Kimkim Trip Reviews for Jordan

Been there. Done that. Have the t-shirt to prove it.

That’s usually what people say when they have travelled to a place, or have completed a task.

Well two out of three ain’t bad, especially since buying t-shirts is not part of my aesthetic. LOL!

Instead, I’ll sit grinning madly with memories of the “been-there-done-that” when I flip through my passport, my gmail account or my phone photos.

Jordan was amazing. The people are amazing. The food is incredible. The history is epochtic. The landscape is jawdropping.

Ahmad was waiting to pick me up at the airport and from the-get proved to be the best companion for this five day trip that I could ever ask for. He was my driver, my dj, my translator, my dance partner, my diary, my sidekick, my smilemirror, my protector, my lunch partner, my tea connoisseur, my phototakeouter and the best tourguide that I’ve ever had on any of my travels.

On our many roads to cross journey, I was introduced to songs that I had never heard before! Music, dancing and laughter was our modus operandi. He even played an Arabic song that would become the songtrack of my trip – so much so that I made him stop the car so that I could get out and dance barefooted in the desert. I wish I remembered it now. He told me the name but I forgot. Needless to say I had F.U.N!

Unto Jordan.

I loved visiting Jordan. I loved it. It helped that I was riding a wave of happy. The visit to Jordan was the culmination of my one-a-year odyssey that I started in 2012, visiting one of the New Seven Wonders of the World every year. Jordan was the one that happened last and may arguably be the best visit for several personal reasons.

Considering its location, the country is pretty peaceful but mostly known for the ancient Nabataean city of Petra which was carved out of rock over 2000 years ago and is one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The city is carved out of these massive towering boulders that occupy several complexes. There is one gate in and one gate out but you rarely ever repeat your steps; often every cornerturn yields a new and magnificent site. Its dramatic and astounding and the walls echo a remarkable history.

After you enter through the gate, you walk through what is called a Siq which highlights the way in which water was harvested and channeled throughout the city, the Siq opens you up to this massive monument called the Treasury. I got there at 7am, it was kinda cold, not many tourists were around, so I got to poke around, peep in, explore at leisure and have not too many people in my pictures. A few hours later, the place was crawling with tourists.

Then I took a different route to climb to the top of an adjacent mountain to see the Treasury from the top. After I dismounted one mountain, I began an epic journey of climbing 1000 steps to view the Monastery – the largest of Petra’s carved structures and an amazing monstrosity of a building. The symmetry of the structure built at a time when engineering was not what it is today, is a sight to behold and the views from on top of the mountain of the surrounding landscape were nothing short of amazing.

As I was making my way off of the mountain, possibly at the last one hundred steps, the sky got dark and it started to rain. I had my umbrella, so the torrential rain was hardly a challenge, but I got to see first-hand how the water is channeled through the gorges of Petra, and how the engineering actually worked. That in itself was an amazing sight. After a couple of minutes though, the water grew fierce. The guides started shouting “save yourself, run for your lives” as the water started swiftly collecting and gushing through the Siq. Not exactly what you want to hear on your travels! The Treasury was opened and tourists piled in as its higher ground provided security and shelter. Needless to say, no one died, the tourism authority trucked the tourists who were stuck far into Petra out. I walked out, but my sneakers never made the journey back. I lost them to Petra.

I called Ahmad to pick me up, I got home and changed and got to Petra Kitchen just in time for my culinary dinner tutorial on the food and delicacies of Jordan, myself and about 20 other persons cooked five courses and sat and ate them all. By the time I got home, I was spent but completely satisfied.

Over the next few days, I toured the enchanting desert landscape of Wadi Rum, where I camped out one night under the desert moon listening to a very silent night. I also visited little Petra, Shobak, the Dead Sea, Mt Nebo and Madaba. When I left Jordan, I felt such a connection with its people who at the drop, were less interested in me buying their wares, and were more intrigued to invite me for copious amounts of fragrant tea, have me sit with them as they tried to figure out from whence I came and laugh uproariously at their confusion of what the Caribbean is.

Jordan is a country of settlers and refugees in that many persons moved there from neighbouring states; and were forced to forge an identity out of a new landscape – possibly one of every three persons hail from a neighbouring country. Quite similar to what the Caribbean represents – it is a place that people make their own. I felt awed by the landscape which since biblical times had held such importance to the region and I felt moved by the culmination of my own insatiable desire to see the world as the world sees itself.

