In late October to early December 2024 I hiked sections of the Jordan Trail. This trail runs almost the entire length of the country of Jordan from near the Syrian border in the North to Aqaba on the Red Sea. Information on this trail is published by the Jordan Trail Organization (https://jordantrail.org). This information includes a GPS track for each of the sections that the trail is divided into, as well as a brief description of each section with very basic information on resupply and water sources. At the end of this trip report I will write a "If you go" section with information I wish I had had before I started hiking.
After studying the GPS map I decided to start my hike at the town of Madaba, Southeast of Amman. South of there there appeared to be less road walking and fewer settlements. If time were to remain after reaching Aqaba, I would then be going up North and hike the Northern third of the trail. In the end this did not come to pass, but I think I made a decision that was good for me and my style and preferences for a hike.
Madaba to Al Karak
One can reach Madaba easily by public bus from Amman. I prefer to take the public bus to see how the locals travel and get an impression of life in a country. Alternatively one can take a taxi, a limousine-type taxi or the comfortable JETT buses that most tourists use.
In Madaba I briefly visited the worthwhile ruins of a Greek-Orthodox church which features the first map of the Holy Land in the form of a floor mosaic.
From Madaba I then walked the road to Mt. Nebo where Moses supposedly saw the Holy Land and where he is supposedly buried. There is another ruin of an old church with some floor mosaics that are worth a brief visit.
A detail from the bottom right corner of the upper image
A non-representational mosaic
I was not so lucky to see the Holy Land from Mt. Nebo since there had been strong Easterly winds for a couple of days (and they would continue) that had introduced of a lot of dust into the air which led to rather hazy conditions.
From the site I descended into the drainage below past an (abandoned?) unfinished construction of a multi-story building then passing by a group of Bedouin shepherds who proceeded to "interrogate" me by way of Google Translate on what I was doing, where I was from, whether I was Jewish or Christian, how old I was, and how many kids I had. This would play out many times over the course of the hike and is apparently the local custom. You establish basic information on the person you are talking to and then move on. For them it's not being nosy. I was invited for dinner which probably would have cost one of their goats its life, but I really wanted to get on and they accepted this choice without issue.
The "trail" meanders through the drainage and eventually you climb out to your left (looking downcanyon (LDC)) where I conveniently found an abandoned concrete shack with a porch that afforded some shelter from the blustery wind. Next morning I descended a long ridge along a donkey/sheep/goat path to reach the Knaiseh spring where I filled up my bottles with good water.
Here I first saw what would be playing out many times along my route: there was water and there was a settlement with orchards of mostly olive trees. Life is abundant as far as the hose will reach plus ~15 ft, beyond that it's bare dirt.
I then climbed a road zig-zagging up the hillside, fighting the wind every step of the way. It was kind of exhausting. At the top I contoured along a ridge and was again invited for chai, the incredibly sweet tea that is dispensed from an aluminum tea pot sitting on the embers of a fire all day long (or so it appears to me ). These guys had about ten dogs of all ages all chained to a rock and a herd of about fifty goats and sheep that tried to find something to eat. The lambs and kids were chasing each other around the compound, which was fun to watch for a while. Eventually I took leave and continued along a road which soon enough turned into four-wheel road that had not seen a vehicle in a long time, just judging by the roughness of it. This "road" descended another ridge into a drainage. Oddly the slopes to either side of the path appeared to have been bulldozed and roughly plowed. I could not figure out what the purpose of this exercise would be, but later learned that this is done in expectation of the January rains. I was told that the countryside would be green then and would provide forage for the animals. The plowing helps retain the precious water by preventing surface runoff.
Clearly, at the time of my hike the animals were barely getting by as there was little greenery and what there was only survived this grazing pressure because the plants were toxic or had either thorns or spikes to deter foraging.
Late October is the time of olive harvest which is accomplished by placing a large tarp under a tree and then shaking the branches of the tree either by hand or by means of motorized/electric tools. At an orchard just being worked on in this way I was invited to lunch by a grandpa who directed his grandsons to provide me with potable water and some bread, tomatoes and sardines. The grandsons were most interested on my take of the "October 7th problem", the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the resulting conflict, another topic that would come up repeatedly.
The Jordan Trail Association has been blazing the trail with red/white markers in the French style painted on rocks, lamp posts etc. These markings are often idiosyncratic and sometimes another, shorter word starting with idio comes to mind. I am not sure that this person knows what a professionally done marking looks like or whether the message did not take. In any case, there are markings painted on the ground on slickrock, markings painted parallel to the direction of travel that you only happen to see when you walk past but certainly not from a distance.
One of these instances where the marking was useless was after crossing Wadi Uyun al Dhib. You follow a road for a short distance and then there are two markers guiding you off the road to the left. After crossing a ditch the markings stop. So be prepared to walk by compass bearing (see more on that in the “If you go” section), something I know now, but I was stumped. Eventually I found my way to the hairpin curve in the road at where the trail leaves the road and continues cross country. There were markings for another kilometer, maybe, and then you reached a deep steep-walled wadi (near Tall Abd al Khaliq) and I at least could not find any more markings.
I eventually just gave up, made my way to a road which connects to the highway near a viewpoint shown on the map and walked along it. The highway crosses a wadi and later another one via a bridge. There is a small creek down below the bridge with good water, getting down to the water is a bit involved, but it is worth it, There won’t be any water until you are down at creek-level in Wadi Ma’in.
Seeing where I ended up, with hindsight I can now recommend the following: when the markings run out you see in the distance a 2-story cube shape building. This building is at the right end of the property (walking North to South), further to the left is a Bedouin settlement. You can use the building as a way marker, aiming just to the left of it, and you will walk through the gap between the property and the settlement. There is a donkey trail from the settlement to the road that goes up to the ridge to your left. It’s probably the old highway, now in some disrepair but easy for foot travel.
