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Umayyad Palace citadel, Amman

© Creative Commons / amanderson2

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Amman Local time

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Jordan

Travel to Amman

Flying to Amman

Airlines flying to Amman from the UK include bmi and Royal Jordanian Airlines (for direct flights to Amman), and Emirates, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.

Flight times: 

From London - 5 hours.

Travel by road

Summary:

Jordan has a good, expanding road network. Road signs on the highways are in Arabic and English. Traffic drives on the right and the minimum driving age is 18 years. Speed limits are 60kph (38mph) in cities, 80kph (50mph) on country roads and 120kph (75mph) on motorways. A driving licence valid in your country of origin is acceptable, provided you have held it for at least one year. However, an International Driving Permit is recommended. Visitors are not allowed to drive a vehicle with normal Jordanian plates unless they have a Jordanian driving licence.

Emergency breakdown service:

Royal Automobile Club of Jordan (tel: (06) 585 0626).

Routes:

Amman is well connected by modern roads to the rest of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the occupied Palestinian National Territories and Syria. South of Amman, the Desert Highway is the main artery to the port of Aqaba. Anyone crossing from Israel to Jordan and vice versa should be aware that they will have Israeli exit stamps on their passport and entry stamps to Jordan from an Israeli border point. This effectively bars them from travelling to most other countries in the Arab League; however, travellers can ask Israeli officials to stamp blank pieces of paper to avoid problems entering other Arab countries. Travellers are advised to bring loose leaf passport pages, although Israeli officials don’t always request them.

Driving times:

From Damascus - 4 hours (although the border crossing can take hours, depending on the traffic).

Coaches:

Three bus companies, all using air-conditioned modern coaches, run regular services to and from Amman: JETT (tel: (06) 566 4146), Alpha (tel: (06) 585 0626) and Trust International (tel: (06) 581 3427).

There are several bus terminals in Amman. Abdali Station on King Hussein Street is the main one. It is a five-minute taxi drive from downtown. From there it is possible to get transport to most towns west and north of the capital. The Jett Depot, about one mile uphill from Abdali Station, is where to get scheduled services to Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad and Riyadh as well as south to Karnack and Aqaba. Wihdat Station near the Middle Circle, 5km (3 miles) south of downtown, covers southern Jordan including Madaba, Petra, Ma'an and Aqaba.

Travel by rail

Services:

Jordan has very little in the way of a rail network. The Hejaz Railway (http://nabataea.net/hejaz.html) runs twice a week between Damascus and Amman but uses seriously ancient rolling stock and the journey takes at least nine hours. It is really only worth doing for the experience.

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