Visiting the Dead Sea in Jordan

Your ears popping as you descend down to the shore, you stop at a sign in the middle of a bare rocky escarpment that reads “sea level” and then you keep going down.

The view over the sea is beautifully desolate – no boats, no gulls, no fish – and a view of Israel’s high plateau on the opposite shore. It’s a restful palette of pale blue and pale white and pale dun, all smothered in a heat haze. “I found the experience very peaceful, especially in the late afternoon when the light reflects across the water and you can look back towards the opposite shore,” says Ant.

The Dead Sea has various health benefits due to its special situation and properties. The atmospheric pressure is high, the oxygen concentration in the air is high, and the dry desert air clear from pollen – some find this helps with asthma. It’s also said to be a good place for heliotherapy. The dry climate and mild winters (summer temperatures can soar to 45°C-47°C, while winter sees comfortable highs of up to 25°C) make it a popular winter health resort, and it’s one of the oldest in the world. There are some 35 different elements and minerals in the waters, and a mineral-rich mud makes a popular treatment at the water’s edge – people slap it straight on, leading to a second amusing photo opportunity once you’ve done the newspaper gag.

There are many resorts on the shores of the Dead Sea, their spas providing everything from Dead Sea mud treatments to flotation pools that use Dead Sea water. Up in the hills away from the sea, you’ll also find the therapeutic Ma’in Hot Springs, where warm waterfalls feed bathing pools.

It’s salty: watercraft corrode too quickly in the water to be worth running on its surface and beneath the surface of the lake scientists have found it actually ‘rains’ salt onto the lakebed. Chunks of salt washing against a sloping shore are worn down to rounded ‘pearls’, and you’ll also find large cubes, and big chunky halite formations. Salt is also available to buy in many a gift shop, as a scrub or as a souvenir.

Floating might provide some light relief in the midst of all the historical sites you visit in Jordan – but the Dead Sea has historic significance, too, and has been important since ancient times. The King’s Highway, one of the oldest trading routes in the world, runs along its length. According to the Old Testament of the Bible, the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah were engulfed by the waters. Even Aristotle reported on the ‘thickness’ of a strange lake about which he’d heard stories, but never visited.

On our Jordan Dead Sea tours you can take a short trip to the supposed site of Jesus’s baptism at Bethany Beyond the Jordan, just a short drive north from the shore. From the top of this mountain, Moses looked out over the view and sighted the promised land for the first time. He is said to be buried up here. You can also pop to Mount Nebo, half an hour’s drive northwest of the sea. If you want a break from history, there’s the nearby Wadi Mujib Nature Reserve – a place to swap the dead for the living – it’s on a bird migration route and is home to jackals, hyenas, foxes and honey badgers.

The Dead Sea is often woven into itineraries towards South Jordan: it’s a useful stop on the way to Kerak, Petra, and the Red Sea, where you can enjoy a totally different watery experience at Aqaba.

Shared between Israel, Jordan and Palestine’s West Bank, the Dead Sea has a long history, but it appears to have a short future – it’s vanishing at a rate of a metre a year.

My visit to the Dead Sea involved skipping around sinkholes – thousands have opened up – particularly on the lake’s western bank. Its main water source is the famous Jordan River, which has been reduced in flow significantly since the 1960s as nations divert its water for agriculture. The entire south part of the lake has been separated from the north for decades and artificially divided into industrial salt evaporation ponds. A project to pipe seawater back into the Dead Sea from the Red Sea via pipeline was abandoned in the early 2020s.

But the Dead Sea won’t ever vanish for good – as it becomes more salty it will eventually reach a concentration level where it’s too difficult for water to evaporate (she writes, straining to remember GCSE Physics). Until then, signs stuck in the ground showing its former bounds, and salt stains on the rocks, point to where it used to lap.