Eventually I made my way down into the first of the "Three Wadis". It was a steep descent over rough limestone and at one point, as I was just minding where my feet were stepping I lost the route and ended up atop a massive dryfall.
With a less heavy backpack I might have tried to climb through it, but common sense prevailed and the climb-around was pretty obvious. Eventually I ended up about 75 ft above the bottom of Wadi Ma'in, just a steep basaltic cliff remained to be overcome. I saw some goat tracks and proceeded to climb into this cliff made up of black rock. Bad Move! There must be an easier way above the cliff than the route I chose in the cliff. This became a truly alpinistic exercise and and at one point I nearly fell down some 30 + ft when a foot “hold" did not hold when I put full weight on it. I was suspended by my two arms above the void while fishing for another foot hold with my feet which, luckily, I found. These 600 yds took me well over an hour to traverse. Later, from higher up on the other side, I saw what I alluded to above, a path above the cliff that would eventually lead to a weakness in the cliff band that allows you to get down to water level without any difficulty that I could see.
Above Wadi Ma'in on the North side
Above Wadi Ma'in on the South bank. The black wall is what I climbed through. Positively not recommended!
From higher up on the South Bank. Upstream there were orchards and a large solar panel array that likely drives the pumps that bring up the water for the irrigation of the orchards
I was glad to reach the stream which was running clean and provided good-tasting cold water after filtration. The climb up the other side followed an old donkey trail, not always super obvious among the goat trails that contour along the hillside but if you ask yourself “where would I go now?" more often than not you'd be ok.
Eventually you reach a road and follow that South past a gas station to a fork in the road. There's a small supermarket near the fork on the road that you have to take to the left. There’s not much there, but he has bottled water and some (very) basics. You follow this road for a while longer than the GPS track I had downloaded in June '24 would suggest, but eventually there's a road going off to the right that does not impinge on private property. Following that allows you to get down into a drainage past a shepherd's shack where I was invited to chai by a Bedouin who was tending to his twenty or so sheep. I don't understand the economics of this, I must confess. Unless the herding of such a small herd is a lifestyle choice with a trade-off that makes it worthwhile for the individual, I can't see how this small herd pays for the cigarettes and the bottled water and the Toyota pickup they all drive. I did not make much progress in gaining an understanding how this all works (for some definition of “working").
The map shows a water site shortly before you reach the bottom of Wadi Hidani. There are two concrete tanks on the right side of the road and nearby is a shade tree making for a convenient rest stop. As I was filling my bottles a young bedouin rode by on his donkey. He slid of his donkey, grabbed my bottles and poured them out indicating via sign language that this water was not potable. He beckoned me to follow him some 25 meters past the shade tree to a much smaller concrete basin where he proceeded to fill my bottles indicating that this was the good water. I do not know what the issue is with the water pouring into the more obvious throughs, chemical contamination or microbiological. My Arabic is not sufficient to ask the question and I doubt that the young man’s education was sufficient to understand “chemical or microbiological contamination”.
The two tanks you see right by the road with water not recommended for human consumption by the locals
The much smaller basin with potable water some 25 m from the two tanks in the upper image.
Wadi Hidan has a lot of agricultural activity on either bank and a significant human and animal population. I would not want to drink the water from that creek, even after filtration. I crossed the creek and found my way to a road on the South bank and from there to a dirt road past tomato fields to a sheep operation. There are about 20 dogs barking their heads off, the noise level of a jet engine. But whenever you bend over pretending to pick up some rocks, the dogs back off. They must have been at the receiving end of some artillery. Past the shepherd's operation I crossed a drainage and after some contouring found a flat area inviting me to camp. I did not think that I would make it far enough to find flat ground higher up suitable for a camp.
A view of Wadi Hidan from high up on the South bank
A look back at wadi Hidan from the North bank. Notice the tanks (oval shapes) in the center of the image. Tanks like that may be filled by collection of surface water runoff during the rainy season, some are filled by pumping ground water. Also notive the red/white blaze in the right quarter at the very bottom of the image
Wadi Hidan snakes its way to the Dead Sea. You can see Israel on the other side of the Dead Sea.
Next morning I climbed the ridge to reach the top of the mesa and then just found my way along the rim with the abyss to my right. About half way to the Jordanian Army outpost some fancy estates are being built, but at least for now one can find one's way through the construction. A fox was crossing my path way ahead, the silver tip of its tail glowing in the early morning light. The biggest wild animal I had seen so far. From the army outpost I continued along the edge of the mesa, now in an ESE direction. I couldn’t even find the first cistern (#31) and the second one was dry. There was a water trailer parked near cistern #32, but I couldn't get any water out. I left my pack and continued to the small town on the horizon where a rancher supplied me with potable water.
The descent to Wadi Mujib is kind of rough, through steep limestone with lots of scree covering the ground. At the bottom one finds a sizable creek with good flow and good-tasting water. I camped before the crossing and continued next morning through an interesting set of cliffs to a ridge that I climbed to the top of a mesa.
As I was trying to decide where to enter the village of Faqo'e I was invited into a private residence by a retired Jordanian ex-military guy who had been in the US for training and spoke English quite well. Chai was served with an option of not having sugar in it! He had four kids, the oldest was a girl who tried to speak English to me, but could not overcome her shyness. The third was another girl who had so many questions with her father acting as the interpreter. Very cute! I was invited to stay the night, but I was hesitant to accept as the wife was going to get stuck with all the work resulting from the guy's invitation and she was already dealing with four kids. So I decided to move on. I got in only 90 min more of hiking time and then made camp by the side of the road, somewhat hidden behind a pile of rocks. It was a windy and rather dusty night and I was glad to move on in the wee hours of the morning. Soon I joined a major road near Khirpat Majdalayn and right there was a quarry or sand pit which would have provided a more sheltered campsite than the spot I had chosen as night fell. This is the last possible campsite on top of the mesa. Further on you are walking past private property lining the road on either side.
