I left Wadi Musa early the morning after my amazing day in Petra, bound for Wadi Rum. I opted to take a taxi for the two hour drive. The same taxi driver that had taken me shoe shopping the day before. We had a good rapport. We left Wadi Musa, passing patches of pomegranate trees, stopped for water, and hit the highway.
The drive wasn’t too remarkable. Lightly colored rocky desert punctuated by the odd town or flock of windmills. (Do we still call them windmills when they are those tall, white modern ones? I still imagine windmills as something out of a fairy tale book or a postcard of historic Netherlands.) Anyway, we arrived in Wadi Rum and I was deposited at the ‘visitors centre’ to await pickup. Nothing was open and there was no wifi, but sure enough, soon a pickup truck approached, and I hopped in the back…and we went about 1 minute away to a house. I had no idea what was happening. It was, as it turned out, the house of one of the brothers who operated the camp at which I was staying.
I was ushered into a room without furniture, and sat on the heavily carpeted floor and leaned against cushions. I was immediately offered sweet mint tea (refusing it was futile) and sat and talked with the host (whose name I have now forgotten) while his two young children played with iPhones – not as phones, but as, cars, I guess; zooming them around on the floor and crashing them into each other, before their father sent them out of the room. We chatted for a while and then three more guys, all in traditional Bedouin garb, joined us: the host’s brother, a guy named Omar, and a guy who said nothing, but sat there being quietly handsome. We drank tea and smoked. I still wasn’t sure why I was there.
After about 45 minutes, I realized that we were waiting for two other people who were to arrive and go to the camp and the three of us would travel there together. The people arrived – a mother/daughter duo – from Germany who had been staying at the same guest house as me in Petra. As well, two Spanish girls who were leaving the camp appeared and we all sat on the floor and ate out from communal plates: hummus, labneh, bread, cucumbers, potatoes, chicken, and tuna, though the vegetarians amongst us abstained from the latter two. It felt so normal to be sitting and sharing a meal in that way, I almost forgot about Covid.
The German mother/daughter duo and I sat in the back of a pickup truck, outfitted with two bench seats and a fabric awning, and set out into the desert.
It was immediately overwhelming in the best possible way. Aside from the odd circle of Bedouin tents, there is nothing there. Just vast expanses of sand in shades of red and ochre and beige, and dramatic rock formations and mountains. It really does look like Mars, or what we imagine Mars to be. And it is huge.
We arrived at the camp: Arabian Nights. It looks pretty much like the others: boxy, black striped Bedouin tents, a main, large tent for meals and hanging out, and a fire pit.
I splurged on one of the deluxe tents, which meant I had my own bathroom. The water same from some metal boxes outside and had to be brought in from the town. No AC. Ironically, I did not sleep a night in my lovely tent. It was so hot that it would have been unbearable. Instead, I slept both nights outside, on a mat under the stars, which I highly recommend. It was still too hot for a blanket, but the breeze was wonderful, and the stars were spectacular.
That first day in Wadi Rum, we (the German mother/daughter duo, and I) just hung out in the main tent, reading, napping, and (me) smoking cigars. There were a lot of guys working at the camp, all local Bedouins, and they were great company as well. At night we all say around the fire talking.
Both nights, dinner was cooked in the traditional Bedouin style of digging a pit in the sand and lowering a tiered, metal … thing … into the pit on top of a fire, after loading the thing up with chicken and vegetables. The pit is then covered with a board, blanket, and a mound of sand and is left to cook. When the oxygen runs out, the fire dies, but the heat remains to cook everything. There was also a big pot of rice and the usual dips and breads. We were well fed.
On the second day, the German mother/daughter duo and I took an all-day trip into the desert. Omar was our driver for the day, and we took the aforementioned truck into the unknown.
The day was a series of drives through the sand to various points of interest and places for hikes. It was all terrific. Even just driving and looking and the awesome scenery was great. But then we would stop at a narrow cave, for example, and venture in to look at ancient carvings and paintings of people, horned beasts, and whatnot.
We climbed up a sand dune and sand boarded or tobogganed down. It was amazing, though hiking up a sand dune is challenging; it feels like you slide back farther with every step forward, but out of breath at the top, it doesn’t seem to matter.
We visited what remained of T. E. Lawrence (of Arabia)’s house where he allegedly slept, a rare spring of water, a large rock resembling a mushroom, and a couple of amazing natural rock bridges.
Whenever possible, Omar parked the truck and told us to hike over a small mountain or through a canyon and he would pick us up on the other side. The scenery was outstanding. Much of it didn’t even seem real, like a scene out of a movie.
All of this was great fun, albeit rather exhausting, made more so by the heat. Thankfully, we stopped in a narrow cave for a couple hours and laid on thin mats on the sane while Omar cooked us a hot lunch over a fire and another man who showed up out of nowhere played songs on the oud.
We also had opportunities at various points to stop at open air tents operating as tea houses – literally in the middle of nowhere – to have a glass of tea, a chat with whoever was there, and, if we were lucky, hear a bit more of the oud being played.
We finished the day by hiking up a small mountain to watch the sunset over the desert, where, on that mountain I ran into the Czech doctor who I had previously met in Petra. I ran into him again later that night when I discovered he was staying at the same camp and joined us or dinner and fireside chats.
It was really nice on this trip to Jordan that, even though the tourist numbers are abysmal, there were still people traveling and all of them seemed eager to talk and hang out. Just like old times.
I slept under the stars, looking up at the milky way, until I dozed off. Wadi Rum really exceeded my expectations. There were iterations of this trip, in the planning stages, where I had thought about skipping it. I am so glad I didn’t.
The next morning after breakfast, I left the camp and caught a taxi to Aqaba before bussing back to Amman.
