth it. I would say yes, because I can’t imagine going to Jordan and skipping the Wadi Rum tour, but in absolute terms it wasn’t as mind-blowing as I had expected it to be.

For a whole day we drove from one beautiful and iconic spot to another, stopping for short walks. Overall, we walked a bit under 20 km that day. It was a very soothing, almost meditative rhythm, especially since we were alone (plus our two guides) until the very last evening and saw very few tourists along the way. As I already mentioned in previous articles, the timing was unusual: January off-season combined with the escalation of the war in Israel and Palestine, which affected tourism in Jordan as well.

However, contrary to my expectations, Wadi Rum didn’t conquer our hearts, and as I’m writing these lines I’m still trying to figure out why. One reason is that we simply aren’t fans of this kind of tourism — being driven around in a car and shown places without much depth. The lack of a common language also made the experience less insightful.

Also, to be honest, litter in Jordan made me feel bad throughout the whole trip, but somehow seeing it in Wadi Rum was heartbreaking. Mixed and hard-to-untangle feelings.

If I could remove everything connected to the “touristy” part — namely the tour organization itself — Wadi Rum would remain a truly beautiful place. We saw magnificent landscapes and even traces of people who had been there thousands of years ago. In fact, Wadi Rum has one of the richest collections of rock art in the Middle East with thousands of petroglyphs and inscriptions in various languages (Thamudic, Nabataean, Arabic…)  It’s hard to remain indifferent to that. Protecting this place from disorganized mass tourism is essential; I only wish that protection had been carried out a little better.

This concludes the Jordan-by-tandem series, and it feels like a separate accomplishment in itself! The next step is putting together all our thoughts about a much bigger part of the trip — the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That is going to be a ride of its own!

Thank you for reading, and don’t hesitate to reach out to us in any way – we would love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or experiences! If you have any questions, we would be happy to answer them too!