In Rabba I found two bakeries, one on the main drag off route, and one on route next to a fruit/vegetable stand with just the most divine oranges fresh off the tree and excellent cucumbers and tomatoes for a simple salad. I needed that! After some more road walking (there was a lot of that on that day) I descended into Wadi Zaytunah. Another day of finding ones way through complex terrain in the form of steep cliffs with short sightlines. Lots of orchards and private roads one had to find ones way around. The final insult was a steep dirt road one had to climb, luckily it was not quite as bad as it had looked from the other side of the drainage.
Al Karak has an old town where the castle is located and a new town that I did not visit, where most of the current population lives. In the old town there are markets and fruit stands for a minimal resupply.
After my experience with the local supermarkets along the way I decided to return to Amman and to pre-deploy some food further down the route as the population density was going to go down as I was heading further South and as a result the resupply options were likely going to be worse and even farther apart. I am glad that I made that decision! Even with this arrangement it was rough, I am not sure whether I would have made it without the stashes.
Al Karak to Dana
I returned to Al Karak and briefly visited the castle that was built by the crusaders in order to control traffic from and to Jerusalem. The castle is built on a promontory with steep flanks on three sides and relatively easy access from one side only, the side facing present-day old Al Karak. After only 50 years they were driven off after a siege by a Muslim king, smart enough not to try to storm the castle. After that Al Karak was mostly an administrative site well into the era of the Ottoman Empire.
A view from the castle towards Palestine As I continued on I passed by the ruins of an early Christian settlement on a steep ridge, Khirbet Ainun. This was a much smaller settlement than Al Karak, maybe 20 - 25 houses. Just as the builders of the castle in Karak, these settlers needed to deal with the problem of how to supply themselves with water, the town being situated atop a ridge. There are impressive remnants of cisterns, which is part of the answer.
Remnants of the chapel at Khirbet Ainun
Cistern at Khirbet Ainun
Past Khirbet Ainun you step onto an ondulating plain with lots of agricultural activity, both in the form of orchards as well as substantial herds of goats and sheep. Eventually you reach the very rim of the Mesa you are on and walk right next to the abyss to your right across plowed fields. You descend into a wadi and climb out the other side to another mesa, which you cross to the village of Mujeida. This has a market and I tanked up on water, chatted a bit with the bored youth who minded the store and then moved on.
Next came the only unpleasant interaction on the entire trip in the form of an early teenager who demanded money, and I mean “demanded”. One of the things I am good at is ignoring unreasonable demands and I just moved on. But the little punk threw rocks at me, and we are talking fist-size here. So if he had hit me, that would have done some damage. I introduced him to the concept of shrapnel, which has the advantage that you do not have to score a hit with one bullet. Instead you send a dozen smaller fragments over an area which increases the probability that one will hit the target. Either this kid learned his lesson and will not mess with hikers again, or he will be using shrapnel himself. In which case: sorry about that!
You turn off the main drag shortly, walk through a residential neighborhood and then you start your descent into Wadi al hasa. I camped fairly high up, out of sight of the houses, but the relentless wind forced me to relocate after darkness fell to a more sheltered location. Next morning I continued my descent, in part off trail across steep and often loose sandstone. In the middle of some orchards part way down I latched on to dirt roads that got me down to the bottom. The terrain is complex and there are many dirt roads, so you have to make the right decisions on which one to follow and you may have to go x-country to connect roadways.
Up the other side is mostly off trail but straightforward if you just choose to follow the top of the ridges. Soon enough you hit roads on top and an asphalted road eventually. A local picked me up and it turned out that he thought he had a fare to Dana. My insistence that I wanted to walk because that’s what I was there forever met with utter incomprehension. I managed to escape his clutches in Khirbet Al Is where I did some marginal resupply in one of the markets and at a bakery near the central plaza.
I moved on and the next stretch turned out to be a road walk along a busy multi-lane highway that winds to and fro. At the beginning of a wide hairpin loop above At Tafila I had lunch at a not particular pleasant place, but it was at least 50 ft from the road and thus the best I could find. As I was packing up to leave a young guy stopped in his car who turned out to be an English and French teacher who was delighted to practice his English on me. Being a government worker he can’t live off his salary, so he has a nightclub and a second-hand store to supplement his income. He insisted on taking me to Dana Village. It was a pleasant two hours chatting with this guy, but I did not get to hike the off- road stretch to Dana.
It was good that I had been able to purchase some supplies in Khirbet as the store in Dana village is very marginal and astronomically expensive to boot. Make sure you have what you need for the long stretch to Petra before you reach Dana village. I stayed at the Dana Tower hotel, a funky place of the kind I like. The rooms were simple but comfortable and the food was just awesome. There were a few intrepid individual tourists there, who did the Jordan in seven days kind of deal.
Dana to Petra
The descent from Dana Village to the bottom is a knee-busting affair. It is an old road, but very, very steep. This road then continues to contour on the left side of the valley above the drainage to its right. After a couple of miles there is vegetation that suggests that in wetter times there may be water flowing in the drainage, but certainly not right before.
