Wadi Rum Desert Tours: Jeep Days, Camp Nights and Balloon Flights Compared

First visit with one night in the desert

Take the full-day jeep tour with a camp night and dinner. It runs from 10:00 to sunset across ten sites, including Lawrence Spring, Khazali Canyon and the red sand dune, with lunch cooked on the fire and the sunset saved for the end. You get dinner, breakfast, a private Bedouin tent and modern toilets and showers, all rated 4.9 from 383 reviews.

At $106.53 it is not the cheapest, but it is the most complete single booking for a first trip.

The tightest budget for a full day and a night

The camp stay with a full-day tour and 3 meals costs $53 per person, the lowest rate in the catalog for a full tour plus a night. You still get an 8-hour jeep tour, a zarb dinner, breakfast, lunch and a private tent with its own bathroom. The trade-off is a camp that sleeps 30 to 35 people, so dinner is shared with a bigger crowd.

A private jeep without staying over

Book the half-day private jeep tour at $72.50. It is your group only in a 4x4 with a local driver-guide, for about four hours in the main valley. Pick a morning start, a sunset at Um Sabatah, or the version with a 45-minute camel ride.

It suits travellers based in Aqaba or passing through with no night to give.

A long active day with sandboarding and a camel

The 9-hour jeep tour with camel ride, sandboarding and lunch is the longest day trip here. The driver drops you at 9 to 12 sites to explore on foot, so expect plenty of walking and scrambling, plus an 80-minute lunch stop and a 20-minute camel ride if you select it. Lunch, water and Bedouin tea are included for $64.

Wanting the desert from the air

A sunrise hot air balloon flight puts you over the rocks, valleys and coloured sand for about 2.5 hours including transfers, at $235 per person. Flights depend on the wind and can be cancelled, so book it for your first morning and keep the second morning as a backup.

A camel ride only

The camel ride with Bedouin tea and guide is a 2-hour outing built around a 1-hour ride with a Bedouin guide and a tea break at the Al Ramal red sand dune. It costs $49 and starts from the village, the Visitor Centre or your camp. If you also want canyons and arches, pair it with a jeep tour rather than expecting both.

The night sky

Two options. The stargazing session at the observatory costs $30, lasts about 1.5 hours after dark and includes large telescopes, an astronomy talk and a long-exposure group photo. Or sleep out under the same sky on the cave camping trip with a half-day jeep tour, which ends the day at a cave with sunset and no camp lights.

Only one day, based in Amman

The Petra and Wadi Rum day trip from Amman squeezes both into 14 hours for $94, with hotel pickup. The catch is honest: about 9.5 of the 14 hours are in the car and Wadi Rum gets roughly 2 hours. Choose the option that includes entry tickets and the 2-hour jeep tour, or save Wadi Rum for a trip of its own.

The single biggest decision on a Wadi Rum desert tour is whether you stay past sunset. A day trip is cheaper and fits a tight schedule, but the desert changes completely once the tour jeeps leave and the sky goes dark. Here is how the two formats compare across this catalog.

What a night actually adds

A night in camp turns a checklist into an evening. You watch the sunset from a viewpoint instead of racing it, eat a zarb dinner cooked underground, and then step outside a private tent to a sky with almost no light pollution. The morning light on the rocks is a second show most day trippers never see, and breakfast comes before the jeeps return.

Both overnight listings in this catalog include all three meals.

Who is better off on a day tour

If your base is Aqaba or Amman and the itinerary cannot stretch, a day tour is still worth it. The half-day private jeep tour covers the main valley in about four hours with your own driver, and the 9-hour jeep tour gives a full day of sites, lunch and sandboarding. Just know what you are skipping: the stars and the quiet after dark are half the reason people camp.

Lawrence Spring

A spring below the cliffs, named for T. E. Lawrence, who passed through Rum several times during the Arab Revolt of 1917-18. It opens most jeep routes, and every jeep tour compared here stops there.

Khazali Canyon and its petroglyphs

A narrow siq cut into the rock, with petroglyphs of humans and antelopes from Thamudic times on the walls. You can walk a short way inside and scramble part of it if you wish. Every jeep tour compared here stops there.

