Nothing is EVER Written
Today we are all about Lawrence of Arabia. We are in Wadi Rum, which is the central valley of the Erum area of southern Jordan. This is one of the most popular landscapes for moviemaking that exists in the world. Besides movies like Lawrence of Arabia and Queen of the Desert, this is where they film many of the outer space movies like Dune and Martian. I always thought Canyonlands in southern Utah was barren and remote, but this redefines the category. The setting is mostly red sand, highlighted by stratified rock mountains. Like in Southern Utah, these mountains simply jut out of the sand and one wonders whether there’s hundreds of feet of sand, that would make them much taller if we stood at the real bottom of the valley that might exist beneath the surface, I’m sure these mysteries have been pondered by the Bedouin tribes that inhabited this region for many millennia.
In the movie, Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence spends a day and a night in King Faisal‘s camp, pondering how to attack Aqaba. King Faisal wants the British to give him artillery and the British are unwilling or unable to do so, so Lawrence comes up with an alternative plan. His plan is to attack Aqaba, which is held by the Turkish army from the land rather than from the sea. The Turks have fortified Aqaba, but they fortified it with the presumption of an attack from the Red Sea. Lawrence’s bold plan is to come up the backside of Aqaba and attack from the land and thereby to create advantage without the resources, especially artillery, coming at the target across the treacherous Nefud Desert. My iPhone tells me that I have walked 5,671 steps so far today and about half of that has been in the sand, so in some ways I could say that I’ve spent some time trying to manage the desert sands. I can say unequivocally that taking a forced march across the sands cannot possibly be an easy feat, even if you are riding on a camel. I’m lying here in my bed in the Sun City Camp in the mid-afternoon with a cooling breeze coming through the open door of our geodesic tent, and I’m falling asleep every few minutes, so I can’t imagine how the men in Lawrence’s Arab Army managed to stay awake, riding across the Nefud Desert all night long. I’m pretty sure that if I were riding with Lawrence, I would’ve been like Gasser and fallen off in the middle of the night only to find myself wandering around in God’s Anvil as the sun comes up.
The government of Jordan is clearly catching on to the fact that the people in the world that like to travel are happy to come to Wadi Rum to enjoy being where Lawrence was more than 100 years ago. There are very few places that have served as movie sets that seem as romantic and have the draw that this place has. What the government has done has enabled the local Bedouin tribes to buy Toyota pick-up trucks and outfit their truck beds with padded benches. They then drive the tourists around across the sand and through the wadi into the canyons, and all of the nooks and crannies that the Bedouins have known about for years. They have also licensed a number of Glamping facilities like the Sun City Camp that we are staying in, which are set up to give tourists a quasi-Bedouin experience by letting them sleep out under the stars of the desert in neatly air-conditioned domes and tents that are clustered up against the craggy cliffs across the wadi, each one having its own amenities like a larger dome where dinner and breakfast are served.
Before boarding our jeep/truck we were warned to dress warmly. Perhaps this is not an issue in the summer, but in early March it was a good warning because the combination of the temperature and the wind blowing across the desert made this a far colder ride than one would’ve thought out in the desert. They have this desert buggy ride pretty well figured out at this point, with three planned stops. The first stop is at a sand dune that rises to a small rock Mesa. This allows the intrepid tourists to see how difficult it is to walk up and down a sand dune. The next stop serves two purposes, to allow visitors to view some petroglyphs put there over 2,000 years ago by the passing caravans that frequented these sands, and to give the guests a chance to enjoy some sweet, herbal tea in a Bedouin tent. It seems that Wadi Rum and Petra were at the crossroads of two famous caravan routes. The first was what is called the King’s Road, which runs north south into Saudi Arabia, and up to Gaza, and the other runs east west and heads from Gaza on Sinai out towards Iraq and Iran, and is part of the Silk Road to China. One cannot help but remember that Gaza was the famous land bridge across which much of civilization passed on its way from its origins in Africa to its ultimate locales on the other continents. Wadi Rum was one of the 60 caravanserai or Caravan Rest Stops that existed between Saudi Arabia and Gaza. Given Mike’s Motel 6 career, I kidded him that in ancient times he would’ve been a caravanserai operator.
The third and last stop on our jeep tour of the wadi was in a quiet little canyon, where the local Bedouins carved monuments of their heroes during World War I. Just like in the movie, their heroic figures were T.E. Lawrence, King Faisal, Sharif Ali, and Auda Abu Taye, the local Bedouin tribal sheik. This was the place that the Bedouin tribes camped, and where Lawrence met them after crossing Gods Anvil. It was from here that Lawrence convinced Auda Abu Taye to join forces to form the Arab Army and attack the Turks in Aqaba from the land side, catching them by complete surprise. As I stand here, looking out to the South towards Aqaba, I can see Lawrence, Ali, and Auda leading their troops on camels and horses across the desert while the Bedouin women stand amongst the hills, trilling their voices with encouragement to their warriors as they set out for battle.
There are few places as interesting and desolate as Wadi Rum and while I wouldn’t miss coming here, I also can’t imagine staying more than a day, since there is literally nothing for as far as the eye can see. Our guide Jamil, and trusty driver Samer have left us here at the Sun City Camp to fend for ourselves for the afternoon, evening and night. The facility and room are five-star and comfortable but once you step outside of your tent, you’re on a boardwalk with sand in every direction. Unlike the Safari camps of Africa, I don’t think anything is likely to jump out and eat you if you walk on the pathways at night, but I also think that the feeling of isolation is very similar, and that you’re out in the wild with very little between you and what God has created in this place.
In a few hours, we will have dinner up in the main tent, which will be cooked underground and then unburied for them to serve to us. We are told this may be the best meal we’ve ever eaten. We’ll see. Then we will spend a quiet night looking at the stars since there will be a distinct lack of light pollution, and an equally distinct lack of television or Internet in the rooms. I think we can survive one night in the wild like this and tomorrow we will be back in civilization at the Kempinski Ishtar Dead Sea Resort Hotel, which looks to be a luxurious spa-like hotel on the East bank of the Dead Sea.
I don’t know that when I first saw Lawrence of Arabia many years ago, I ever thought that I would spend the night in Wadi Rum, but here we are. Fate and fortune are tricky things and we are all masters of our own fate. In the words of T.E. Lawrence, nothing is EVER written.