View into Dana valley from near Dana village
At the bottom is the Feynan valley and the Feynan Eco Lodge, a very hoity-toity place for the well-heeled (~$250/night). The attitude is one that their shit does not stink. No that’s not right, they would be offended if one thought that they shit. Their take would be that their excrement is non-odiferous. That’s how hoity-toity they are. Don’t think that you can get water there as an ordinary shitter. I moved on to the entrance of Wadi Ghwayr which I had planned to hike into the next day. Apparently much of the water coming out of Wadi Ghwayr is captured for irrigation and distributed, just as everywhere else, by means of black PVC pipes. And just as everywhere else these pipes spring leaks and it it very easy to collect water at any one of those. After filtration the water was good-tasting and cold.
There was a nasty wind coming down the wadi, so I took my groundsheet, mattress and sleeping bag and found myself a nook in the oleander bushes lining the drainage. At 5 AM in the morning all of a sudden water came spraying out of one of the hoses. I don't know whether it was a timed irrigation or whether the sprang a leak, it was a rude awakening in either case.
Next morning I made my way up Wadi Ghwayr. The first hour or two you walk a stream bed filled with sand, gravel, pebbles and rocks. You pass the spot where the water coming out of the water is dammed up and directed into the pipes you had walked along earlier. Shortly thereafter you come to the first obstacle that you need to climb. There is a piped spring immediately before that spot on the left-hand side of the wadi (looking up-canyon(LUC)). The most obvious way to climb is on the right hand side (LUC): a couple of PVC pipes dangling down a steep wall with some steel U-clamps high up that would allow you to get off the wall. This to me did not look at all enticing since I was carrying a through-hiker’s pack and not a day pack. I preferred to climb through a crack on the left side of the waterfall (LUC). It was tight, but man-handling my pack ahead of me, I could make a go of it.
The next hurdle is another waterfall that one can overcome on the right (LUC). One can climb some driftwood and transfer over to a slickrock chute. At the top there is a narrow ledge one has to squeeze by, but there again are some steel U-clamps to provide a hand-hold.
The wadi turns into a slot canyon after about an hour’s worth of walking and I stopped once that section ended and the canyon widened again. Overall a very nice and very green canyon. There is one fly in the ointment, though: the amount of trash left behind by hikers is just absolutely hard to believe. And the graffiti. But in the Fall it is probably the greenest place you will be seeing along the Jordan Trail.
I hiked back out the way I came and headed for the Maqaba wild campsite shown on the map. I have no idea why this place would be identified. There is nothing there to make camping any easier/more pleasant than any spot earlier or later. It is flat, open to the elements, particularly the wind which mercifully was not a problem that night.
Next morning I continued hiking x-country across a wide, flat, gravelly area that had quite a few drainages run through it at right angle to my direction of travel. So down you go and climb up the other side.
Wadi Maqaba/Wadi Feynan (I do not know where exactly the border is)
After a couple of hours of that the first of many cairns appeared which
mark the old camel/trade route to Shobak. These cairns are about 5 ft
high and appear at distances of about 500 m to a 1 km of each other.
They guide you slowly but relentlessly higher on a scree slope and
closer to the mountains on your left.
When you reach the last one, the camel route soon after climbs a set of switchbacks that one can’t really see from the bottom.
The path is easy to follow over a pass and then the real climb starts up a slot canyon maybe 50 m wide at its widest and 15 m wide at its narrowest. It’s kind of rough, no longer suitable for camels, but donkey shit suggests that herders still use this. There are multiple false summits here, so monitor your altitude if you are not keen on getting your heart broken multiple times.
The first pass. The slot is located in the cleft in the shade.
Looking back through the slot to where I came from
Somewhere near the top
I stayed the night at the top since it appeared to me that the downclimb on the other side was going to be similarly rough (This turned out not to be the case next morning). Conveniently others had built a rock wall at the top of the pass that very nicely shielded me from the strong wind that came up through the slot. The evening light provided some nice views of Nabatean country ahead.
A look ahead from the pass. Somewhere ahead is Petra. To the left of the bush on the slope in the foreground is the wadi I would be walking next day. The mountain sloping up from left to right in the middle of the picture is where I am heading as an intermediate goal.
The descent next morning was pretty much effortless in the steep section, a testament to the workmanship of the builders of the camel trail. Further down it was rougher but well-cairned. Some spray-painted markers lead you to the spring in Wadi Fayd which flowed strongly and I left with six liters of good-tasting water.
You follow a canyon for a while and as it divides you then have to pay attention to turn right and not to follow the blue markings. On the right hand side (LUC) of the canyon to the right there are a few cairns and after that you climb a very rocky dirt slope towards a prominent ridge. Near the top you have to find your way through a stretch of giant boulders. You want to be on the steep right side of the ridge since there is a path there, past a cave, that gets you on top of the ridge. A real “aha!” moment. After that you just walk up a clearly visible trail on scree and dirt with the abyss to your right.
A view from near the top
of the sloping mountain towards the West where I had come from
At the top is a flat area that a road leads up to from the other side which you follow until a contour single-track trail opens up. Follow that for quite a while until you hit some ruins and an associated (dry) pond where somebody is collecting run-off. From there more contouring along an eventually narrow and rough trail across a steep flank of a mountain leads to another flat area made up of blindingly white limestone and sandstone.
The white sandstone, close up oner sees the layering of coarser sand and sandstone
At the very top there is a karst zone of eroded limestone, where the lines of sight are short and one never knows whether the path one has chosen will actually go through.
The trail loses itself here, but if you just head left in the bottom of the very wide and shallow gully, eventually the trail reappears. You make your way to a ledge hugging the mountain on your left and in a convoluted way get up on top of that. At that point you are golden. Just like that it leads you to a Bedouin settlement which is connected via dirt roads to Rock Camp, which is shown on the map. Rock Camp is a settlement of three or four families and located next to an asphalted road.
