As-Salt climbs three steep hills in the Balqa highlands north-west of Amman, a town of honey-coloured limestone houses with arched windows, terraced streets and long staircases. In the late Ottoman period, from the 1860s to the 1920s, it was the most important town in the region east of the Jordan, a trading hub where merchants from Nablus, Damascus and Beirut settled and built grand houses in a mix of local and European styles. Muslims and Christians lived side by side, sharing guesthouses and charitable traditions, and the town was inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2021 as As-Salt, the Place of Tolerance and Urban Hospitality.
When Amman was chosen as the capital of Transjordan in the 1920s, As-Salt lost its political role and slowly declined, which helped preserve its historic centre. Today it is a lively town of around eighty thousand, with a busy souk on Hammam Street, mosques and churches, and old mansions, some converted into museums and cultural centres, such as Abu Jaber House, now the Historic Old Salt Museum.
The landscape around As-Salt is hilly and fertile, with olive groves, vineyards and fields, and in spring, the hills are green and covered in wildflowers. West of the town, the road drops dramatically into the Jordan Valley, more than a thousand metres below, with hairpin bends and views toward the West Bank and, on clear days, Jerusalem. The descent to the Dead Sea, the lowest point on earth, is one of the great rides in the region, though the heat at the bottom can be fierce.
Riding in Jordan is generally straightforward, though driving can be aggressive in the cities, with fast traffic and unexpected manoeuvres. Fuel is easy to find in towns. As-Salt has narrow, steep streets, so leave the bike at the edge of the old town and walk. Try mansaf, the Jordanian national dish of lamb cooked in fermented yoghurt and served over rice, and kunafa, the sweet cheese pastry. Spring and autumn are ideal, when the hills are green or golden and the air is mild.