Wadi Rum, Jordan: Why This Otherworldly Desert Belongs on Your Bucket List

Most travellers dream of visiting Jordan for one iconic reason: Petra. And while Petra absolutely deserves its place as one of the world's greatest archaeological wonders, there was another place that completely surprised me... Wadi Rum.

Known as the Valley of the Moon, Wadi Rum feels like stepping onto another planet. Towering sandstone mountains, endless red dunes, ancient rock formations and vast open skies create a landscape so dramatic that it has been used as a filming location for Mars in movies like The Martian and Lawrence of Arabia.

But what made Wadi Rum unforgettable wasn't just the scenery. It was the feeling of being completely disconnected from the outside world... sharing tea with Bedouin hosts, watching the desert transform at sunset, and standing beneath a sky full of stars with nothing but silence around me.

In this episode of Tourist to Traveller, I’m sharing exactly what it’s like to experience Wadi Rum, why staying overnight is essential, and how to make the most of your visit to one of Jordan’s most incredible bucket list destinations.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode

• Why Wadi Rum is one of the most unique places to visit in Jordan
• What it’s really like to explore the desert on a Jeep safari
• Why staying overnight in a Bedouin camp is a must-do experience
• The best things to do in Wadi Rum, including sunrise, sunset and stargazing
• The best time of year to visit and what to pack
• Practical advice for planning your own desert adventure

Helpful Resources & Links

• My complete Wadi Rum Jordan Travel Guide - including where to stay, what to do, practical tips and everything you need to know before visiting. 

Connect & Explore

Find destination guides, travel planning resources and more at touristtotraveller.com, and follow along on Instagram @_touristtotraveller for behind-the-scenes planning and future travel inspiration. 

