Summary

The author shares their experience of spending a day and a night in Wadi Rum Desert, Jordan, which defied their preconceived notions of a desert landscape and led to a magical and adventurous journey.

Abstract

The article recounts the author's personal experience in Wadi Rum Desert, which contrasted sharply with their expectations shaped by literature and stories like "The English Patient." Instead of endless wavy dunes and mirages, the author found a diverse landscape filled with rock formations and a surprising lack of the anticipated mirages. The trip, which initially provoked anxiety due to the prospect of sleeping in a tent and potential discomforts, turned out to be an enchanting adventure. The author highlights the simplicity and beauty of the desert, the hospitality of the Bedouins, and the joy of disconnecting from civilization. Activities such as sand-surfing and the unique experience of dining on food cooked in the sand added to the allure. The desert's Martian-like landscape has also made it a popular filming location for movies like "Dune" and "The Martian." The author concludes by emphasizing the profound impact of the desert experience, which surpassed even the awe of visiting Petra, and the value of simple pleasures in nature without modern distractions.

Opinions

The author initially envisioned the desert as a place of mirages and hardship, influenced by fiction and childhood stories.
The reality of Wadi Rum Desert was far more diverse and interesting than the author's imagined version, with unique rock formations and a lack of mirages.
The author overcame initial hesitations about the trip, particularly concerning comfort and potential hazards like insects.
The desert experience was described as magical and transformative, with the author particularly enjoying the simplicity of Bedouin life and the absence of tourist traps.
The author was impressed by the desert's role in Hollywood, noting its use as a filming location for several well-known movies.
The author recommends trying food cooked in the sand and emphasizes the joy of stargazing without light pollution in Wadi Rum.
The desert experience in Wadi Rum left a deeper impression on the author than the famous historical site of Petra.

Traveling

A Day and a Night in Wadi Rum Desert

To see or not to see mirages

The desert was nothing like I had imagined it to be.

After I had finished reading “The English Patient” (by Michael Ondaatje), the very idea of the desert stayed with me. Not once did I imagine it to have a certain charm, but of which kind, I was never quite sure.

Reality Versus Expectations

I had this picture in my head of people walking in the blazing heat looking for water, and every now and then seeing mirages.

I was well aware that this was just fiction, but still, when I visited Jordan and got a chance to spend a day and a night in Wadi Rum, I was expecting certain things.

Maybe not finding Oases exactly, but something close to that.

Well, I have had my share of Arabian Night stories as a child, and they have certainly left a print on me.

While I have seen how wind moving sand everywhere and the shimmering heat could trick the mind into believing in mirages, nothing remotely magical happened while I was there. That is if you don’t count the metaphorical uses of the term. As my trip was magical indeed.

The vast immensity of sand which in my mind was wavy (the dunes), but very much alike everywhere you looked proved to be far from being so. There might indeed be deserts like the one I had pictured in my mind: vast sepia landscapes with wavy dunes, but this was definitely not one of them.

There were rock formations everywhere and all of them had different shapes.

The sea of sand was not wavy as I had imagined it to be and the dunes were not like waves at all. You could not see them regularly displayed on the whole ground. Big heaps of sand had been pushed by wind closer to cliffs and getting on top of them (which we did a few times) was quite a challenge as ascending was really far from being easy.

I had almost given up on the idea of going on this particular trip to Jordan just because it included a day and a night in the desert (which meant sleeping in a tent, so kind of out of my comfort zone). And then I just didn’t and went for it.

Before the trip, I had kept thinking there would be insects or things crawling, there had been mentions of the night being chilly there, so I had kept picturing some how I was going to be shivering and not be able to sleep at all for the whole night. How I was going to hate it.

Fast forward, I loved the desert.

It was not cold (at least, not even by far as cold as I had expected it to be during the night) and there were no insects. In fact, it was nothing like I had imagined it to be. And it was the best experience ever… a real adventure.

Walking in the sand barefoot trying to reach the top of a dune or another to get a better perspective over the Martian landscape or drinking Bedouin tea while sitting on the sand in a semicircle, facing Mecca in the middle of nowhere while waiting for the sunset… Such simple things, yet so fulfilling.

Brewing tea in Wadi Rum while waiting for the sunset. Photo credit: author

Also, I had no idea before spending some time in this particular desert that there was such a thing as sand-surfing. Sand-surfing is exactly what it sounds: you get to do some surfing, not on waves, but on dunes.

I did not have the guts to do it as I don’t go snowboarding either, nor did I manage to stay on the plank the only time I tried surfing, but I enjoyed watching the few people from our group who ventured to do it. It seemed like a lot of fun and adrenaline seemed to kick in hard while doing it.

A Few Facts About This Particular Desert:

- Quite a few movies had scenes that had been filmed in Wadi Rum. Here are the most famous ones:

Dune
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
The Martian (no wonder that scenes from this movie were shot here as the landscape seems to be Martian indeed)
Prometheus
Lawrence of Arabia (this one is a classic and it might be the first movie ever to have been filmed in this particular desert)

- We slept in tents, but these looked more like little houses made of wood. We had clean sheets and there were toilets with running water. We also had showers.

- There was a big tent where the food was served and it was great to have this shelter because at some point the wind was blowing really hard and it was a bit unbearable to stay outside.

- Bedouins offered us tea several times and they were brewing it in a large black teapot. It tasted like black tea (so it must’ve been black), but they were adding sugar (a lot of it) while brewing it and there was no way to get any without it (I usually don’t add any sugar to tea).

- We had dinner cooked in the sand and it was delicious. There was a smoky taste to the vegetables and meat cooked so. So, if you ever go to this particular desert, make sure to try food cooked this way!

Conclusions

I know that everybody who goes to Jordan is really amazed by Petra and I was quite amazed by it as well.

For me, however, the desert was an even more wonderful experience. I loved the landscape, the lack of tourist traps (in Petra there are so many tourist traps that at some point it just becomes tiresome to deal with them), and the simplicity of the Bedouins.

You also have this amazing feeling while being there, in the middle of nowhere… a bit cut off from civilization (there was no Internet connection for the whole duration of our stay there). Thanks to the lack of distractions of any kind, you have time to pay attention to everything around you.

Also, getting to spend the night there is something else as well. You get to see a lot of stars (if you are lucky and the sky is clear) as there is no light pollution, and you get to remember how simple pleasures such as this one can bring more joy than anything else money can buy.