Wadi Rum looks like nowhere else on Earth, which is why Ridley Scott shot most of The Martian here and barely had to touch up the colour grading. Sun City Camp was one of the first big camps to figure out that the best way to sleep in a landscape like this is inside a glass bubble, and its geodesic Martian Domes still do the job better than most newer copies. Down on the sand, dinner means zarb: goat and chicken buried in a pit oven and dug up, smoking, at the table. Days start with camel rides at sunrise and end with more stars than you knew existed.
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Everything communal happens under one big air-conditioned dome: buffet breakfast and dinner, a bar pouring tea, coffee and the odd cold beer, and rows of cushioned seating angled toward the mountains outside. After dark, staff dig the night's zarb out of its sand pit with real ceremony, goat and chicken that have spent hours cooking underground, and the smell alone gets people out of their domes before the announcement is finished. Fire pits scatter the camp for the actual stargazing, well away from the dining lights.
Five options, all roughly the same 32 square metres, so the real decision is dome versus tent. The Martian Domes are the ones on the postcards: a transparent geodesic front that turns the whole desert into your view (and means the sunrise finds you whether you're ready or not). Prefer four solid walls, go for the Deluxe Tent instead, handwoven textiles and rustic touches over a proper Bedouin frame. Every room gets an en-suite bathroom with a hot shower, air conditioning, a minibar and its own private terrace for morning coffee.
Book a 4x4 with a Bedouin guide and go looking for Thamudic and Nabatean rock inscriptions scratched into the cliffs at Khazali Canyon centuries before anyone thought to film a Ridley Scott movie here. Climb (or slide down) the red dunes with a sandboard, swap the jeep for a camel at sunset, and if hot air ballooning is running that season, take it, the whole valley looks even stranger from above. None of it needs booking days ahead. Most of it needs booking that morning, over breakfast.
Lying in bed and watching the Milky Way through your own dome wall, no telescope, no jacket, no getting up required. Wadi Rum's night sky does the rest of the work for you.
Pack an eye mask if you want to sleep past sunrise in the dome; the glass front doesn't believe in lie-ins. Better plan: book the sunrise camel ride and let the desert wake you properly.
Dinner is buffet-style in a big shared tent that also feeds day-trippers passing through, so it's more lively communal camp than intimate hideaway, except on zarb night.
Sun City Camp can be booked with Timbuktu as part of a tailor-made Jordan trip, rather than as a standalone room reservation. Start online, customising one of our recommended Jordan trips featuring Sun City Camp or get advice and suggestions from one of our Jordan specialists who will design the trip around your dates, check availability and handle every booking for you.
Stays at Sun City Camp start from around $70, or US$70, per person per night as part of a tailor-made trip. The exact price depends on your travel dates, room type and the shape of the rest of your itinerary. A Timbuktu travel specialist can give you an accurate quote for your dates.
Red sand desert where massive sandstone towers rise like monuments from Mars.