Transcript

Speaker 0:00

Welcome to the Tourist to Traveller Podcast, the show that helps you go beyond the guidebook and turn your bucket list dreams into real adventures. I'm Tahnee, a travel blogger, podcaster, and everyday explorer who's been ticking off epic destinations for over 20 years while balancing a 9 to 5. Each week I'll bring you inspiring stories, destination deep dives, and practical tips to help you plan smarter, travel deeper, and capture those unforgettable moments along the way. So, grab your passport, pack your curiosity, and let's get started. If you've ever looked at photos of Mars and wondered what would it be like to stand there, I think Wadi Rum is probably the closest you'll get without actually becoming an astronaut. Like a lot of travelers, I arrived in Jordan thinking Petra would be the highlight of my trip. And don't get me wrong, it absolutely deserves all the hype. But it was Wadi Rum that completely surprised me. It slowed me down, made me appreciate silence in a way I hadn't before, and gave me some of the most memorable moments of my travels. So today I'm taking you into Jordan's incredible Valley of the Moon to share exactly what it's like, why staying overnight is absolutely essential, and how you can experience this remarkable desert in a way that goes beyond simply ticking off another destination from your bucket list. In my opinion, no trip to Jordan is complete without visiting Wadi Rum. I know, I know. Everyone goes to see Petra. A lot of people are keen to see the Dead Sea, but for me, Wadi Rum was a real surprise. I absolutely had it on my bucket list, but what I saw there just blew me away. This landscape is so incredible and otherworldly. So much so that there are a lot of films that are shot there that are designed to be in outer space. For example, The Martian. Also, Lawrence Arabia was shot there. And once you see it for yourself, you really start to understand. You've got this red dirt, these towering dunes, these rock formations and mountains, you've got camels that are slowly moving through the sand. And amongst all of this, you've got the rich culture of the locals. Wadi Rum is also known as the Valley of the Moon, and it's located in the south of Jordan. So just to help you get your bearings, it's about two hours from Petra and about four hours from Amman. And while the landscape here is pretty rough and pretty unforgiving, it's actually been inhabited by locals for over 12,000 years, which is just incredible. The first thing to know when you're planning a trip to Wadi Rum is that you don't really experience its full magic unless you stay overnight. One night is incredible. If you have the time for two, even better. But you miss so much of what makes this place special if you're just ducking in and out for a quick trip. So book at least one night in this area. One of the most common are Bedouin camps. So these are, I guess you would call them somewhere between camping and glamping, where you've got permanent fixed tents that have a proper bed. Sometimes you might have heating or cooling, they've got electricity and they've got a private bathroom, which, in my experience, had freezing cold water only. And even though there are actually a lot of accommodation options because Wadi Rum is so massive, most of these accommodations you actually can't see anyone or anything around, which truly makes it special. In the Bedouin camps, they're a little bit more rustic, but also you get a lot of the local touches and local experiences by staying in this type of accommodation. And the other really popular form of accommodation here is bubble tents. These go from about mid-range all the way up to ultra luxurious. One of the great things about the bubble tents is because of their design, you've got just incredible views from almost every tent. So the price here for the bubble tents really does vary. So, how do you actually experience this beautiful landscape? One of the most common ways is via a Jeep safari. This is where you jump into the back of a Jeep or a Ute or a truck and drive through this incredible landscape. It's often very rough, very bumpy, very sandy, but that's all part of the fun. And this is exactly how I experienced Wadi Rum on day one. I traveled to Jordan as part of a group because I didn't feel confident or safe enough as a female to travel around Jordan on my own. Having been to Jordan, it actually surprised me and I felt way more safe and comfortable than I would have imagined. That being said, as a female traveler, there were offers given to the men in the group around me to purchase me in exchange for camels. And this happened with most of the females, especially the young females in our group. So even though it felt like a really safe country, that is still a practice that is happening in certain areas of Jordan. Now I traveled here with the group and we arrived probably around midday to Wadi Rum and we knew that we were going to be staying overnight. The first thing that we did was we headed out to a big tent where we were served mint tea with the locals. And this is our first opportunity to just really embrace the landscape because we were in the middle of Wadi Rum. Now, after our mint tea, we had the opportunity to scale up a massive sand dune and climb up towards these rock formations. And that was uh pretty grueling to say the least. It was quite a warm day, and scaling up that sand room, that sand dune, it kind of feels like one step forward, two steps back, because as you're climbing up, the sand is basically sliding out from underneath your feet. Anyways, we get to the top and we had quite a while there just to sit, to wander around and just take in the landscape. This is where you start to understand the pure scale of this region, and of course, it is a really great photo opportunity. After coming down, we ate our packed lunch, we jumped back into the back of our Ute and we continued. Uh, we went through sand dunes, we went through or we went past rock formations. We didn't really pass many other people other than locals and a lot of camels. We stopped at an area where we had the opportunity to wander through what I would probably call a canyon. It was quite narrow. There was a little bit of climbing over rocks, around rocks, but it was just helping us to understand the different aspects of this landscape. We kept driving and stopped by an area where there were a lot of camels, and you had the option to pay to ride camels through the landscape. Uh, I am very much against animal tourism. So, as beautiful as the camels are, and