A Dune Zoom Through Wadi Rum!

Amman → Wadi Rum → Wadi Musa
251.7 mi (405.0 km)

Sabah el kheir, liljamie!

I stepped off an overnight flight from Rome into the deep blue of a Middle Eastern morning. Over the steady azif of crickets echoed the Allahu akbars of the 4:20 salat al-Fajr. For I have arrived in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and if this introduction to the Middle East wasn’t otherworldly enough, I was about to be astonished by a place that truly belongs on Mars: the red deserts of Wadi Rum!

With my handmade keffiyeh wrapped around my head to protect me from the sun and heat, I headed south on the amazingly bleak Desert Highway. I learned a lot on this nearly four-hour drive, like how lanes are optional but police are very vigilant! I learned the hard way that this highway comes with very large speed bumps! I also learned how much fun it was to see camel crossing signs and the many different styles of local mosques. Then the mountains of Wadi Rum appeared in the distance through the morning haze, and I heard the call to adventure!

Any good adventure in the Middle East starts with tea, and as I pulled into Wadi Rum village and checked in with Bedouin Lifestyle Tours, there was plenty of tea to go around! Tea is super important for business and social gatherings, and even though it was already a toasty day, this sweet tea really hit the spot!

I had originally scheduled a climb to the Burdah Rock Bridge, but Attallah the booking agent convinced me to join the 11:00 full day tour instead, promising that we would cover a lot more ground and see a lot more sites. Plus, there would be lunch! That sounded a-OK to me, so I joined a group of other visitors from around the world and, just like in Monument Valley, piled into a truck with our guide, Khaled, and headed out into the desert!

Our first stop on the tour was Khazali Canyon, a super narrow slot canyon named for a thief named Ali who made a leap (khaz) from the top to escape his pursuers and miraculously survived! Though Ali had a miraculous escape, the hundreds of Blaps beetles filling the pools at the canyon’s end were not so lucky! It was super grim, but the walls here are part of the reason UNESCO recognizes and protects this area. It’s covered in petroglyphs left behind by folks of the Thamudic (8th century BC), Nabatean (6th century BC), and Islamic (7th century AD) cultures, who enjoyed the shade of this canyon and probably drank from the same beetle-filled pools!

Our next stop was considerably more touristy. There was an artisan tent for shopping, sand boarding down the red dunes, and of course, camel rides! As I observed some of the other folks hanging around in the shade here, I realized I was wearing my keffiyeh incorrectly: no one had it wrapped around their faces! So, I made some adjustments just in time to find a flat rock and whiz down the dunes!

Atop this sandy hill, the red desert stretched for miles! With few visible plants and endless stretches of dry reds and rocky contrasts, it’s no wonder this has been the scene for so many science fiction movies! It’s been the Martian landscape in three movies and other alien worlds in four more, including the Star Wars and Dune series! But it was the 1962 movie, Lawrence of Arabia that really drew attention to Wadi Rum! Here in the so-called Valley of the Moon, T.E. Lawrence gathered forces to attack Aqaba during the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and 1918!

Nowadays, the fight has gone from Wadi Rum, and instead, it’s dedicated to tourism and the activities that draw it in, like camel rides! There were dromedary camels everywhere, some dressed for riding and some wearing nothing but leg ties. Did you know that none of the camels wandering Wadi Rum are wild? They range freely, but they naturally return to their homes at the end of the day, which makes them easy to track! They’re also huge, up to six and a half feet tall, and, after riding one to lunch, really, really gassy!

Though there wasn’t going to be time to visit the Burdah Rock Bridge, which was a 6-hour climb, after a sack lunch, we headed to another rock bridge, called the Little Rock Bridge, which still offered up an amazing vantage point for photos! I also learned at this stop that I still had one more adjustment to make to my keffiyeh to fit how local Bedouin folks wear it. I think I’m good to go now!

We also checked out a really neat rock formation that looked like a cobra head, but in geologic terms is known as a Mushroom Rock! Just like the arches of Arches National Park, this mushroom rock was formed from years of wind and sandblasting etching away pieces to leave behind this unique sculpture!

From there, we drove further into the desert, while Khaled demonstrated his death-defying truck surfing skills. Our next two stops were short treks into two canyons, near Abu Khsheibah, where we caught glimpses of the Burdah Rock Bridge and met some baby camels, and Siq Burrah, where we scrambled up a slot canyon and down a sandy dune, next to some locals who were sand sledding!

Though I was starting to get a little tired after these two treks, we still had more to see, including another towering rock bridge called Um Fruth, which had visitors scrambling all over it! It’s super popular for taking photos, though one of our travel companions discovered halfway up that she was deathly afraid of heights, so we had to help her down.

As the sun got lower, we stopped for a water break, not for us, but for the local camel herd. Khaled took us to a spring and started filling a trough with buckets of water. It was like a dinner bell, because camels started to appear from all over, slipping and stumbling on the sandstone to get a slurp of precious water! Though camels can survive without drinking for up to six months, they’ll take any chance they can get to stock up!

At last, at the end of a long day, it was time to wrap up our tour with a view of the sunset. We parked by the appropriately named Cow Rock, or Chicken Rock, which to me had the face of our current president, and climbed up on some other rocks for a nice view of the sun setting over the desert!

From this calm vantage point, the haze slowly swallowed the sun and returned the desert to the same dark blue as when I had met it, though we were far enough away from all minarets that there was only desert silence and two more cups of tea in place of a salat al-Maghrib!

As darkness fell over the desert, the truck trundled down the sandy paths to the campsite, where I had to sadly decline the invitation to stay the night in a tent and enjoy dinner and singing. That’s because I still had a two hour drive ahead of me. So once they returned me to Wadi Rum Village, I turned my attention northward along the famed Kings Highway. The way was dark, winding, and loaded with surprise speed bumps, which kept me awake through pure fear! Luckily, around 9:00, I cruised into Wadi Musa and rinsed off a bunch of sand at the Petra Edom Hotel.