Wadi Rum – Jordan’s Desert Frontier

Deserts are vast, hot and intimidating. They can take the form of ergs, where the precipitous crests of sand curve gracefully on a whim, each grain contributing to the swell of a monumental tide. At the lapping edges of the sands, where the grains peter out, rocky deserts prevail. Not yet broken down over millennia, rugged escarpments, deep valleys and wide stone strewn plains stand resolutely under the sun. While some life can eek out an existence in these conditions, driving roots deep to seek out hidden moisture or lying dormant until the rare rains return, a constant in the desert is how life must show extraordinary resilience to survive. This is of course also true for the people that inhabit the deserts. In Jordan, these are the Bedouin tribes. After migrating from the Arab peninsula to Jordan between the 14th and 18th centuries, they have become the backbone of the country’s history and its tradition. This is because between the fun and games of the Crusades in the 12th century, and the arrival of some semblance of governance in the 20th century, Jordan was of marginal importance to the Ottomans (who ruled it). So, Bedouin tribes took control in lieu of real authority. After the Ottomans were ousted in the Arab revolt 1916-1918, modern day Jordan has little tangible history to hold onto. The cities are recent constructions and the way of life within these cities is also new, so the thing that can be clung to is a hundreds of years of Bedouin spoken word history. A history of those people, many of whom still do as their ancestors have always done, lives on within Jordanian culture to this day. A nomadic backbone to a modern country.

The largest of the Bedouin tribes in Jordan are the Banī (who inhabit Petra), the baniṢakhr and the Banū al-Ḥuwayṭāt (who both inhabit Wadi Rum). While my love for the unfathomable intricacies of the ancient city of Petra are well documented, Wadi Rum is a different animal and in fact, it’s truly a unique expanse of desert wilderness. On the southern end of Jordan the breathtaking grandeur of the otherworldly scenery of Wadi Rum stretches to the remote Saudi border. There among the mountains, smugglers bring back unregistered pickups from the desert kingdom, due to their much more appetising price further south. On my first trip to Wadi Rum I got in the back of one of these trucks on my standard tourist tour with a lovely Taiwanese lady (who was baffled that I had been to her country). On my second trip, the QuarenTeam was out in force on our nationwide road trip so we were equipped with our own truck and best of all, an inside man who got us entry to the park and use of his camp for as long as we wanted all for free. 

The Main Valley

When you go to Wadi Rum you turn off the main highway and you set off into a landscape of slowly rising bulbous peaks. After a short drive you arrive in Rum village and it’s literally the end of the road. You go over a few monumental speed bumps then you’re out onto the sandy valley floor. From there it doesn’t take long for the beauty of Wadi Rum to drag you kicking and screaming into a state of utter awe. Perhaps Wadi Rum’s most famous traveller T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described the entrance to Wadi Rum best. He wrote about this area in his autobiographical account “Seven Pillars of Wisdom” which detailed his experiences in the Middle East during the Arab Revolt. His description, although 100 years old, is strikingly poetic yet illustrative in the modern day:

“The hills on the right grew taller and sharper, a fair counterpart of the other side which straightened itself to one massive rampart of redness. They drew together until only two miles divided them: and then, towering gradually till their parallel parapets must have been a thousand feet above us, ran forward in an avenue for miles. The crags were capped in nests of domes, less hotly red than then body of the hill; rather grey and shallow. They gave the finishing semblance of Byzantine architecture to this irresistible place: this processional way greater than imagination”.

After a famous yet disappointing spring, which requires an uphill scramble with other tourists, the next main tourist stop is the large sand dune and Khaz’ali canyon. Before Jordan shut every international border, the gently undulating sandy desert floor between the great mountain walls was dotted by trucks. From on high they were just ants ferrying the prizes of their hunt back to their nest, crisscrossing the desert with their tracks. However, since no tourists have been filling the countless camps, there has been no need for the same volume of trucks. The full scale of the harm that the prolonged disruption to the tourism industry has had in Jordan will eventually make itself known when the proverbial smoke clears. However, from a solely selfish point of view (having seen both options) surprise surprise I would wish for less people. It doesn’t matter if it’s an all-engulfing crowd of obnoxiously loud flag following tourists or some man with a camera, people ruin things for me with their mere presence. I am aware that I am in fact a person (a fact I deeply regret) but seeing as I cannot become a less troublesome species, I’ll just have to live with the fact that some of the hate I have for others also extends unto my self by proxy.