I want to show them love, and of course, I'll always be kind to the camels, and I might give them some pats. I was not going to be paying to ride the camels, and I was really happy that actually all of our group decided to watch the camels, appreciate the camels, but not to ride the camels. We then continued in our Ute and we pulled up at a spot just to watch the sunset. So, where we pulled up, it was in the sand, and the sunset in this region was stunning. Something that I found about wadi rum and was pretty common across Jordan in general is the landscape really changes colour, the sand, the rocks uh throughout the day with the different light, and waddy rum was no different. But sunset here was stunning. After this, we jump back in the Ute and we headed off to our desert camp. Now, of course, you can also experience this area via camel. Uh, you can do it via quad biking, you can do it, you can go sandboarding. There are a few different experiences here, but the Jeep safari, which is usually funnily enough, not a Jeep, uh, is the most common way. So, getting to our accommodation, we stayed in fairly rustic bedouin tents. We were lucky enough that our camp really felt like it was in the middle of nowhere, and we couldn't see any other accommodation near us. We had rock formations on one side, we had sand on the other side, and as you walked into our desert camp, it was lit up with lanterns. That just really set the tone for our stay here. After we checked in, we found our rooms, we then all headed to a communal area where we could just hang out and await dinner. Dinner here was a buffet that was full of traditional food. All I remember from the dinner is that it was delicious. They do eat a lot of meat here. I am not a meat eater, but don't worry, I ate just fine. There are a lot of areas within Jordan where alcohol is either not served or not common. And in a lot of the accommodation here, they will allow you to bring your own alcohol in, and we did that here. So we sat around, we had a couple of drinks, we ate dinner, and then we chilled out in a in a communal area because the workers there were going to put on a little bit of a performance for us. So as we shifted into the night, they started bringing out a couple of instruments and playing some local music and singing, and then eventually that singing turned into dancing. So we had an opportunity to check out what was the local style of dance, the traditional dance. It was a lot of fun, it was really entertaining, and then they started to invite us to join them to learn this dance as well. So we did. Uh now nothing slowed down, the music kept playing. They would just take it easy and show us the steps, and then everyone would really get into it, and we learned dance after dance, and we really did dance the night away. It was so much fun, and you could barely wipe the smile off everyone's faces. Now, while this was my experience, this is a very common experience with the accommodation in Wadi Rum because you were so far away from everything, you know, it you're not going to have things like TVs and Wi-Fi in all of your accommodation. So you find a lot more entertainment provided by the locals, and it really just adds to the experience that you have. After dinner, your night doesn't need to end there because in the desert with very little light pollution, it is a really great place to do some stargazing. Most of our group decided to head out into the dunes for a couple of hours throughout the night. They took their drinks with them and had a really great time. We, however, had a different plan. As much as I would have loved to have gone stargazing, my priority was getting up early in the morning before sunrise so that I could experience sunrise in Wadi Rum. Now, something that you should know about me is that I'm not one to miss out on an experience. And if I feel that it is absolutely vital, I will go without sleep, don't you worry. Um, whereas here, I grew up in Outback Queensland in a town where there is a Cosmos Center because the stargazing out there is so good and there is so little light pollution. So I was fortunate enough throughout childhood to always be able to look up and see the sky incredibly clear. I also get off grid a lot and I do tiny house days a lot. So I feel like I've kind of ticked the stargazing box there. So that made me feel a little bit better about prioritizing sunrise. I felt like, you know, I can stargaze anywhere in the world, but how often do you have the opportunity to experience sunrise in Wadi Rum? So we headed back to our room and got ready for bed. Now I mentioned cold showers before, right? Keep in mind it's very rustic, they have limited electricity, a lot of these camps don't have any Wi-Fi, and as a result, they also a lot, not all, don't have hot water. And this was the case for ours. So in the desert overnight, it can get really cold regardless of the time of year. Even in summer, the temperature diffs a lot overnight. It was freezing cold overnight when we stayed. Um, and that was from memory around late April that we were there. So already we're freezing cold, and the shower is freezing cold, but there was no way that I was not showering before getting into bed, especially after we'd been in the dunes covered in sand and dirt all day. I hate the cold, and the moment I got into that shower, I screamed so loudly that the whole rest of our group heard and all made a communal decision that they weren't showering. So, early the next morning, before sunrise, we get up, we get dressed, and we head out on an adventure. And funnily enough, we were the only people in our camp that were up. No one from our group, no one else staying here, and none of the staff were up and about. It was just us. It was dead silent and it was a little bit eerie, but we headed out into the dark desert. And we didn't actually get that far away from our accommodation when we realized that in the distance were some wild dogs. We could hear them before we could see them, and then they started to get closer and closer and closer to the point where we realized we are now being hunted by a pack of wild dogs. At this point, I still wasn't scared. I thought, you know, what are they gonna do? Uh we can scare them off. That will be really easy. And then we tried that. We tried to move faster, we tried to intimidate them, we tried to scare them off. Nothing worked. They kept getting closer, they were getting louder, they were getting more aggressive. Uh, and we're like, okay, we are genuinely in trouble here. Luckily enough, there was a local