A whistlestop tour of Wadi Rum

After an awesome day in Petra the original plan was that we would get on the road and head back to site the next day, but after a bit of research we decided to go out and take a 2 hour tour around a very small part of another stunning part of the area, and another UNESCO site called Wadi Rum .

The area itself is enormous so a 2 hour tour was very much only an introduction to a stunning part of Jordan where evidence of human habitation can be traced back over 12,000 years. The area is full of ancient carvings and inscriptions on the striking red sandstone formations. Wadi Rum was just on a different scale to Petra - Petra is much more mountainous and full of valleys and peaks, whereas Wadi Rum is made of of absolutely huge sandstone outcrops and massive wide valleys full of rusty looking red sand. Wadi Rum feels like what I imagine it would be like being on Mars, so it is little wonder they have filed Stars Wars movies here.

Our tour guide here was a real let down and was basically just a taxi driver driving us between the 4 different sites we went to.

Wadi Rum was also a base for Lawrence of Arabia during the Arab revolt between 1916 and 1918 and the first stop on our tour was the Lawrence of Arabia springs where T.E Lawrence's troops often congregated and fed and watered themselves using the spring water that comes out of one of the mountains. The spring is still active today and it was cool taking a drink from it given all the history of the site.

Next stop was a bit of a fizzer, a cool rocky outcrop you could scramble up and get great views out over the alien looking red sandy valleys, but not much more so didnt stay there long.

The 3rd stop was to an incredible looking, narrow canyon in between what looked like a mountain that has been split in two. Very cool spot and we had a great time exploring that as far up as we could go.

The highlight of the two hour tour was the fourth and final stop - one of the handful of beautiful, natural stone arch bridge formations that are dotted around the area - a very instagrammable photo opportunity - ha ha. another scramble up a rock formation gets you to the area where the bridge is - I had visions of getting some amazing photos stood proudly on top of the stone arch, but my fear of heights, which I swear is getting worse, got the better of me and I only managed a couple of very hurried photos while my legs were trembling and before long I had to get off the arch.

Somewhere again that I am very keen to get back to some time, the wider Wadi Rum area has a number of fancy campsites and to do all the sights justice you should really spend 2-3 days there, but that was something we just weren't able to do this time, so we got in the car and started the very long journey back to site.

I loved my time in Jordan and it is somewhere I am desperate to come back to with Joan and the girls some day. Czytaj więcej