CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
Out of Amman, one way: 278 km, roughly 4 h 44 in the saddle. The stops in between: Madaba, Wadi Mujib, Karak and Dana. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,150 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. A steady touring day rather than a sprint.
Expect company on a summer weekend. Early is better than fast. For about 33 km this is Jordan Kings Highway, a road with a name of its own and a reason for it.
Amman is the starting point of Jordan's King's Highway, the old road that runs south through the country to the Red Sea, and it is also a city worth a day of its own. It is built on a series of hills, once seven, and the oldest part is the Citadel, which holds the pillars of a Roman temple to Hercules, a Byzantine church and an Umayyad palace, all on the same ridge. The ancient name was Philadelphia, after the Ptolemaic king who rebuilt it, and before that Rabbath Ammon, the capital of the Ammonites. Down in the valley below, a large Roman theatre, carved into the hillside and seating around six thousand people, still stages concerts.
Read the complete Amman write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Amman is where the day begins. Next is Madaba.
Madaba is the town of mosaics, and the reason is a floor. In the Church of St George, a nineteenth-century Greek Orthodox building, lies a sixth-century Byzantine mosaic map of the Holy Land, made from some two million tiny stones, which shows Jerusalem, the Nile delta and the Dead Sea with astonishing detail. It came to light again in 1884 when the church was being built, and it remains the oldest known cartographic depiction of the region. Other churches and houses in town contain fine mosaics too, and a small archaeological park displays some of the best, so you can easily spend a morning looking at the floors.
Read the complete Madaba write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Madaba comes up about 33 km into the recorded legs. Next is Wadi Mujib.
Wadi Mujib is the lowest nature reserve on Earth, and the Kings Highway crosses it in one of the most dramatic descents in Jordan. The road drops from the plateau near Madaba down the side of a great canyon, in a long series of bends, to a bridge at the bottom, and then climbs the other side, a change of several hundred metres in a few kilometres. The canyon, which the Bible calls the Arnon, was the boundary between the kingdoms of Moab and the Amorites, and it carves a deep red-brown gash through the sandstone toward the Dead Sea.
Read the complete Wadi Mujib write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 73 km into the recorded legs you reach Wadi Mujib. Next is Karak.
Karak is dominated by its castle, which sits on a spur above the town and looks as stern now as it did eight centuries ago. The Crusaders built it in the 1140s, under the kings of Jerusalem, to control the road between Damascus and Egypt and the pilgrim route to Mecca, and for a few decades it was one of the most important strongholds of the Latin East. Its most notorious lord, Reynald of Châtillon, raided Muslim caravans from here, and the dark vaulted corridors and cellars are a good place to imagine the sieges. In 1188, after a long blockade that followed the Battle of Hattin, Saladin took the castle, and it later passed to the Mamluks, who added their own towers and halls.
Read the complete Karak write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Karak, about halfway. Next is Dana.
Dana is a village that clings to the edge of a cliff, and from its terrace the land falls away in a great gulf of rock, with the desert plain of Wadi Araba shimmering far below. It stands in the highlands of southern Jordan at about 1,200 metres, a cluster of old stone houses that were abandoned in the twentieth century and are now partly restored, at the heart of the Dana Biosphere Reserve, the largest nature reserve in the country.
Read the complete Dana write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Dana sits at 271 km, late in the day. Next is Petra.
Petra is the most famous ruin in Jordan, and it earns the fame. The Nabataeans, an Arab people who grew rich on the incense and spice trade, carved their capital into the rose-coloured sandstone cliffs of a hidden valley more than two thousand years ago. You approach through the Siq, a narrow gorge about a kilometre long, with walls rising on either side until, at the end, the Treasury appears in a slice of light, a monumental facade cut straight out of the rock.
Read the complete Near Petra write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 278 km.
Amman → Madaba is 33 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Madaba → Wadi Mujib is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Wadi Mujib → Karak is 49 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Karak → Dana is 97 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Dana → Petra is 60 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.