who was leading his uh oh god, what's it called? Like a caravan of camels. Just him and his camels, and the dogs seemed to be scared of the camels. So we were on one side, we wanted to get to the other. We stayed really close to the camels and jumped on the other side of them. So the camels were between us and the dogs. Uh, we eventually kind of made a run for it to a point where we knew that we were going to be safe, and the dogs had given up by this point. We were then in a beautiful spot to watch the sunrise. It was incredible. We had rocks behind us, we had dunes in front of us, we had we could see multiple camels in the distance. It was just beautiful. And it's funny that something that is absolutely locked in our minds now, locked in our memories, is that morning sunrise in Wadi Rum because we were hunted by a pack of wild dogs. Don't worry, the chances of this happening is so incredibly slim, and I've never heard of this happening to anyone before in Wadi Rum. So after sunrise, we headed back to camp. We got ready, had another really cold shower. Yes, I was not gonna miss my shower, even though it was very uncomfortable, and then headed off to breakfast where we told everyone about the beautiful morning that we'd had and the crazy experience that we had had. And they were telling us how crazy we were for showering. Not once, but twice in that water. We heard all about their night stargazing, and I would still pick our morning sunrise experience every time. So we only have one night in Wadi Rum. But if you have more time, you can go sandboarding or a lot of the more luxurious accommodations will set up beautiful dinner tables in gorgeous locations that are outside of their camp. They're usually candlelit with traditional food. So there are a lot of different experiences that you can have here. So if you're worried about getting bored, I highly doubt that that is going to happen. Now, one thing to note is just outside of Wadi Rum, as we were leaving, we stopped by this old train station. I honestly don't remember if it was still in operation or not, but um it certainly wasn't at the particular time that we were there. There was an old steam train there. Uh, the train station itself had had historic value. And it made for a really cool photography opportunity. We were wandering along the tracks as the the wind was blowing the sand up. You could see a mirage on the horizon. We were climbing on the train and got photos on the train. So if you're going past, if you're going that direction and you happen to pass by this historic train station, stop by because it was actually a pretty cool experience. So when is the best time to actually visit Wadi Rum? Keeping in mind this is a desert destination. In the summer, which is around June to August, it is very hot. Most people will not travel then. During winter, which is December to Feb, it is very cold, especially at night. It can be freezing cold. And the most common months to travel are spring and autumn. So spring is March to May, autumn is September to November. When it comes to packing for Wadi Ram, regardless of the time of year that you're going, you're gonna want to bring layers. Keeping in mind it might be hot during the day, it's probably going to be cold at night. I very much recommend a warm jacket or even thermals overnight if you're like me and prone to the cold. I always recommend bringing a scarf into desert locations because it adds extra warmth, it can protect you from the sun, but it can also protect you from the sand and the wind. Of course, you're gonna want comfortable walking shoes, but keep in mind they're gonna get sandy, as is everything else. Bring sun protection, hat, sunnies, sunscreen, etc. It's always worth packing some mosquito spray just in case. It's not an issue that we experience, but it's something that's very handy to have in these locations. Even though you're out in the desert, you will be surrounded by local workers and locals who will be driving you around. So it is important to dress modestly for your environment. And also, I highly recommend a power bank or two because electricity is limited. Even if you have power, it can go out constantly. Charging is often really slow, so having a power bank or two can definitely come in handy. What you're not going to need is anything fancy, fancy clothes, heels, or anything like that. None of that is going to be needed in Wadi Rum. Now, a couple of key tips that I have for visiting this area. I've already mentioned stay overnight. At least one, two if you can, but one night is perfect. With your accommodation, always book through a reputable company or a reputable bedroom camp because not all camps are created equally. If you're unsure, you can jump onto any of the booking platforms like Expedia or booking.com and just look at the reviews. First of all, you want to make sure that there are enough reviews to seem legitimate. Ideally, look for 20 or more reviews. Have a look at the overall star rating and then look at the dates of the reviews. Are they recent? What are they saying? And that will really tell you all that you need to know. Bring cash, especially for tips, small purchases. Avoid animal tourism, especially for anything that's going to be harmful for the animals. Be prepared for the extreme temperatures. And as always, be respectful to the locals and to the environment. So if you're heading to Jordan in the Middle East, Wadi Rum is definitely worth adding to your bucket list. I think Wadi Rum is one of those rare places that reminds you why you fell in love with travel in the first place. It isn't about ticking off attractions or rushing from one photo op to the next. It's about slowing down, embracing the silence, and letting a place leave its mark on you. If Jordan is on your bucket list and you'd like to dive deeper with more practical tips, accommodation recommendations, and even photos from my trip, I've written a full Wadi Rum travel guide on my blog. I'll link that in the show notes. Thank you for joining me on this adventure. I'll catch you next time. Thanks for tuning in to the Tourist to Traveller Podcast. I hope today's episode has inspired you to travel more authentically and plan your next adventure with confidence. Don't forget to head to touristtotraveller.com for today's show notes, resources, and free guides to help you plan like a pro. And if you love this episode, please hit subscribe and leave a review. It helps more travelers like you discover the show. Until our next adventure. Go beyond the tourist track and level up your travel experiences.