The territory around Rock Camp is kind of convoluted and I did not find the trail shown on the map. I took the road and then latched on to the trail at the top of the hill. It is an area with intense agricultural use (hence the huge basins of water shown on the map) and I took some care not to step on private property. I reached Little Petra which is really just a bunch of containers with people trying to sell you jeep tours and guiding services as well as the ticket office where you can turn your Jordan Pass into a ticket for Petra.
From there I headed over to the Little Petra Bedouin Camp where I had deposited my food bag for the hike through Petra and down to Wadi Rum. I stayed there for two nights as I needed a rest day and some time to fix broken gear. It’s not exactly cheap, but the people and the food are just great.
Petra to Wadi Rum
Given my location at the Little Petra Bedouin camp I got my ticket at Little Petra and then entered the site from the backdoor.
Along the way from the Little Petra backdoor to the Monastery
After a hike of about two hours from Little Petra you reach the Monastery. This building is not really a monastery, but probably a church of some kind. When I was inside of it a guide demonstrated the acoustics to the group he was guiding. Quite impressive! This building is not built up from smaller stones or rocks. Instead it is carved directly into the sandstone, like most buildings in Petra.
I hung out a little bit but the regular tourists got on my nerves and I made my way to the head of the descent (some 900 steps) that would get me to the inner plain of Petra. First you have to run the gauntlet of the vendors who try to sell you trinkets. Alas, it’s all the same stuff and nothing particularly original. This year Fall 2024 they were desperate to make a sale as tourism, particularly package tourism, is down as a result of “October 7”, to use local parlance. Being a hiker I am even less interested in purchasing stuff that I would have to drag through the desert for another fortnight.
The locals were genuinely curious what I was up to and once I had established my bona fides as to where I came from and where I was going, where I camped, how I got water etc the attitude changed from amusement to respect and I received some valuable pointers for the stretch ahead.
The Temple in the central bowl of the site. This building was built up from stones and not cut into the rock
Ornamentation on what once was the head of a column
Kitty corner from the temple is a string of graves cut into the rock. The sandstone there is particularly colorful
I walked out the front entrance, made my way to the hostel I had booked and did some food shopping along the way. The shower hit the spot, as did the town food. Next day I reentered Petra and entered a slot canyon near the stores at the entrance to the Siq. It’s actually a nice slot canyon, about two body widths at its narrowest, that leads you to a wide valley with some more sights. When you come to the police checkpoint and toilet, you can climb up some 200+ steps followed by some x-country walking (cairned) to a point where you can look down on the Treasury. Considering that this was a time with low tourism numbers, the sights like the Treasury were still busy. I shudder to think what this place is like in a normal tourism season.
On the way out I chatted with the guys who want you to ride their horse out to the entrance. They recognized me from the day before and they too wanted to know what I was up to. In retrospect, I should have hiked up to the high place sacrifice on that day, but I had planned on combining this with my hike out of Petra to Wadi Sabra. It’s very much up hundreds of steps and down hundreds of steps in some narrow natural “staircases”, not the easiest with a through-hiker pack as I would find out.
After another night in town with town food I got up very early and entered Petra one more time, this time to head out via yet another backdoor, this one not near the Monastery, in direction of Wadi Sabra. There is a faint trail one can follow, but there are also other trails and making the right decision as to which one is “the one” is not straightforward. I ended up going up an incorrect wadi for about 30 min until I could no longer persuade myself that this could possibly be right. It’s the wadi fairly early on that goes off to the left past a steep-sided mountain on the left in a general NE direction. There is decent trail there, so it is easy to just follow that and end up in the wrong place. The correct wadi at that point is pretty wide, it only narrows about 1.5 km ahead, and points into a West/Southwest direction. I made it there and made my way along a goat/sheep trail well above the drainage. I hit the faint dirt road shown on the map. I probably followed it for too long and as a result I had some difficulty finding the entrance to Wadi Sabra. What one needs to know is that the old Roman road starts in the middle of the wide plain and not at its left margin where I tried first. This looked very much like no-go, but then I saw what turned out to be the Roman road and that leads you all the way down into Wadi Sabra. No need for any heroics.
The uppermost part of the road goes over slickrock and that's what you will first notice. Once you are on the slickrock the road is obvious, for some value of the term.
The old Roman road. Not bad for a 2000 year old piece of infrastructure. In the foreground you the rocks defining the left margin of the road and in the right half of the picture you can see how it contours the hillside. This was likely not a wagon road, but a road for troop movement on foot.
A look back from the bottom on the hillside with the Roman road. The road enters the wash at the lowest point on the horizon. Stealthy I would say
I met some young Bedouins herding goats and they strongly advised against drinking the water from the spring in Wadi sabra “Not healthy!”, whatever that means. In the event, the water downstream of the spring was pretty disgusting and I still had plenty. I did not make an attempt to locate the spring itself among the oleander bushes and just moved on. The map suggests that there is another outbreak of water farther down the wadi, but in November ’24 that location was dry.
The cairns indicating the beginning of the donkey trail that leads around the dryfall are very small and I of course missed them, so I got to see the dryfall which was impressive. Walking back up the valley for less than 10 min I saw them right away. The trail is rough but pretty well cairned. You climb up pretty high but the exposure is not too bad. I camped shortly after being back in the drainage, realizing that I would be climbing out of the wadi shortly and the wind would be more bothersome up on the plain. Next morning I made my way cross-country past some flood-damaged dirt roads past a Bedouin settlement to an asphalted road.
