Private Tour: Wadi Rum from Aqaba

Start your desert day trip with a pickup from your centrally located Aqaba hotel or Aqaba port. Settle into your air-conditioned private car and absorb the desert views as you head northward to Wadi Rum.

This immense desert wilderness of mountains, valleys, dunes and rock formations covers much of southern Jordan and is famed for its changing colors, Bedouin tribes and connections with T.E. Lawrence, also known as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, who called it ‘vast, echoing and godlike.’ The region is also a haven for wildlife and flora, and is home to mountain goats, hares, wildcats, vultures and eagles.

Arrive in the late morning and enjoy an included, 2-hour (approx.) 4x4 tour of the rugged canyons, towers and gulleys that rear up from the vast desert plains. With a friendly Bedouin driver-guide at the wheel, pass through steep gorges, trace arid riverbeds and stop for photos along the way at natural rock bridges, waterfalls and palm-fringed oases. See some of the haunting rock petroglyphs carved into the cliffs — some are believed to date back a staggering 12,000 years — and marvel at the ever-changing colors as the rocks turn from pink to red and then gold in the changing light. Listen out for the silence here, too: the quiet and stillness of the desert is almost deafening!

After your 4x4 tour, visit a Bedouin tent and sip refreshing mint tea. Alternatively, upgrade to enjoy a 30-minute camel ride to the tent. Feel like a real-life Bedouin as you clamber up onto your hump-backed herbivore and plod slowly over the rugged terrain.

When the time comes, bid farewell to the desert and return to Aqaba. Along the way, stop off for lunch at a local restaurant (own expense) before concluding your trip with a drop-off at your hotel or port in the late afternoon.