Jordan - Aqaba, Wadi Rum &the Desert Highway (Chapter)

This is the Aqaba, Wadi Rum & the Desert Highway chapter from Lonely Planet’s Jordan guidebook.

Southern Jordan is the home to the unforgiving Southern Desert, a quintessential landscape of sand dunes, oases and weathered escarpments, beautiful at sunset and awe-inspiringly extreme in midsummer. A trip to Wadi Rum makes all but the most unromantic at heart long to leave the modern world behind and attempt the life of a nomad. And that’s possible – at least for a day or two amid the camps of Rum and Diseh, on camel back, by 4WD or floating above in a hot-air balloon. Nearby Aqaba, together with neighbouring diving centres, give access to another of Jordan’s natural splendours: the coral gardens of the Red Sea.

• don mask and flippers and hover with the pipe fish over spectacular coral gardens in the Red Sea
• maps
• taste fresh tuna steaks in one of the excellent fish restaurants of Aqaba
• transport
• relax at one of Jordan’s southerly coastal resorts and enjoy the three ‘S’s (sun, sea and sand)
• restaurants & accommodation

Coverage includes: Aqaba, South Coast, Wadi Rum, Diseh, The Desert Highway, Ma’An, Qatrana and Qatrana.