Bedouin settlement near the exit from Wadi Sabra about 1 km from the asphalted road
The map has you follow the asphalted road for a while, then you get off it and rejoin later. I just followed the road the entire way down past a hairpin curve. There was a Bedouin camp with some rather aggressive dogs at the bottom of the wadi, so I avoided walking through the camp and instead walked all the way down to the bridge before entering the drainage. Not good enough for the barkrats and they harassed me for the next 20 min. Luckily they understood the signal of me bending over as if I was grabbing stones which led them to back off temporarily, alas not for long. But that too passed and I got to enjoy walking a pretty canyon in peace and quiet.
Ein Al O’Rouq, a spring I really depended on, did not look too promising at first, lots of algal growth and murky, but farther down the drainage were a few pools not overgrown with algae and the water tasted good and was easily filtered. I loaded up with six liters not knowing what the water situation at Wadi Quseib was going to look like.
The cistern shown on the map downstream of the spring is just a big concrete box that is probably filled by runoff from a drainage above it. I did not investigate whether it had water and what its quality might be. The walk all the way to Wadi Quseib is straightforward, getting more straightforward as you progress as you are locked in by mountains on either side of the drainage. The campsite shown on the map is a rockwall/windbreak but has nothing else to recommend itself, at least in the Fall when there is no water flowing down below.
Reaching the water source in Wadi Quseib at first I only saw two puddles, each about 1.5 ft across, one filled with trash and quite turbid, the other clear with large pebbles at its bottom, which might do in a pinch. But first I walked down the wadi to see whether there was a Bedouin settlement between this water hole and the highway some 8 km away. No dice!
Next morning I walked back up the wadi up to a rock with an arrow spray-painted on it pointing upwards and to the right. This was the path up and out of this wadi. At the top it was a little bit confusing as to how to proceed, but I picked up the faint trail soon enough. It led past some colorful lime- and sandstone and then on to a drainage cut deep into the rock with a big dryfall at the end.
Above Wadi Quseib
You eventually reach a wide open plain littered with residuals of former settlements (aka trash). At the far side is a drainage and you have to find your way into it. I used a bearing, came to the rim above the drainage and was quite near a trail that led down into it. On the other side a road leaves the drainage and I used that to climb a dune and could see another dune not too far away. You climb that, very steeply at the end, and at the top you see the next wadi at the bottom, Wadi Rakiya. Take a right in that wadi and a little while later you leave it to the left for the entrance to Wadi Aheimar. I camped there nestled between some big rocks to be shielded from the wind and had a good night’s sleep.
At the top of the dune above Wadi Rakiya
Another dune, next to the one I had gone down, viewed from Wadi Rakiya
In Wadi Rakiya by the turn-off to Wadi Aheimar
Next morning I made it to the entrance of Wadi Aheimar and then spent the entire day hiking up it with just one longish lunch break by the spring shown on the map. Wadi Aheimar is kind of rough at the bottom and then you climb steadily all day. The water hole by the spring did not look great, but the water tasted good and filtered easily, the looks notwithstanding. I could not reach the spring itself as the water hole in front of it was rather dark and I could not estimate how deep it was going to be. Since the water in the hole was ok, I did not push it.
Near the exit there are some very nice slot-canyon sections, short but impressively deep. I elected to spend the night at the head of the wadi since I expected there to be little protection from the wind up top. This was born out the next day.
As I was trying to find the trail out of Wadi Aheimar I overshot at first, but when I turned around, the trail was pretty obvious. It’s a bit convoluted there, many big rocks in the drainage but getting out was not at all problematic.
In upper Wadi Aheimar
A pseudo-dead-end. It goes, but it does trick you for a second
At the top I walked the roads towards the Desert Highway at first but then noticed that trucks passing me on the roads were appearing way ahead after following a half-loop. So I left the road, walked cross country easily and met the road again saving myself a mile or two. Walking this now asphalted road it again became obvious that the road did not lead in a straightforward fashion to where I wanted to go. So I left the road and crossed the plain between the road and the Desert Highway on the basis of a compass bearing. I came out pretty darn close to the supermarket on the highway that is shown on Google maps. I had seen it when I drove to Rum Village to stash some food. A reddish-brown building, pretty sizeable, that looked promising from the outside(Desert Castle Bazar, Cafe and Supermarket (North of Al Humaymah)0. Alas, this was the total tourist trap, selling trinkets in most of the floor space with a small section on the side with snacks and drinks for tourists coming from Amman in the buses. Beyond water there was nothing of interest to a hiker in this place.
Jabel Kharaz in the foreground and Wadi Rum mountains in the far distance
I left, walked along the highway and in short order there were three supermarkets that had at least some stuff of interest to a hiker looking for food. I then crossed the highway and took aim for Jabel Kharaz. I walked across the plain through abandoned fields and then had to evade active fields where tomatoes were being harvested. Shortly thereafter I found a spot that would make a good camp as it was shielded from the wind. The days were starting to get noticeably short and darkness comes really fast.
Next day I walked up to the arch on Mount Khazan and then on to the Nabatean spring on the east side of the mountain range. It took me a while to find it, in part because I did not know what I was looking for. There is not much of the Nabatean construction left, but the basic principle of how this cistern works is still in evidence. The Bedouin have just improved on it.
Arch on Jabel Kharaz, a good waypoint if your GPS is not working
In essence, this cistern collects rain water that falls on the mountainside. This water is first collected in grooves cut into the rock and these groves direct the flow towards the cistern. There is a hole at ground level for the water to flow in and on top is an opening where you can retrieve water. When I was there the water surface was approximately 20 ft down, so you need a throw line and a weighed down vessel attached to that to get water.
The Nabatean well. Probably not much left from 2000+ years ago and more of a Bedouin well now. The basic principle is still visible, though.