Oh, the joy of travel.

A friend recently reminded me of a response that I had given to the question of my travels, where is my favourite place in the world, and my response to him, is that I haven’t been there yet! That’s so me!

Now that the seven wonders are done, I need to see more. I need to travel even more. There is so much more to discover and so I wonder and I wander and I can’t wait to see where my wanderings take me to next!

My experience in Jordan would not have been what it was without my travel specialist, Carmen answering ALL my questions, working around my own plans etc., and just being accommodating! My driver, atef, was unbelievable. He was so gracious and kind and knew all the routes and gems of each place. My Bedouin guide, Ibrahim, who took us through Petra's backdoor to the monastery was wonderful. He was patient, helpful, and an overall great guide who showed us so many cool things along the way. From jerash, to the sites in Amman, to the absolutely magestic Petra, my husband and I had an incredible time. Petra by night was also such a beautiful experience. And driving along the dead Sea was really beautiful. It was thanks to Carmen's expertise, I was able to pack so much into my trip. I highly recommend working with this team! It'll make your life and experience that much better!!!! Thank you Carmen!

We loved our trip to Jordan! We saw everything we wanted to see at our own pace. It was the perfect blend of rest, relaxation and activity, all thanks to Lena, our kimkim trip organizer and Wael, our tour guide and driver, Wael. Lena was professional, answered all our questions in a timely manner and planned an amazing trip for us. She worked with us as we requested for numerous adjustments and changed itineraries. Thank you Lena for your patience!
Wael showed great customer experience. Super friendly. Kept us safe. Gave us the appropriate warnings at certain sites. Highly knowledgeable of Jordan. Always prompt. Drove extremely well through the changing terrain and crazy traffic. Introduced us to delicious authentic Jordanian cuisine. We felt like we were on vacation throughout the whole trip. No stress at all, like our other trips. Would highly recommend this trip to anyone! Thank you kimkim, Lena, Wael and Jordan for give us an awesome vacation!

We were very happy with all of the arrangements made by Kimkim. Our drivers and guides, both city and hiking were excellent . They were warm and welcoming and all went beyond the call of duty making extra stops where they thought appropriate. We learnt a great deal about modern day Jordan from them . Of special note were Fahdi ( Abu Hamza), Fawaz and Bilal. The hike from Dana to Feynan and from Little Petra to Petra were especially memorable and we will treasure our memories of our stays at the Dana Guest House and the Feynan Ecolodge . The home hospitality meal was a great addition to the itinerary. Thank you Andy for always keeping us informed of pickups and arranging the last minute drive to Amman from Aqaba.

We could not have been more pleased with the overall tour! Our driver was absolutely amazing!!! The tour, guides and the hotels were also top notch. We would definitely book with this company again! Thank you so much!!

My trip to Jordan was everything and a bit more from what I have expected :)
Carmen has provided me with an amazing service from the beginning and she was great accommodating all the places I wanted to visit in only 5 days, thank you so much for that!
Amman was very interesting and I really enjoying walking around the Paris Circle and getting lost on Circles 1 and 2... also on day 2 going to Mount Nebo and Bethany beyond the Jordan was a great experience, and needless to say that a pit stop by the Dead Sea it's always a great idea ;-)
Qusai my driver was super nice and flexible and always making sure to make pit stops to get me black tea with sage, water, sweets and the best falafel that I have ever had in the middle of nowhere on my way to Fernan Ecolodge.
I always wanted to go to Petra and I can only say that it was amazing! I am happy I spent 1 and 1/2 day there as this gave me enough time to do the back trail to the Monastery the first afternoon and enjoy the Trail to High Place of Sacrifice ( 4.5 hours and lots of steps) and the some other interesting spots on the second day.
I have really enjoyed my stay at the Feynan Ecolodge and the night at Khaled's Camp in Wadi Rum, to be honest, I never thought I would have liked to be in the desert as much as I did... Khaled is amazing and he even managed to get me on the hot air balloon the next morning, although I forgot to tell Carmen that this is something that I wanted to do and they were super flexible helping me with the payment, as I did not have enough Jordanian Dinars with me. Shukran again Khaled and Qusai :-)
Last but not least l couldn't leave Jordan without enjoying a beautiful afternoon in Aqaba relaxing by the beach sipping cocktails on the Red Sea...
By now, I hope you will drop Carmen a message for your personalized trip and go enjoy the best of Jordan! I am already looking forward to go back...