The red sand dune

The Al Ramal red sand dune is the climbing stop, a steep slope of red sand with a view from the crest. Several listings offer sandboarding here, and the camel ride uses it for its tea break. Shoes fill with sand, which is part of the fun.

The rock bridges

Wadi Rum has several natural rock arches of different sizes. Little Bridge and Um Fruth Rock Bridge are low enough to climb, and Burdah Rock Bridge stands about 80 m (260 ft) high, usually admired from a viewpoint rather than climbed. Most jeep itineraries include at least two of the three.

Lawrence's House and Mushroom Rock

Lawrence's House is a raised site with the remains of hand-cut stone walls, linked by the listings to Lawrence and his companions. Nearby, Mushroom Rock is a boulder shaped exactly as the name suggests. Both appear on the full-day and camp-stay circuits.

Abu Khashaba Canyon

A canyon you walk through on your own while the jeep drives round to meet you, 20 to 30 minutes in the listings that include it. The camp stay listing budgets a 25-minute walk here after lunch.

Not every stop appears on every tour, and the shorter trips necessarily skip some. The table below shows which of the main stops each listing reaches.

Wadi Rum sits about 60 km (37 mi) east of Aqaba in southern Jordan. Most travellers arrive from Aqaba, Petra or Amman, and the practical options differ a lot by direction. Here are the routes and rough costs as published in reference guides.

Driving to the Visitor Centre and Rum Village

By car you drive to the Wadi Rum Visitor Centre, 21 km from the Desert Highway turnoff, pay the entrance fee there, then continue 7 km to Rum Village. Most overnight tours meet at the Rest House in the village, which has a large car park. One listing charges 5 JOD for parking in cash, another describes parking next to the Rest House as easy and free, so carry a small note either way.

The Disi camps warning

Disi, also written Disah, is a cluster of camps outside the protected area, and they give a different experience from camps inside the reserve. One listing warns that touts offering free entry are often from Disah and take visitors into the other desert, not the UNESCO area. If sleeping inside the protected valley matters to you, confirm the camp location when booking and be polite but firm with anyone offering deals at the Visitor Centre.

The protected-area entrance fee is 5 JD ($7.05) per person for foreign visitors, paid at the Visitor Centre, and children under 12 enter free. No tour in this catalog includes the fee in its price. Two listings quote it as 7 JD and one as $10, while the camel ride listing and reference guides give 5 JD, so the sensible move is to carry enough cash for the higher figure.

The fee is covered by the Jordan Pass if you have one, just show your passport and pass at the window.

The Jordan Pass and Petra prices

The Jordan Pass comes in three tiers. Jordan Wanderer costs 70 JD ($98.70) with 1 day at Petra, Jordan Explorer is 75 JD ($105.75) with 2 consecutive days, and Jordan Expert is 80 JD ($112.80) with 3. Each pass covers entry to more than 40 attractions, Wadi Rum among them, and it waives the tourist visa fee when bought before arrival with a minimum 2-night stay.

Petra on its own costs 50 JD ($70.50) for one day for visitors staying overnight in Jordan, 55 JD for two days and 60 JD for three, while day visitors who do not stay a night pay 90 JD ($126.90). On entry fees alone, one day at Petra plus Wadi Rum costs 55 JD ($77.55), less than the cheapest pass. The pass wins when you add the visa fee it waives and the other sites it covers, such as Jerash and the Amman Citadel.

A private Bedouin tent with shared facilities

The full-day jeep tour with a camp night ends in a private Bedouin tent at a camp with modern toilets and showers and a charging station. The jeep tour runs 10:00 to sunset, transfer between Wadi Rum Village and the camp is included, and dinner plus breakfast are part of the price. It is the most reviewed overnight listing in the catalog at 4.9 from 383 reviews.

A private tent with its own bathroom

The camp stay with a full-day tour and 3 meals is the step up in comfort per dollar. Your private tent for 1 to 3 guests comes with its own bathroom and shower and towels, in a camp that sleeps 30 to 35 people. Children under 11 stay free, which makes it the natural family pick.

There is no air conditioning and no internet, and dinner is a shared zarb.