I think that the groove cut into the the sandstone is original Nabatean construction. This groove collects the water running off the bulk rock of the mountain during rainfall. It has been bulked up by Bedouin by cementing rocks onto the berm of the groove.
From the well I continued on to Mushroom Rock where I camped for the night. Next day I made my way to Ash Shakiriyah, but did not find the store that the guide indicates to be there. From Ash Shakiriyah I walked parallel to the road to Rum Village, had lunch at the restaurant near the entrance to the village and then went to Star Camp where my food bag was located and stayed the night at the camp.
I talked to the owner of the camp about how to procure water while hiking through Wadi Rum and he advised to just go to one of the many Bedouin camps and ask for water if somebody was around and to just take some if nobody was there. Nobody would mind. This is what I did and I encountered no problem. All of the camps were empty and, if I could figure out the plumbing, I could get water in every case. That was much easier than what I had imagined, namely renting a truck with driver and caching water. Ahmed said that this would be way too expensive.
The highlight of the sites in Wadi Rum was the Siq Barrah, a slot canyon that I managed to ever so barely squeeze through with my largish pack. The Barrah canyon was kind of “meh”, but the dune at the top of it was memorable. I camped nearby close to the abandoned Sand Storm Bedouin Camp and the wind that night did not disappoint.
Siq Barrah slot canyon, quite a squeeze with a through-hiker pack
Wadi Rum to Aqaba
As I was hiking in the main wadi in Wadi Rum to reach the Southern border and take a right towards the village of Titin I was picked by jeep and got a ride to one of the camps at the very bottom of Wadi Rum. I decided to stay at the camp and have a real meal for a change. Later a young Dutchman and an Australian arrived and we had a pleasant evening around the fire with a Bedouin who could explain some of the aspects of Bedouin life that had puzzled me.
At the Southern end of Wadi Rum
Next morning I headed off towards Titin village. There was supposed to be a market there where I intended to get water since the path to the coast was too long to carry the necessary amount of water from Wadi Rum. The way from the Southern border of Wadi Rum at first is complex and you have to do it by bearing because you really do not know where the 4 x 4 roads down there are leading to. Not all of them are on the map either. Eventually you find yourself in a fairly narrow canyon filled with deep sand, then you have to find a sharp right turn which gets you to a wide canyon, which again you leave to your right to get to a rocky plain from which you depart by way of a gently upward sloping wide valley.
The navigational challenges are over for a while. At the top of the valley you pick up a road that leads you into a gully from which you can see the some houses outside of Titin. I camped halfway down this gully since I could not see how the camping was going to be down in the valley and the time in mid-afternoon did not bode well for the market being open. I built a rockwall to sleep behind out of the abundant rock since the wind was kind of fierce.
Next morning I reached the market just as it happened to be opened. It was the most pathetic little market you can imagine, but it had bottled water and that’s all I cared about. I followed the valley, crossed the cemented road and passed the dam with the giant reservoir. I climbed up on the lab and then made an orienteering error that was all too easy to make, so listen up: do not go up the drainage to your left that does not have a Bedouin settlement right at the bottom (going up this incorrect drainage requires a sharp left, the correct drainage comes after making a wide turn left). Just continue paralleling the road (at a considerable distance and above it, to be sure) until you see fencing for sheep pens and a Bedouin camp. Follow the drainage behind the Bedouin camp, follow it as it bends to the right and then climb out to the left. There are some faint cairns there but seeing them is hit or miss. You climb up to the second to last pass and will be seeing Wadi Libnan before you.
Across Wadi Libnan (going left to right) you see another drainage winding its way up to the next mountain range. This is where you are going. At the top this drainage curves to the left to the Final Camp, which was occupied by a Bedouin camp when I was there.
A look back from near the Final Camp across Wadi Libnan. The
second to last pass is in the front mountain range, a dip just to the
left of the bush in the foreground
From Final Camp I moved up some very steep 4 x 4 road, contoured around the very tops of the mud hills and then reached the fenced-off entry to the path that takes you down to the coastal mountains. The path leads you into a wide flood plain and you need to go down on that as far as you can. You can safely ignore all the roads to your left.
View from the last pass to the Gulf and the Sinai peninsula in the back across the water
The map indicates a 90 degree turn to the left. This leads you into a slot canyon and then onto a wide drainage that you follow for a while until you turn right into drainage that you climb to a cairn on a wide saddle.
Looking out to the Gulf the trail continues to your left crossing two drainages and leading you to a third which you descend. It is rough, but fun, including a climb-around of a dryfall, for good measure. At the bottom you come out near a fenced off building with solar panels on top. A little further on you see the customs station with hundreds of vehicles behind a massive fence.
The guide has you walk around this to the left and then head for the beach where you could find a taxi. In Fall ’24, with tourism significantly down, I did not expect to find a taxi at the beach and therefore turned right at the fence. DO NOT FOLLOW MY EXAMPLE! Whatever you do, do not do that. I saw in the distance to the right something that looks like a fire station (it is in fact a mountain rescue station), so I headed there. It turns out that is is located in a paramilitary security zone without there being a fence or signage indicating that fact. So I rambled right into this and found myself in a hornets nest of paramiltary with guns and helmets and sand bags, the whole nine yards. The minor kerfuffle turned into a medium kerfuffle as I speak no Arabic and they spoke no English. The temperature got lower when they raised an officer who spoke English and was convinced quickly that I was harmless and should be let go. As it turns out, the jail is right behind the fire station, hence the security zone.
At least I got a taxi in the parking lot in front of the jail and a ride to Aqaba. I was DONE!
If you go.......
