Eat, sleep & wear

The food

The Hashemite Kingdom can pride itself in having quite a bit of variety in its cuisine and though we surely expected a bigger prevalence of different spicy tastes, the cuisine we found was very tasty! Check this out for a lot more info on Jordanian food: https://migrationology.com/jordanian-food/

On a personal note, though I would hardly classify myself as a foodie, being from Southern European culture, I do tend to treat food with a certain reverence that my fellow Central and Eastern Europeans do not always understand but tend to respect. At that time I was thoroughly going through a hummus (even homemade) phase. I was super pumped to try it somehow nearer to its origins. Sadly this was somehow a disappointment. We did have hummus almost every morning in most of the places we stayed in but it tended to be broken down to the most basic elements and was simply ok. Perhaps we were looking in the wrong places though so maybe it was rotten luck.

I was also keen on the smells around the kitchen table and around the markets. We had the chance to try a few dishes from local cuisine including Warak Enab and Kousa Mahshi (grape leaves and zucchini stuffed with meat and rice), both of very interesting, different to classic European taste. We even had the chance to try and cook both of these dishes with a local family (you can read more about the experience here). The dishes were served with a sour milky sauce which is not my personal favourite but was definitely tasty. 

Mansaf and Maqluba, being basically rice with respectively lamb and chicken meat, we had a chance to try during our Iftar dinner with locals on the boat (read here). It’s a simple, very traditional and again a bit sour dish served with a fermented goat milk yoghurt in the first case or a bit of broth in the second case.

Last but not least, I have to mention Zarb, a traditional Bedouin dish that was served to us twice during our stay on the desert (read here). It was a barbecue consisting of grilled chicken meat and vegetables cooked traditionally underground and served with a side of rice and fresh salads. The dish is very simple, yet very tasty, with the meat being tender and juicy. Definitely recommend!

Talking about Jordanian food, one cannot forget about sweets, coffee and tea. As a dessert, you will be served a variety of Baklava sweets that seem to be the basic treat in this region. For my personal taste definitely too sweet but I can imagine it has lots of fans. Coffee and tea are both served with as a combination of brew, herbal infusion and literally tons of sugar. Though both are very sweet, I definitely liked it and drunk it gladly even without the addition of milk.

If I can describe the smell of Jordan in one particular scent then it would have to be cardamom! The lingering and somewhat mysterious smell was present almost everywhere and tended to remind us of just how exotic this country was to us.

Accommodations

From our experience, accommodation was really not an issue. You can find hotels of just about any level in the main tourist places without any real effort and at least in Amman and Aqaba Air BnB was working really well. You may be somewhat disappointed that hostel options appear to be relatively few but the reality is that they do exist but tend to call themselves hotel instead. For more specific places like Wadi Rum you will need to book with a camp though. This is also not a real issue as many offers are available online and even if you decide to book it last minute (as we did), many hotels will help you with that by calling one of the camps and ensuring you are set. Shout out to the Rocky Mountain Hotel in Wadi Musa for helping us with this.

Clothing

The first thing we thought about when thinking of how to prepare was how my partner and I should dress. It was Ramadan and we wanted to be especially respectful to the people but then again it was also summer and we didn’t want to excessively cover ourselves.  We proceeded to get long dresses and proper desert pants but ultimately discovered that in most of Jordan things are not as strict as we feared they might be. 

Though we always took care of covering her hair, even near mosques we saw that women were wearing dresses (not short ones though) and pants without taking special care. As for the locals, we noticed that some women wore burka (though this may be a result of refugee inflow) and that most women wore hijab. As such, it appears that covering the female hair is deeply ingrained clothing choice albeit not entirely a mandatory one. We did see a few tourists walking around with short dresses in Amman and even swimwear at Aqaba but it really did appear out of place and disrespectful so that is something we’d rather advise against (not that you’d be unsafe but it felt disrespectful).

As for me, well I really saw no limitation or difference between what men were wearing there and what I’d wear in Europe and was pretty comfortable most of the time. I do regret not getting the local scarf though…

If you read about the climate above then do remember to adjust your clothing to the time of the year. It gets chilly in the winter and even snows in the mountains so you don’t want to be caught with only your shorts!