Wadi Rum Tips

Last November (2010) I went to Wadi Rum on a week's climbing trip and I figured my experiences might help others who are planning a trip there. Hope this info and tips are useful for you.

This is just what we experienced, don't blame me if things change!

We flew to Amman got a taxi to drop us at the 'bus station'. We found a coach going to Aqaba. Can't remember how much this cost I'm afraid, but it was probably only about £20 each.

The coach from Amman to Aqaba was about a 4 hour journey. I would factor in a day spent travelling from Amman to Wadi Rum.

The driver wouldn't drop us at 'Rum Junction', as described in Tony Howard's guidebook, so we had to go all the way to Aqaba. It was nightime by the time we got there. We found something to eat and found a taxi to take us to Rum Village. This wasn't hard - there's loads of taxi drivers and they were all competing for our business.

We crammed all 5 of us (plus big rucksacks) into the taxi and he took us all the way to Rum Village to the campsite. You can't miss the campsite as it's on the right as you hit the village and any taxi will naturally park there because pretty-much all tourists stay there.

There was some standard drama about the fare when we arrived. We'd agreed 15JD (£15) with a driver and he had passed us onto this guy, so he was saying he'd been told something different etc etc. He was trying to get 50JD off us. We offered 20JD as a compromise but in the end the driver went and found the tourist policeman who came and mediated. He decided to leave it up to us how much money to give him. The driver wanted 25. I think we gave him 20 or 25 in the end. Just make sure you double-agree the price when you're all in the car and have actually started to drive.

We since learned that the standard taxi fare Aqaba-Rum Village is 25JD (£25).

The price for the campsite was 2JD per person per night. There's drinking water and cold showers. If you want you can buy a good evening meal in the restaurant there for 8JD. During the day there are shops to buy provisions. You can buy noodles (like Supernoodles), which we found good for breakfast. There's bread and tins of tuna which we used for lunches. Cereal bars too. All at normal reasonable prices. We'd brought a load of rice and curry packs for our evening meals but you could easily rock up at wadi rum with no food and you'd be fine.

A good breakfast alternative is Ali's Place, which you can see from the campsite, it's really obvious. You can have a good breakfast here for £2.50. Standard breakfast there is a cheese omlette, houmous, bread and tea. It's a good feed. He usually opens almost straight after sunrise too, which is good, particularly if you're doing a big route (most of the routes are big), because you'll be wanting an early start for that.

Ali can also organise guides for you if you like. Ali guides too. Other ways to find guides or Bedouin Taxis are just to hang around the campsite in the evening. One or two Bedouin guys will have a hunt around for business for the next day and you can make all your arrangements there and then.

There are topos in Ali's Place, but it was basically a big pile of unsorted paperwork, so I didn't even try to sort through it! I'd recommend getting hold of a copy of the guidebook by Tony Howard. There were none on sale in Wadi Rum. There's a climbing shop there that is no longer open. We had one copy between us. Two climbing parties so one party used their mobile phone to take pictures of the relevant parts of the guidebook each day. You could do this off other people's guidebooks around the campsite. However, if you're staying there for more than a week then you're limited by battery! Hand-copying bits with pen and paper is a possible alternative.

You don't have to bring tents for the campsite, but there's a chance they might all be full. There's about a dozen in-situ tents which sleep two or three. They have foam mattresses in. However, I went to sleep in one for one night and found the air a bit dusty for my liking so I slept outside again for the fresh air. In fact, I personally slept outside every night on a tarp in my 3-season down bag. I got bitten a little bit, but only a couple a night I reckon! I had a silk liner which meant I could be totally cocooned away from any insects. There's a few mossies kicking around, but not many at all. My friends slept in our own tents. They had thin sleeping bags and got cold sometimes. Other nights however, they were too warm! The temperatures at night fluctuate a fair bit!

There's also a shelter with a concrete floor you can base yourself in too. There's foam mattresses you can use to sleep on again. However, I wouldn't turn up counting on there being enough available.

A good way to start with the climbing there is to base yourself in the campsite and do some climbing on the nearby crags. They're big! If you're planning on doing a route all the way to the top of the nearby crags, expect it to take a FULL day and you MUST carry headtorches! We found it's really easy to underestimate the climbing at Wadi Rum. Take ALOT of tat. Most of the time you'll be using threads to descend off. There's rarely an easy walk-off in Wadi Rum. Most of the time you'll be doing multiple abseils using your own tat around thread. Sometimes the odd bolt here and there, but again there's not often maillons. Maybe take a few maillons too but this isn't essential.

On your first day it's probably a good idea to go and climb Goldfinger on the Central Tower on the east face of Jebel Rum. A good introduction, because it's a relatively short route on relatively good rock. The climbing doesn't go above solid HVS. The top crack is quite sustained. Would possibly get E1. Loads of gear. It's only 15 minutes walk from the campsite.

There's loads to go at from the campsite but you've really got to experience the tranquility of the desert for the true wadi rum experience! Bedouin Taxis are not cheap, but they're well worth it. We got a taxi to The Haj for 80JD (return fare). It was the driver himself who recommended the spot. We climbed and camped in the desert for 2 days and 1 night and he picked us up at the agreed time.

The Haj (last crag in Tony Howard's guidebook) has an AWESOME route on it on perfect rock. Highly highly recommended. Incredible views. A couple of us also went walking and scrambling from our campsite on some nearby ridges which was a great day too and made a nice change.

To get back from wadi rum, we took a bus to Petra. There's a few buses that leave to various locations in the morning and it's a case of hanging around and asking the drivers where they're going and, with a bit of luck, you should find a suitable bus. There were none going to Amman though - it was Aqaba or Petra. From Petra we found a taxi driver with a good pickup truck and all five of us got him to take us to the dead sea for a float around via 'The King's Way' (the scenic route - I can highly recommend this! Great views from high up in the mountains) and then onto Amman where he found us a cheap hotel (he made out we were his friends and we got a triple room with two extra mattresses for 35JD with breakfast). The taxi ride from Petra to the dead sea and onto Amman only cost us 100JD, which was a bargain, I think.

There is a hotel called the Cliff Hotel which is cheap too, but our driver didn't know where it was. We stayed in a place called the Saladin Hotel. The rooms are pretty basic but it did the job for a night and the breakfast was good. To be honest though, I'm sure you can hunt around with your driver and find plenty of other similar places. It's a big city.

Taxi in the morning from our hotel to the airport cost 14JD.

Camping out in the middle of the desert in Wadi Rum was an awesome experience. The climbing is great if you find good rock. It can be a bit harrowing on not-so-good rock. We took shedloads of cams. You could probably get by with a full set, but I'd recommend having 3 or four duplicates. A huge cam is useful but you could get away without it.

Take LOADS of tat! Be prepared for epics and benightments.

In terms of grades at Wadi Rum, along with loose rock, I would recommend as a minimum you're extremely comfortable at UK VS and happy enough on HVS.

Grades in Tony Howard's guidebook are stiff to say the least. It's common to get on a 5+ in Wadi Rum thinking it'll be a bit of a cruise like an El Chorro 5+ and it turns into a bit of a horror show. It could be a perfect crackline on great rock, but it's a 45m pitch, or it could be a bit loose and sandy, which just changes things completely. Every day's an adventure in Wadi Rum!

For clothing, while I was there in mid-November, I wore shorts the whole time and t-shirt. The most I ever wore on my upper-body was a fleece and pertex windproof smock. It seemed to be the perfect amount of clothing. I only had to wear more than shorts and t-shirts in the middle of the night while camping. When benighted on a climb shorts and t-shirt was fine because it takes a few hours to cool down after dark.