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Published: July 14th 2010
Sand dune
Walking towards a sand dune...Years ago, long before I first visited a desert, I used to have an impression in my mind that deserts are just dusty, hot and dry, nothing more than a vast ocean of sand and mere emptiness - that was about all I could come up with when thinking of deserts. To my surprise, I later found out that deserts are much more than that and of an unique magnificent beauty. Now, when I think of deserts, I can't help but to think of them as one of the most magical and mystical regions of this green blue planet of ours...!
- From Amman towards south right into the Valley of the Moon - After some days in Petra we decided to head farther south and took the public bus to Wadi Rum which runs every morning and it took us about 3 hours to get to a remoted Bedouin village on the outskirts of Wadi Rum, 70km inland from the Red Sea. As we managed to gather a group of fellow travelers from England and Holland in Petra, and later some more Koreans so that we were a group of nine in total, we ended up paying 21JD
Posing
Wadi Rum (30USD) each for a 2days and 1night trip including Petra-Wadi Rum busride, 2 jeeps for the 2 days, guides, food and accommodation in a Bedouin camp.
The first thing you do when you get to somewhere in nowhere is to have some tea with the Bedouins. It a kind of felt like having “tea time” like the Brits have just that nothing around you was British at all nor did any of the Bedouins in any imaginable way looked even close to being British and then of course the tea itself was totally different to the awful “Earl Grey” you can get in England. It was sweet with tons of sugar and some fresh mint which is so typical for the entire Islamic Middle East region, no matter if you are in Istanbul, Damascus, Cairo or on the opposite side of the North African continent in Marrakesh, you will always be served this sweet tea, so that whenever someone serves me this kind of tea in other parts of this world, it will instantly remind me on the Middle East or North Africa.
But even though Bedouins are obviously no Brits at least they have the ability to
Camp
Bedouin Camp do things as slow as Brits do, but in addition Bedouins do lack the sense of time, maybe just because in some regions of this greenblue planet of ours time simply doesn’t really matter, it’s just time - and outside it’s just the desert and to the desert time most probably doesn’t really matter either!
After a while we finally started to head right into the desert in our 4x4 jeeps, sliding through the vast ocean of sand, deep into Wadi Rum, which is also known as “The Valley of the Moon”, the largest and most famous Wadi in Jordan.
“Wadi” is the Arabic term traditionally referring to a valley. In some cases, it may refer to a dry riverbed that contains water only during times of heavy rain or simply an intermittent steam. The name “Rum” most likely comes from an Aramaic root meaning 'high' or 'elevated'. The highest elevation in Wadi Rum is Mount Um Dami at more than 1800m above sea level. It’s a protected area covering 720 square kilometers of dramatic desert. Huge mountains of sandstone and granite emerge, sheer-sided, from wide sandy valleys to reach heights of 1700 meters and more. Narrow canyons
Twilight
Sunset in the Desert and fissures cut deep into the mountains and many conceal ancient rock drawings etched by the peoples of the desert over millennia.
Bedouin tribes still live among the mountains of Rum and their large goat-hair tents are a special feature of the landscape. People have lived in Rum for thousands of years, struggling to survive in its harsh environment. Virtually all the people living in and around Wadi Rum today are of Bedouin origin and, until recently, led nomadic lives, relying on their goat herds.
While driving through the desert, it often invokes images of a vast expanse, a timeless space of beauty, wonder and longing. Some people come to the desert to commune with a higher power or the forces of nature. Indeed, for much poetry about the desert was an allegory for a spiritual quest. Others come to witness natures spectacle at its finest - the forces of erosion, wind and water, thunderstorms, flash floods, bitter cold and broiling heat. And some other come to be, just - to be - at place where life clings and thrives, sometimes for only days, other times for centuries, other times for millennia and who knows, maybe for eternity?!
Intense heat. No shadow for miles. No place to hide from sun. Just sand and stones. All of a sudden there is a wind full of dust and sand. That’s desert. Could such place have been beautiful at all? Well, believe me… it is beautiful.
Imagine the desert once again, see the landscape differences, observe the huge stone massive coming out from plains. Some stones are perfectly rounded others are sharp like a knife as they would be processed by some machine. You can see mountains getting out of stone and sand desert, partially covered by sand. Enjoy sand dunes all around, making an incredible landscape. In between all of that you can suddenly discover oasis (though not in Wadi Rum), places full of green and water, small villages and people in between of the dry land. And when you all of a sudden spot a chameleon on a rock, you could almost forget you are in the middle of an harsh and deadly environment - that’s the desert, that’s the magic, that’s the danger, that’s the totally different world you will face.
- The Silence of the Desert - We drove the whole day from
one desert sight to the other, had a short lunch break in the shades of a rock, climbed and ran down a huge sand dune before we finally arrived at our desert camp on the edge of a plateau with a view on the nearby mountains, where we should spend the night. The heat outside was unbearable so that most of us took a nap in one of the Bedouin tents or in the shades of some rocks from where we could overlook the valley.
And then the sunset came and all of us were just sitting there, watching the sun going down slowly behind the purple red horizon, around us just the silence of the desert and nothing else, just silence and the desert and the dying sun, a dying day, in red and purple!
- A night underneath a blanket of stars - After watching the sunset, we went back to the camp where the Bedouins were already cooking our dinner in a hole in the ground. Inside the hole they placed potatoes, meat (lamb and chicken) and vegetables and let it cook for 2.5 hours. The food was surprisingly pretty good. In the evening
one of the Bedouins played some music on a traditional instrument and afterwards all of us decided to sleep outside under the stars and not inside of one of the tents.
Laying in the middle of a desert at night while the whole world around you is covered in total darkness and the stars are hanging above you in the clear sky like Christmas bulbs is a magic moment. A moment that compensates for everything, the time when travelling is not fun at all, the time you feel tired, the many times you had to fight with people trying to rip you off, the time waiting at border crossings, the times you felt lost in a new city, the time being on road and moving on and on and on… all that will fade away for a night, a night underneath a blanket of stars, somewhere in the middle of a desert while the whole world around you is covered in darkness and the silence of the desert!
- Closing a Chapter - On the next morning, I had to say farewell to Grace as we split up, she moved on to Israel and I started my
way back north via Amman to Syria and then Turkey. It took me a while to get to my final destination Antalya and then finally to head back from there to Germany.
I felt good that I could return to travel this region and finally closed the chapter “Middle East” after it was laying open for such a long time, it was good that I have returned to finish it and it was time to move on! As I said before in the first entry of this Middle East journal: As a traveller in the Middle East, you will encounter different kinds of difficulties, some of them are tremendously annoying, funny or plain stupid, some are tiring and some might even be frightening, but at the end of the journey, you will return with a bag full of striking memories and stories to tell... - that’s one of the fascinations about this part of the world - if not one of the fascinations why we simply love travelling and exploring, the reason why we can’t stop but keep moving on and on!
So these were my latest Middle East stories... thanks again for following me and thanks for
reading! I am sorry that it took me so long to update, I promise to do better… :-)
To be continued… next: England - The Land of Blood Sausages and Vinegar...
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AnnaAdventuring
Anna Louise
Great photo!!