8-Day Hiking Tour in Jordan from Dana to Petra and the Dead Sea

• Transfer from QAIA airport to Amman Dana Eco-Lodge.

• After breakfast, we visit the 6,000-year-old town of Dana, located on the edge of the Dana Biosphere Reserve.
• Here, we meet our guide and staff and start the hike. The Dana Nature Reserve is home to everything from ibex to mountain gazelles, foxes, wolves, and badgers. A single tree here and there provides shade in the strange landscape, not least in the steep gorge we must pass through. Help is available in some steep passages.
• We walk for about six hours. The route offers a few hundred meters of ascent and then 800 meters of descent. From there, we follow the open valley to Wadi Feyan, with a view of the Dana Mountains behind us. It's a slightly long first day, but unbelievably beautiful.

Overnight in Feyan (also called Wadi Feinan) in a camp surrounded by the Dana Mountains.

Meal: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• Today, we pass through dry plains and canyon landscapes with views of the Sharah Mountains. There may be remnants of Nabataean and Byzantine ruins on the day's 6-7-hour trek. The route is fairly even in ascent and descent, with 350 meters up and 400 meters down.
• During the day, the landscapes change from classic "hamada" - dry, rocky desert landscapes - to valleys, the so-called "wadis." To the west lies the vast Wadi Araba Desert.

Overnight at the camp on the border of Wadi Barwaarea.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• We leave the rocky desert behind and walk on the old trading path of the Bedouins in the lush Ras Fied Valley.
• We climb quite a lot for approximately three hours, away from the hamada landscapes and into the mountains, where we can look back towards the desert landscapes of Wadi Araba. We continue with a fairly strenuous ascent towards a small pass.
• From here, we descend towards the river valley on easier trails to the riverbed and the Ras Fied camp. In total, the day includes about 980 meters of ascent and 350 meters of descent, with a 6-7-hour hike to Ras el Fied.

Overnight in Ras Fied.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• From Ras Feid, the trail continues along the riverbed. From here, it climbs into a beautiful rocky landscape with small ridges, dry wadis, and Bedouin path systems.
• The day offers, at times, challenging but wonderful hiking. It is one of the most beautiful days of the trip, with the ruins of Iron Age villages from the time of the Kingdom of Edom.
• We hike for 6-8 hours to the beautiful sandstone-coloured mountains of the Petra area. Camp at Shkaret Msei'd.

Overnight at camp in Shkaret Msei'd.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• As we approach Petra and Little Petra, we enter the more popular routes.
• From Shkaret Msei'd, the landscape changes once again quite markedly, from rocky terrain to more classic, open sandstone "cushions" and plateaus.
• During the day's hike, we walk across sand and rounded mountains.
• Along the way, there is Nabataean influence, and the first carvings begin to appear in the form of steps and other features.
• We pass through beautiful mini canyons and slowly arrive at Little Petra and the solid, lovely Bedouin camp in Ammarim, which has all kinds of facilities, although on a shared basis.
• It's a big and beautiful day - about 450 meters of ascent and descent over 4-5 hours - and the last day of hiking on the Petra trek. A short drive then takes us to Petra itself and the hotel.

Overnight in Petra.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• What a day awaits! First, we say goodbye to our trekking team, and then we experience Petra.
• We walk through the incredible and "forbidden" gorge leading into the temple area. In 1809, the Swiss explorer Johan Ludwig Burckhardt travelled through what is now the Jordanian desert and entered the dark, narrow gorge.
• After a long walk, a hidden valley suddenly revealed itself, and above it stood the 40-meter-high, impressive and majestic mausoleum chiselled into the fine, beautiful pink sandstone.
• Petra is magical, incredibly beautiful, and just as incredibly well-attended as the Taj Mahal, Angkor Wat, and Machu Picchu. It is the lost nomadic people's capital, the capital of the Nabataeans, and a very, very big and beautiful experience.
• After a short half-day in Petra, we drive north towards the Dead Sea and a hotel near the beach. Here, there is an opportunity for a late afternoon bath in the extremely salty water, where you do not sink - read a newspaper in the water, relax in the strong sun in good weather, or enjoy a good hotel after the hike to Petra. The Dead Sea is the world's lowest lake at an altitude of 420 meters below sea level, with a salinity of up to 32%, which makes it a very special experience. You cannot sink to the bottom, and the feeling of floating like a cork is really fun. Due to the height - or lack thereof - unlike so many of our other travels, it is more oxygen-saturated than anywhere else on Earth.

Meal: Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• Drive to the airport for check-in and return home.