Semi-wild camping at a cave

The cave camping trip with a half-day jeep tour is the wild card. After a 4 to 5 hour jeep tour of 32.3 km you sleep at a cave with camping equipment provided and dinner cooked by your guide, rated a perfect 5.0 from 227 reviews. It is outdoors in a real sense, with no bathroom mentioned in the listing and a stricter 3-day cancellation window, and children must be 6 or over.

What desert camps have, and what they lack

Set expectations before you book. The camps in this catalog offer private tents, proper dinners, tea and in one case a bathroom in the tent. The camp-stay listing states plainly that there is no air conditioning and no internet, and the others do not mention either.

Winter nights average about 3°C (38°F), so the listings advise warm clothes. Choose on three things: en-suite bathroom or shared, camp size if you want quiet, and whether you want walls at all, which is where cave camping wins.

Spring and autumn

March to May and October to November are the comfortable months, with afternoon highs from about 21°C (70°F) in March and November to 30°C (86°F) in May. September is still hot at about 32°C (90°F). Rain is rare all year, under 8 mm even in the wettest month.

Nights in these months are cool rather than cold, which matters when you have paid for a night in camp.

Summer heat

July and August average about 34°C (94°F) by day, and June and September sit close behind at 33°C (91°F) and 32°C (90°F). Jeep tours manage it with shade, long lunch stops and water, and the balloon flight runs at sunrise for a reason. If summer is your only window, book the 9-hour jeep tour with its 80-minute lunch break and unlimited water, or start early and finish by mid-afternoon.

Winter days and cold nights

January averages 14.4°C (58°F) by day but only 3.2°C (38°F) at night, and December is not much warmer at 16.1°C (61°F) with 4.7°C (40°F) after dark. Daylight runs about 10.5 hours in January, so the 10:00 start of the full-day tour still fits a full circuit. The camp listings say the same thing: bring warm clothes for the night.

Climate figures come from the Open-Meteo ERA5 reanalysis of daily data for Wadi Rum.

Wadi Rum's film story starts with T. E. Lawrence, who passed through several times during the Arab Revolt of 1917-18. In the 1980s the rock formation once called Jabal al-Mazmar was renamed the Seven Pillars of Wisdom after his book, although the pillars in the book itself have no connection with Rum. David Lean shot much of Lawrence of Arabia (1962) here, alongside locations in Morocco and Spain, and its desert scenes are credited with kick-starting tourism in Jordan.

Several standard tour stops, including Lawrence Spring and Lawrence's House, carry his name to this day.

The valley keeps getting cast as other planets. The list of productions filmed in Wadi Rum is long and grows regularly.

• Lawrence of Arabia (1962), most of the film shot on location
• The Martian, Ridley Scott, standing in for Mars
• Prometheus
• The Last Days on Mars (2013)
• Theeb
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, as the planet Jedha
• Aladdin (2019)
• Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, as the planet Pasaana
• Dune (2021), as the planet Arrakis, and Dune: Part Two
• Moon Knight (2022)
• John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)

Most Wadi Rum desert tours are easy physically, since the jeep does the distances and you walk at the stops. The exceptions are worth knowing before you book, along with the age rules, the accessibility picture and the cancellation terms that differ between listings. The points below come straight from the listings compared on this page.

• Children under 12 enter the protected area free.
• On the camp stay with a full-day tour, children under 11 stay free.
• The cave camping trip has a minimum age of 6.
• The balloon flight takes ages 5 and over.
• The stargazing session is the only tour here marked wheelchair accessible, including its transport.
• The 9-hour jeep tour involves a lot of walking and scrambling at the stops.
• Camel rides are not advised for travellers with back problems or anyone over 80.
• Moderate fitness is enough to climb in and out of a 4x4 on most tours.
• The cave camping trip only refunds if cancelled at least 3 days ahead, unlike the 24-hour window on most listings.
• Parts of the desert have no phone signal, so download offline maps before you enter.

Pack for the temperature swing rather than the afternoon. Warm clothes are essential for winter camp nights, when the average low sits near 3°C (38°F), while summer calls for sun protection and far more water than you think you need. Comfortable closed shoes serve you better than sandals at the dune and the canyons.