Great support by Andy. Local guide, Waleed, had very in-depth knowledge and was able to show us exactly what we were looking for.

I'm the Head of Content at kimkim, and booked the first half of my recent trip to Jordan with Andy from Experience Jordan. A major goal of my trip was research for original article ideas, and my criteria was challenging. Andy did an amazing job of curating unique activities in Amman and throughout Northern Jordan that lived up to my "off the beaten path" standards.

Two favorite memories come to mind from my trip. I loved the hike that Andy arranged in the Ayoun area of Northern Jordan, complete with a local guide and home-cooked Jordanian lunch. The day before my hike, the length of the hike had to be shortened significantly to accommodate a meeting I had later that afternoon. Andy was able to quickly make the change and worked with the hiking guide to find a shorter route that was still beautiful and enjoyable.

Andy also booked a tour of the winery facility at Eagle Distilleries, the oldest distillery in Jordan. It was so special to chat with the winery director, who was so passionate about his work, and to sample some of the best wines made in Jordan. These tours are now available to the public, and getting a sneak peek was a treat!

Thank you so much Andy for your incredible flexibility and responsiveness during my trip (and for making my border crossings from Israel so seamless)!!

I'm the Head of Content at kimkim, and booked part of my recent trip to Jordan with Carmen from In2Jordan. A major goal of my trip was research for original article ideas, and my criteria was pretty challenging. Carmen did an amazing job of curating interesting, unique, and immersive experiences that lived up to my "off the beaten path" standards.

One of my absolute favorite memories is from my time in Wadi Rum, the desert wilderness in southern Jordan. I was originally scheduled for an overnight "digital detox" experience, complete with private yoga sessions and sleeping under the stars (no tent!) in the middle of the beautiful desert. Due to crazy weather and some other unavoidable circumstances, this had to be canceled day-of. Carmen immediately got to work finding alternate options for me, and managed to book one of the very highly coveted bubble tents at Wadi Rum Night Luxury Camp (see photo). This was unforgettable - I felt like I was waking up on Mars!

Thank you to Carmen for being reliable and available during my trip, and quickly coming to my rescue with a fantastic alternative to my original plan!

Everything on this trip was great except for the mishap with the Visa situation upon our arrival and the pick up from the airport. Also, our last hotel was changed and the hotel didn't have a double bed option in the non-smoking room. My roomate and i had to share a bed.

If I were to do this again,

I would want more information up front from the guide about what has been paid for already and what hasn't.

Wonderful country and nice people.
We enjoy a lot and our trip was a great experience.
Good organisation, maybe just one driver had been better as a new one every day !
Thank’s a lot !

I have been wanting to go to Jordan and have done a lot of research and comparison between different tour operators. I have also considered just renting a car and doing it on my own since I want the experience to be as intimate as possible and not be stuck with a big tour group. Thankfully, I came across Kimkim's 8 days Experience Jordan Tour which offered the type of itinerary I was looking for and also offered a fair price as a private tour. The communication platform of Kimkim worked great for our group and Andy Nurse, our tour specialist was able to answer all our questions and concerns on a timely manner. He was the one responsible to set up our tour and was very patient with all the changes and adjustments we made until the last minute. Joost Schreve and Alex Buri also came to our rescue to make sure our needs were attended to. They all worked well as a team.

There were 8 of us in our group and everyone came back home safely and full of amazing memories and adventures created during our tour of Jordan. We were also happy with our tour guide, Abdallah As'ad, who gave us an insight about Jordan's culture & history through out our tour. He was easy going, patient, knowledgable, accommodating and a great company to be with.

As far as the negative side, the only hiccup I have experienced was during our arrival at the airport. The 4 of us out of the 8 in the group arrived a day earlier at the airport. The representative who was supposed to meet us and process our visas failed to show up. It was late at night so we got a bit frantic not knowing if we were going to get picked up or not. We waited for about 20 minutes just incase they were running late before we decided that we needed to get a hold of somebody from the company. Fortunately, we were able to call the main office based out of California and with the time difference, the office was open at that time and that was when Alex Buri stepped in to help us out. He got a hold of Andy for us and got things straightened out from there. The airport representative never made it so we got instructed to buy our own visas which later got reimbursed by the company. It set us back almost an hour until we got picked up by our driver to take us to our hotel. The rest of our group who arrived the following day had no issues with their airport transport.

Overall, I recommend Kimkim and I would chose to book again with them for future travels.

