Wadi Rum
Jordan 2021
We get up early, at 7 a.m. Today we are going to the Wadi Rum Desert!
The desert is 70 kilometers from Aqaba, and it takes us an hour to get there. The road ends in the village of the same name, Wadi Rum.
The village is very small and dusty. It is a meeting place for tourists and Bedouins, who take visitors around the desert in jeeps, showing them the most important sights. At first, I also thought we would go by jeep, but Volchiy found a report about a guy who walked through the desert on foot, and we decided that we wanted to do the same.
The village has a large parking lot where we leave the car and then set off on foot.
There are many jeep tracks in the desert, and they are easy to walk on, as the sand is packed down.
The beginning of our journey through the desert
Thanks to the wind, it’s not as hot as I thought it would be. We reach the first attraction - the red sand dunes.
At the foot of the dune there are lots of jeeps, and tourists are climbing up the dune. Volchy leaves me in the shade with the backpacks and goes up too. When Volchy comes back, we eat bananas and keep going. Along the way, we feed the camels banana peels. Their front legs are tied together, and they hop around funny.
Me and the view of the dune
Volchiy photographed the view from the dune
Feeding camels banana peels
Our next destination is the Khaz'ali canyon. I am amazed by the height of the cliffs, their color, and the surface of the walls.
Inside the canyon itself, it is narrow and crowded with people. It is very short, just a couple of dozen meters; we reach the dead end, turn back, and continue on.
Towering Pink Cliffs
Entrance to the canyon
The canyon is narrow and crowded
An hour later we reach another popular tourist spot - Little Bridge. There are again lots of jeeps and people here - everyone wants to take a photo on the little bridge. We climb up the mountain, drink water, eat cookies, and wait for the crowd to thin out a bit so we can take a photo too :)
Approaching Little Bridge.
I’m on the bridge :)
After this point, there were significantly fewer people and jeeps, and it felt much more like we were in the desert. We were already getting tired.
We sit down to rest in the shade of a very beautiful rock. Volchiy tries to climb up the sheer wall. The whole wall is full of holes, so three-dimensional.
A very beautiful cliff and pink sand
At around one o’clock in the afternoon, we reach our camp, where we are to spend the night. We are warmly welcomed by the host. He pours tea from a thermos. We sit in a large tent-dining room.
Besides us, there is one other tourist in the camp — a retired man from the Czech Republic. He doesn’t speak English, and his Russian is very poor, but we managed to chat with him a little. According to the plan, we still have a hike to Mushroom Rock. So we say goodbye to the Czech man and set off again!
Our camp
Dining Room
After the rest, it seems that I have regained my strength, but it doesn’t last long.
In this part of the desert there are no people or jeeps at all. Endless expanses. The sun slowly sinks toward the horizon and everything around transforms, the colors take on a deeper shade - the bright red sand and rocks are clearly visible. I am tired and we often stop to drink water or shake sand out of our boots (which immediately gets packed back in again).
At last we reach the stone mushroom! We take a few photos and head back to camp. Evening is falling. The whole desert is already in shadow.
Mushroom Rock
The wolf climbs up the rock
The camp has a hot-water shower and toilets with regular flushing! It remains a mystery where all this water comes from to make it possible. How nice it is to take a hot shower in the desert!
By evening, other tourists arrived at the camp, making about 15 guests in total. For dinner, we had the traditional Bedouin dish, zarb. Zarb is chicken with vegetables, cooked for 2 hours in an iron barrel buried in the sand. We gather around the zarb and watch as our dinner is dug up.
Dinner Excavations
Royal dinner in the desert - chicken, vegetables, flatbread and rice
After dinner we sit by the campfire, drinking sweet, strong black tea. Before going to sleep, we walk a little away from the camp to look at the sky. So many stars here! The Big Dipper hangs unusually low above the horizon.
It’s cool in the evening, but much warmer than I thought. We decided to stay in this camp for another night. Tomorrow we’ll wander the desert again. Today we covered 18 km.
