Day 2 Wadi Rum

So now we are journeying down Desert Highway to amazing Wadi Rum - a landscape of rugged sandstone mountains among an ochre desert floor .

We meet our Bedouin hosts before getting onto the area. It’s old jeeps for transport which is ok Pippa tells me !

In the midst of nowhere there’s an old steam engine ! T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia”—the Arabs fought interrupting train passages during 1916 . The origins of the modern Middle East thus trace their way back to the attacks on the trains of the Hejaz Railway desert stop and the refurbished locomotive

This place is called “Valley of the Moon” and it used to be seabed but the water went and now all that’s left is a huge aquifer beneath which they take water from).
The scenery: high sand dunes, rocky mountains with incredible shapes, narrow canyons of many colours , impressive rock arches, 4,000-year-old rock engravings,

It’s a real piece of Mars on Earth as it was used Mars in “The Martian” and possibly Star Wars I think

We climb the dunes (Pippa sort of happy ) and ascend to a small rock bridge at Al-Hasany Dunes. - Pippa not happy ! The dunes
occupy a relatively small area, as they rise for many feet accumulating against the slopes of Jebel Umm Ulaydiyya mountain.

Then we travel onto the Burdah rock bridge, a spectacular 260-foot-high natural bridge - not climbed (Pippa happy) as it needs to be preserved.

Then we camp but actually tents are above ground and with some electricity and a comfortable double bed !

Before retiring it’s the stars - however moon is pretty bright but look amazing at 3am !Read more