BTW, since we arrived a day early, we were able to do an extra activity by having Kimkim arrange our R/T transfer to Wadi Mujib Resereve. We did the Siq trail Hike and I highly recommend this thrilling activity if you are looking for something different to do while in Amman. The book Lonely Planet quoted one of the reserve ranger describe this hike as "Petra with water".

Our trip to Jordan was great. Lena created a perfect itinerary for us and she included in it everything we wanted. Even if we changed our requirements a lot of times and we booked our trip at the very last minute, Lena was very patient, responsive and understanding.

We didn't have any problems. and our driver was very funny, professional and friendly. The price was very good as well. Highly recommended!

The only thing that I would change is the 4-hour 4x4 Jeep Tour that we had in the desert. We really enjoyed that tour, but the car was not even close to a Jeep. It was an old vintage car, which caused us some headache.

There were a few bumps along the road with the reservations and requests for activities that didn't go through e.g. we were placed into a different hotel than the one we had requested and weren't notified; we only found out when we got to the hotel and had to call Andy ourselves. Granted, the hotel was a much nicer one than he one we had requested but "I changed the booking I just didn't tell you" isn't what passes for an apology or a suitable notification.
For the dive in the Red Sea, we asked for 2 dives and we paid for the 2 dived each but when we got onto the boat we were told that we were only to do 1 dive because thats what they were notified.

Our freelance tour guide, Walid, along with the bus driver who was provided by the Agency helped a lot in getting us around and giving us information and knowledge on the places we were to, and gave us insider trips to get us the best deals.

However, I think we could've done without the bus driver smoking on the bus every time we got off. It was nauseating every time we came back onto the bus.

Ultimately, it was an amazing experience visiting that part of the world for the very first time, it wouldn't be an adventure if we didn't have any obstacles.

Our group had an amazing time in Jordan! Despite some minor miscommunication at the beginning of our trip with Andy, our local specialist, about some accommodation details, it was overall a pretty smooth experience and he was able to help us with the problems we had. We very much enjoyed our time with our local guide, Waleed, who was very accommodating and had ample knowledge about Jordan's history and traditions, all of which we very much enjoyed hearing about.

We spent a total of 5 days there and we felt that was enough to see everything without having to rush, although more time to relax at the Dead Sea at the end of our trip could have been the cherry on top. Petra is truly a world wonder and we spent about 7 hours exploring, which for the average traveler, I think is plenty of time. But, if you are very interested in ancient history and want to do more of the hiking trails, perhaps an extra day in Petra would be good. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the Petra by Night experience because it is quite a long walk and you don't get to see much in the dark -- but it might be worth it to some people. We also went to Aqaba, which is worth a boat trip if you are into snorkeling/scuba diving but otherwise, there isn't much to do in the city. Wadi Rum is also a very cool spot, but if you stay at one of the campsites, I would recommend trying to get there a bit on the earlier side to explore the grounds -- but that and the desert jeep tour warrants about a full day at most.

The meet-and-assist step at the airport both upon our arrival and departure was highly convenient, although it would have perhaps been useful to know what to expect about the visa process prior to our arrival.

The only downside was our bus. The driver was very nice but he had the habit of smoking in the car (albeit, when we were not there) which made long bus rides very uncomfortable because of the smell. The driving was sometimes erratic but I think that can be partially attributed to the slightly bumpy roads!

The trip was simply amazing.. The online scheduling department, the driver and the guide were all top notch. I could not have hoped for a better experience. Honestly, what a great country, experience and team that are at Kimkim... Thank you to all of you for all of your effort.

Our trip to Jordan was just as expected. We were met at every stop exactly on time. The guides and drivers spoke english well enough to explain our needs and to hold an enjoyable conversation on some long drives. The cars used were new and comfortable. The hotels, camp, and spa were excellent with the exception of occasionally poor hot water for showers. We had a great time and felt safe and well cared for throughout our tip. I would suggest that the company issue a list of contact numbers when they send out the written itinerary before the trip.

The trip was very well organized. The whole process of communication with Raisa and payment process before the trip was very easy. Raisa picked the best itinerary for our short four days stay in Jordan. Our guides were very professional and knowledgeable. Drivers were very polite and courteous. Hotels and bedouin camp which Raisa picked for us were very good, provided great service.

Overall Andy and our the local guide and driver were excellent. They were responsive and designed a bespoke trip for us , managed all the logistics well and really knew Jordan.