Travel and Field Trips

“My favorite part of the program was the week we spent traveling around Jordan. From camping in Wadi Rum to hiking through Petra to swimming in the Dead Sea, it was an unforgettable experience.”

Beck Eder, 2012

Traveling to and from Jordan

Students must have a valid passport and are advised to apply for their passports well in advance of their scheduled departure. Accepted students will also be asked to procure a Jordanian visa prior to departure.

The program fee includes round-trip air travel between Columbia University in New York and Amman, Jordan. Students are accompanied by their instructors and resident advisers on all travel.

Field Trips in Jordan

Columbia University collaborates with two excellent local organizations for the travel portion of Culture and History: Understanding the Arab World, both of whose guides are professional, experienced, knowledgeable, and longtime friends of the program: Bedouin Discovery and Friends of the Earth Middle East.

Bedouin Discovery is a tour company run by Bedouin tribes from the Petra region. They offer a unique perspective not just on one of Jordan’s most longstanding cultures but also on the growth of the tourism industry, which has drastically shifted ways of life. Their tours are sensitive, diverse, and entertaining, and the friendly tour guides have infinite patience and interest in our students’ questions.

Bedouin Discovery will guide us for the following tours:

• The spectacular Nabatean city of Petra, a wonder of the world
• Petra’s lesser-known but equally beautiful sister city, Little Petra, where students camp with Bedouin Discovery’s tribe
• Wadi Rum, a protected area covering 720 square kilometers of dramatic desert wilderness, where students camp with another Bedouin tribe
• Traditional Turkish bath house in Wadi Musa
• Amman’s Citadel and Roman Amphitheater
• Kerak, the twelfth-century Crusader stronghold

Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) is an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian environmental organization which works both at the grassroots and policy levels to raise awareness about the dire environmental challenges facing the region. Their knowledgeable, fact-driven tours give students a bigger picture in which to view the political conflicts of the Middle East and teach them fascinating, if disturbing, information about the region’s delicate ecosystem.

FoEME will guide us for the following tours:

• Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have looked out over the Promised Land
• The fourth- and sixth-century Byzantine and Umayyad mosaics in Madaba
• The Dead Sea, for a swim and a look at the sea’s recession
• Bethany on the Jordan, the baptismal site of Jesus
• Sharhabil bin Hassaneh Eco-Park in northern Jordan
• Al-Himmeh, northern Jordanian village in the Yarmulke River Valley
• Umm Qais, Hellenistic-Roman town
• Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve on the southern Dead Sea coast