Cold desert

On our last night in Petra we phoned around to a couple guides in the Wadi Rum area (southern Jordan). Finally getting a hold of one we were given a quote on a price for desert: camping accommodations, camel tours, and transportation to and from the sight. After putting down the phone in the hotel room it immediately rang and it was one of the guides who I could not reach earlier who had my number on his “missed calls”. I told him we had already booked a tour and said sorry we wouldn’t need his help; whereupon he asked me what price I was given and gave us a lower one. My first mistake was talking any further than “hello” with him and my second mistake was then telling my travel partners the new situation and lower prices.



Obviously intrigued they agreed to take this guide instead, so I had to call back to the first one and tell him not to find camels because we would NO LONGER need his help. He asked me what price we got from the other man and told me that people like this other man run scams on tourists, promote child labor, hike up prices, and are not listed in Lonely Planet travel books (like himself), not having a Lonely Planet for Jordan I had to take his word on it, third mistake.

Obviously concerned about many aspects of safety we chose to go with our original quote and with yet another phone call to cancel another trip we were set. Don’t barter on the telephone, it’s a recipe for disaster; all the things the first guide warned us that other guides would do to us, he did (kept money we paid him for national park tickets, used child labor, had higher prices for less).

I by no means measured the value of my trip in money; it was beyond price in what I took away from it. But looking back you always find little things you would have liked to change.



We mounted our camels as they were sitting down and then without spurs or reigns wrestled to stay on them as they stood up. A camel rises methodically from rear to front and this puts you at quite a challenge because of the shift of weight and great incline/decline.



Riding a camel is much like a horse. It is a bit slower of a ride and gait because of the longer strides taken; front and rear legs of the same side move at the same time. It is not as bumpy as a horse, from what I remember, and you let your shoulders roll with the movement giving you the air of a dignitary.



After four hours, 12 kilometers, and three sightseeing stops we arrived at camp. The breaks were needed during the ride as I am not used to saddles. We stopped at a spring named after TE Lawrence, a huge sand dune (which we climbed), and a mountain fissure.


During the ride we were all smiles; laughing at the chance to ride a camel and enjoying even more unbelievable views. My camera really cannot capture the scope a person has out in the desert, the freedom, space, and ability to get lost in thought and reality. I can see how you can get disorientated, as many precipices look alike and the distances between them seem short but are actually quite far.




I felt like I was being guided through a painting. The sky was a beautiful blue with wisps of clouds and something about the air made it seem like the bluffs were on the other side of glass, yet the colors were bold and flowed steadily.



We got to camp and were introduced to the volunteers, accommodations, and facilities. They decline in that order. Let me elucidate.



The people were great, from all over the world with different stories and reasons for doing what they were doing. They were funny, outgoing, and knowledgeable. They are the kind of people that after you talk to them, you want to go out and challenge yourself.





The tents were thick cloth with woven mat floors. Our beds were old mattresses with thick blankets, neither seemed to have been washed in a while. We slept in our clothes not because we needed the extra layer for warmth but for an aesthetic boundary to ease our minds. Early in the morning, still dark out, I was in a deep dream and in my mind I heard a “shake…shake…shake” like a bag of sand or flower seeds being shaken. Immediately I was out of my dream and wide awake, I’m thinking snake. It was pitch black in the tent and I had no light within reach. All I can picture is this humongous cobra rising next to my head ready to strike, I mean I am fearing for my life.



Out of the corner of my mouth I whisper to Johannes and Martin to wake up. Johannes does, and after I beg him to turn on a light we see nothing out of the ordinary. I grab my camera, lights go off, and we lay back down and not even 30 seconds later it happens again. I turn my camera light on and see nothing. Johannes says, “oh its nothing, go to sleep”.


I search, banging my shoes on the woven mat, to no avail and then lie back down. A minute or so passes and all of a sudden Johannes bolts up and turns on his light saying the sound is by him now. I put my arms behind my head, lie on my back, smile, and say “oh its nothing, go to sleep” as he proceeds to bang his shoes on the mat. We didn’t find anything and at breakfast were told that more than likely it was a mouse or an insect.





The camp had a small generator connected to lights in only the most important of places. I failed to familiarize myself with the bathroom before the cover of darkness and after dinner had to use my camera flash in order to navigate. I felt like I was in a horror movie not only because after I took each picture and then looked at the screen to see what lay ahead of me, half expecting a killer or ghost to appear on it, the toilets were rancid and offensive.

Don't let me leave you with a bad image, I loved this trip. It was the anti-Israel and it only helps me gain more of an insight on the differences between cultures and the mind states that continue to separate races, religions, and cultures. Unbelievable.