Jordan: When to Go

The best time to visit Jordan is in spring or autumn, when you can dodge the baking sun of summer and the freezing winds of winter. Although winter can be bitterly cold in most of the country, the Red Sea area and Aqaba are still very pleasant. If you're planning to travel through the rest of the Middle East, try heading north into Turkey around spring, or south into Egypt by autumn.

The tourist authorities usually plan festivals (such as the Jerash Festival) for the summer period.

The month of Ramadan is a time when visitors should not eat, drink or smoke in public during the day so it's a tricky time to visit. Eid al-Fitr, the great celebration at the end of Ramadan, is a fun time to visit but it's best to bunker down for a few days because public transport is heavily booked and hotel rooms are sometimes hard to find, especially in Aqaba.

Note also that most of the excellent ecotourism projects operated in Jordan's Dana, Wadi Mujib and Ajlun nature reserves only operate between April and October.

Weather

Jordan's climate varies dramatically from one end of the country to the other. The Jordan Valley can be incredibly hot in summer, around 40°C (104°F), while Amman and Petra occasionally get snow in winter. The Plateau area is usually warm and dry, fluctuating between the low 20°Cs (low 70°Fs) and high 30°Cs (high 90°Fs), while the desert suffers extremes of temperature - baking dry heat interspersed with freezing winds from central Asia.