After Karak we beelined it towards the Wadi Rum Desert where we would spend the night with a Bedouin Tribe. Unfortunately we arrived very late on a moonless night and we couldn’t see anything while the 4WD Jeep transported us through the desert. But the stars! I hadn’t seen that many stars for a long time. If it hadn’t been so darn cold we would have just lain out in the sand and watched the night sky.


Wadi Run night sky
  The Bedouins are a great bunch of guys and the food might have been the best of the entire trip. We didn’t know exactly what to expect while camping with the Bedouin but it was very comfortable. We each had our own private tent with a small comfortable bed and enough blankets to stave off the cold. Even though we had a shared toilet facility it was very clean and modern.
 


Warm breakfast fire on
a cold clear morning.

Everyone congregated in a large lodge-like tent and drank Bedouin whiskey (non-alcoholic sweet tea). Since we had arrived in the dark we had no idea what our surroundings looked like until the next morning and then it was WOW! It was like mixing Moab, UT and Sedona, AZ together and then adding really fine sand between all of the rocks and bluffs. It is one of the most beautiful desert settings I have ever seen.


Sunrise with the our private tents in the background
 


Bedouin camp

 Breakfast was particularly good that morning with good food, good company, crisp cool air, blue sky, and a warm fire in the lodge tent. Of the entire 3 week trip I would have most liked to have had an extra day here. It was just plain fun and very enjoyable. I wish every American had an opportunity to experience camping with the Bedouins in the Wadi Rum Desert.


Camels await our 3 hour trek
  After breakfast the sun quickly began to warm the day as we took off across the Wadi Rum on a 3 hour camel ride.
 


Solomon, our camel driver

 Solomon, our camel driver, had a constant smile but rarely said much and stayed a distance away from us allowing us to just enjoy the surroundings and the trek. We were both surprised with how comfortable the camels were.

 
I wasn’t even remotely sore after the ride or the next day.

Wadi Rum Desert petroglyphsHappy trails
 

The only negative came when I was getting off the camel. He was so happy to get me off his back that when he got down to his knees he immediately rolled over on his back sending me flying and rolling over the sand. Luckily I wasn’t injured but my jeans weren’t so fortunate. My seat caught on the saddle horn and ripped a big hole in the butt. This was made an even bigger deal since just a few days earlier the laundry service in Luxor tried to iron my REI nylon pants and damaged them to the point of being unwearable. I was now down to one pair of pants and still a week and a half left in the trip. Luckily we were headed for Petra which is Mahmoud’s home town and he was able to find a lady to repair my jeans.

 

Egypt, Jordan, and Paris 2009
Egypt Home | Cairo Area | Abu Simbel & Aswan | Luxor | Northwest Jordan | Wadi Rum | Petra | Paris

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Revised April 05, 2009