Khaz’ali canyon is a narrow crack in a mountain that with or without tourists is not worth much of your time. Other than a few impressive petroglyphs from unknown nomadic groups who roamed the area over 1000 years ago, there’s less than 100m of walkable canyon and then you have to turn back. The walk from the canyon to the sand dune however, is short and beautiful. First, you emerge from the shelter of the canyon and then, from under the thick blanket of mountain-cast shade, head towards a stand alone rock in the centre of the sand. Rising like a ship in a copper coloured sea, the dark rock grows more imposing as you approach. Leaning on its right side is a monotone orange slab of sand which pinches out towards the top of the rock. Once we had climbed the crumbing outcrop, the views of the surrounding landscape were beautiful. The avenue of mountains that Lawrence described stretched out to my right, while I looked out towards the last semblance of civilisation at Rum village. Ahead of me the desert floor looked as if a paintbrush had been taken to it, swiping the sand with indifferent brushes of colour from the same rusty colour palette. We ran down the big sand dune, sinking deep with every heavy stride and then, after a water break, we headed back to the truck. 

On my first trip to Wadi Rum, the next attractions were a couple of natural rock bridges which even at the time weren’t all that special. Nevertheless, for educational purposes I will show the photos below so that you can see why you should skip them and instead make the trek to Burdah Rock Bridge.

Burdah Rock Bridge

Away from the camps and towards the south eastern edge of the protected reserve is Burdah rock bridge. We had heard it was enormous and worth a hike so after arriving at our camp we set off towards it in the late afternoon. The rock bridge is up a mountain in the middle of nowhere and far off the beaten track so, once we were parked, we were excited to get going. From the get go we started up the sandstone rock, following a mix of the maps.me trail and the arrows people had carved into the mountain. There was no visible trail on the bare rocks, so sometimes we clambered up narrow cracks and sometimes shimmied around smooth faces, but on the most part the climbing was simple with plenty of hand holds. I was running around over those rocks like a mountain goat on speed, really enjoying the challenge of a climb. As we got higher the views rejected reality and slipped into a fantastical panorama of indescribable proportions. The lower mountains were rotund and squat, their surfaces smoothed and scraped by the endlessly abrasive winds, in the distance into the haze, the taller mountains reached higher with pointed peaks.  As the sun continued its downward arc, the mountain seemed to absorb the steadily deepening colours of the solar light. The rock formations which rose from the main body of the mountain like red loaves of bread were catching their final glimpse at the sun, its golden light gracing their tops for the final time that day. 

The final climb was the hardest, up a short but precariously placed rope with a long way to fall but we all made it and were greeted with the rock bridge. Much like anywhere in Wadi Rum, no photo can do this place justice. The bridge itself, according to some much more spatially aware people than me (see my Kuala Lumpur post for details of my spatial affliction) has a 35m drop to the nearest rock and it’s 300m above the valley floor. But really, all you need to know is, is you fall you will be telling your god of choice why you thought doing a cartwheel on a narrow rock bridge miles from the nearest hospital was a good idea. We all took it in turns to go on the bridge and then we spread out to take in the view as the sunset. As far as the eye could see, the wild desert unfurled around us. In the gentle afternoon breeze we sat and watched as the colours continually shifted and deepened, everyone left completely speechless by the vast scenery in front of them. 

Siq Barrah

Another off the beaten track attraction, Siq Barrah lies to the east of Wadi Rum Village. After some very long winded navigation to get there, where we followed the seemingly endless choice of tire tracks, we arrived in the wide canyon (Siq). Unfortunately for us, we had no idea we were there because the map shows Siq Barrah as a perpendicular offshoot to the true canyon so we spent a good amount of time exploring these instead of walking along the Siq itself. Each of these canyons was off to our left and the first two we explored were especially ominous with vertical walls so high that the muted afternoon light barely sunk into their depths. In one of these side adventures, some wild dogs had taken up residence in the canyon and came charging full pelt at me and Firas, making an unfriendly racket. I think alongside the similar experience in a Vietnamese alley that’s the fastest I’ve ever turned and accelerated in my life.

