missko

All, I will be travelling from Wadi Rum to Tel Aviv on a Saturday. It seems the most efficient way would be to get a ride to Aqaba, cross the border at Yitzhak Rabin/Wadi Araba and fly from Eilat to Tel Aviv. I understand Eilat airport is 10 minutes from the border. How much time would I budget for the border crossing and airport security? Once all this is taken into consideration, would it easier to make the trip by car or coach? I will have checked bags.

I ask about flight vs coach because tour itineraries almost always take people from south Jordan to Tel Aviv via the Allenby Bridge. Why is this? Cost? Logistics of moving a large group of people? Do tour groups get to fast track at the crossings? I've read that the Allenby crossing is one of the slowest and that it has shorter opening hours.

Thanks.

Ditto

It's hard to say how long the border crossing will take, it can be as little as 10 minutes but if you are stuck behind a tour group than it can also easily take 2hrs, not accounting for any extra security screening/questioning which you might or might not have to go through.
As for the why most itineraries go through the Allenby crossing, I would think probably because it's shorter (unless you are already in Aqaba) and cheaper.

ajGoes

If you're a younger woman, you should allow for a possible long delay at the border. I met a young Swiss woman in Jerusalem who had been detained for 2-1/4 hours, while her mother crossed in a couple of minutes. A friend of hers, also a young woman, was in secondary for 2-1/2 hours.

This is unpredictable but young women are known to be particularly liable to long interrogations at the border.

missko

Thanks so much for the information.

Efrem

My wife and I went through the Aqaba/Eilat crossing in 2017, also after getting there via a hired car and driver (from the Dead Sea, not Wadi Rum, but that doesn't matter). We were fortunate to arrive at a time that tour buses were absent, so the whole process took less than ten minutes including both sides and the walk from one to the other. Granted, though one of us was (and still is) a woman, she isn't young.

Our only nervous moment was, after being cleared to enter Israel, we started walking away from the immigration office. After a few seconds, an immigration officer came running toward us. What had we done, or not done? We couldn't think of anything that might make him want to talk to us again. When he caught up with us, which didn't take long since we stopped as soon as we saw him, he had one question for us: "Can I get you a taxi?"