ORIENTEERING
As I wrote in the post, during my hike the Israelis were jamming the GPS and often for many hours or days at a time. Given the location and the tensions in the region for the past 60 years+, it is unlikely that this was the last time this happened.
If you are going to hike the Southern part of the trail, say at a minimum South of Dana, you need to be proficient in dead-reckoning, hiking by compass bearing and similar skills. I recommend a couple of blog posts by Andrew Skurka where he shows you in detail how this works:
https://andrewskurka.com/tutorial-dead-reckoning-navigation-hiking/
https://andrewskurka.com/backpacking-navigation-toolkit-intro-maps-equipment-skills/
https://andrewskurka.com/backpacking-topographical-maps-types-sources-formats/
https://andrewskurka.com/navigation-system-equipment-watch-compass-altimeter-gps/; https://andrewskurka.com/navigators-mindset-attitude-story/
https://andrewskurka.com/backcountry-navigation-skills-knowledge-checklist/
I found the altimeter on my GPS watch to particularly helpful. The altimeter depends on you recalibrating it frequently. To me this is second nature, if it is not for you, get into a routine of doing so every second day at the latest.
It would be best to have an adjustable compass, but a non-adjustable one can work. The declination in Jordan is +5 degrees
The trail also has markings (red/white), but the person doing the marking does not know what they are doing. The markings are not reliable in a convoluted backcountry setting. There are markings on every second light pole, where none are needed, but the location of markings in the backcountry is spotty at best and idiosyncratic.
FUEL
If you cook meals, fuel needs thinking about. American-style screw cap propane/isobutane canisters are available, if at all, only in Amman and, maybe, Aqaba (I did not explore this question in Aqaba as this was the end of my trip). I tried the Decathlon store in Amman since they carry canisters in France. In Amman it’s just a fashion store, so no go. They were not just out, they don’t carry this item at all, ever.
A guide whom I met in Little Petra suggested that such cartridges are available in "good hardware stores". Ask your hotel staff to help you calling them (I assume your Arabic is as non-existent as mine).
Don't count on finding alcohol. Gasoline is ok if you have a multifuel stove. It is dispensed by attendants at the gas stations, so you do not have to worry about making a mess. The dispensing pistols fit into the neck of the MSR-style fuel bottles. The fuel bottles need to be half full to work with the stove, so you better have two. One as the reservoir and one to be attached to the stove that gets refilled from the reservoir as needed. I suggest that you carry the filled fuel bottles inside a Mylar bag as I had a persistent whiff of gasoline in my pack without there being an obvious leak.
RESUPPLY
I did not go to restaurants as I tried to move through towns quickly and efficiently to get back into the backcountry. I found it exceedingly difficult to reach my target caloric intake of 3k calories/day with what I could buy in the local “super"markets. There was nothing super about them. They all had Tahini (chickpea paste with sesame) in 125 g packs, tomato paste in 125 g packs, some had Egyptian "feta" (Panda brand) (fresh cow cheese in 125 g packs), sardines and tuna in cans, most often in a spicy sauce (Thai and Chinese products), rice and some type of pasta. Most stores have bottled water. There is rarely any fruit available, that gets sold in a different shop. Bread sometimes, but bakeries can be found in almost all smallish towns. They are not obvious, ask a local. You can also buy bread from Bedouin women, they are really keen on cash.
The Carrefour store in Amman is like a US supermarket. The one in City Mall had more Bob's Red Mill products on the shelf than I see in my local market where I live in the US.
If I were to do this hike again, I would bring food and pre-deploy along the route, using markets only for the above items.
SHELTER
I slept under the stars every night without putting up my tarp as it never rained once. I was advised that I was lucky that way. I suggest that you bring something to protect you from the wind as natural wind breaks are infrequent, particularly South of Dana. The wind in the Fall/early winter is not only cold, it also stirs up a lot of dust and you get rather dirty. A light bivvy bag would do the trick. Note that weight of tarp + bivvy bag ~ weight of lightweight tent, depending on what you have for a tent. Bring a ground sheet, there are lots of sharp rocks and plant debris with spikes or thorns.
WATER
Based on my experience in Fall ’24, you cannot count on all the water sources listed in the guide.They are far enough apart as it is and if they are dry, as some were, you may be in trouble. This is true particularly South of Dana. North of that there are Bedouin settlements where you can ask for water in a pinch or towns where you can buy bottled water.
The water level in some of the cisterns was rather low. You need a throw line and a container weighed down with a rock to collect water from the cisterns.
The Bedouin advise against drinking from the water holes in the South. I do not know the exact reason, whether it is chemical contamination/mineral content or whether the issue is microbiological. In the case of the former, it obviously makes a difference whether you will be drinking this water every day for your life or once while you are hiking through. I encountered no water that had a mineral taste and I have had water like that in Utah, so I know what that tastes like. That said, the minerals contaminating the water in Jordan may be different than the ones contaminating it in Utah.
I filtered all water through a Sawyer microfiber filter and I suffered no ill effects during the entire trip. A pre-filter is strongly advised to keep your water filter clean. I use a 10 micron sump pump sock from Amazon, but a bandana or similar would do.
NUISANCES
Aggressive dogs. Everywhere. They back off if you bend over to pick up a rock or pretend that you are picking up a rock.
Call to prayer from the nearest mosque at 5:30 in the morning.
SAFETY
I had only one instance of hostility, by a teenage kid who through rocks at me when I ignored his demands for money. He threw fist sized rocks at me as I walked away. I introduced him to the concept of shrapnel by throwing a handful of smaller rocks back at him. I don’t think he will do it again.
Otherwise “Welcome to Jordan!” and “Do you need help?” is all I heard.
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