After that Sebastiaan, Zaid and I fancied a little more walking while the others went to get the car. We climbed up a sand dune or two and skirted by a camel skeleton before reaching the entrance to our final canyon. From the top of our sand dune the entrance was magnificent. The sun, now mercifully low in the sky was shining directly through the canyon, its light funnelled by the vertiginous sandstone walls. This enormous golden entrance only lasted a few minutes before the sun moved to highlight another area of the valley, so by the time we were on the valley floor the golden gates were gone. Looking down the canyon, the scale of the walls was beyond belief and as perspective narrowed the canyon into the distance, the rock seemed to get darker in clear defiance to the sun that had warmed its faces. We kept walking and admiring the towering stacks of rock that were climbing into the last vestiges of sunlight but eventually it was time to turn back and head to the car which should’ve been waiting for us at the entrance. With Firas and David very much not there, we continued walking the way they had to have driven. Eventually we reached them next to the beautiful convex rock face that marked the end of the Siq and we drove slowly back towards Rum village taking in the views. After a quick supply run we headed back to camp as darkness finally claimed the desert. 

Camp 1 & 2

The first camp I stayed in after my truck tour was the Seven Pillars Camp which was fairly out of the way as camps go. All the camps in Wadi Rum are tucked away under enormous mountain faces in the central part of the reserve, that way they aren’t too far away from the village or the main sights. However, Seven Pillars was on the edge of this concentration, on the way to the as of yet undiscovered Burdah rock bridge. Travelling in winter the camp was empty except for my Taiwanese pickup truck companion and a small Belgian family. With at least 20 tents we had the place to ourselves. In winter Wadi rum is a sunny, bright but a bit nippy place in the day and bloody freezing yet beautiful hellscape at night. Not satisfied by the tour, I decided to head off to find somewhere to climb and then have a look to see what was what. I crossed the wide open valley dotted with small tufts of grass heading gently downhill from the camp to the other side. There I climbed a small rocky outcrop and admired the view in the afternoon sun, in fact it was perfect apart from the wind which was making the perch a little less comfortable. So, I walked to the other end of the mountaintop and sat down out of the wind, the rock I sat on cradled me so tenderly so I leant back and found a headrest suitable for a snooze. So thats what I did, there on my mountaintop I snoozed an hour away. The sun gently warmed me while the eddying wind sent refreshing breezes my way, it was perfect. That evening I sat by the fire and read my book while sipping sweet Bedouin tea and once night fell I forgot all notions of stargazing and I ran as fast as my frozen legs would carry me to my canvas tent and dived under 5 of the thickest blankets imaginable. In the morning I woke naturally for sunrise and ran on top of the nearest rock to catch it. The sunrise was a gentle reintroduction of colour to the view but the serenity was shattered somewhat by two desert foxes having a scrap beneath me.  

The second camp (desert bird) was closer to the centre of the reserve but once we had got settled in you forget about all of that, you can’t see the other camps anyway (it’s easy to forget about how vast the place is). Summer was doing its thing and that meant trying to withstand the heat by doing as little as possible until boredom and dropping temperatures met at the sweet spot. That sweet spot usually fell around early/mid afternoon, which meant our mini adventures could be had without too much desert heat, however the fun doesn’t stop when the sun goes down. We set up a campfire in the raised sandy area that the owner of the camp had constructed in an alcove of the rock face. There we cooked, ate and most importantly star gazed on both evenings. Much like in Merzouga in Morocco, the Milky Way was draped out across the sky all night and with no light pollution or moonlight to interfere with the extrasolar light, the sight was almost overwhelming in its beauty. From the fire side there was only so much we could see, so I walked out towards the centre of the valley with my camera and stood with my neck craned back watching the galaxy reveal itself as my eyes adjusted. The milky way seemed to cross the valley too, bounding the valley walls in an arch of gentle light. Individual stars were not visible to the naked eye within the milky way but the collective brightness of millions, the light of some taking thousands of years to reach us, contributed to a cloud of celestial light. Unable to see or even comprehend the entirety of the Milky Way I watched one section of the sky, pinpricked with far flung light, it was light millions of lanterns drifting lazily on an distant interstellar sea.

Final Thoughts

Do you want to visit Mars without the certainty of a lonely death? If the answer is yes, then Wadi Rum is the place for you. It’s like dating without having to impress the parents. Like eating a tray of brownies without the self loathing and overnight diabetes. In other words, it’s an unobtainable fantasy brought to life. There’s a reason Wadi Rum has been used as a extraterrestrial film set by Hollywood for years, it’s landscape is figuratively out of this world while being very literally on this world. I’d call that… The best of both worlds.