The end of Wadi Rum

One last shot of the red sands, in a truly magical place. I've really enjoyed going through this last set of photos.

Maybe I'll get to go back one day. And maybe I'll just have to settle for having been lucky enough to see it once.

Speaking of sexy, sinuous curves of red rock....

Still in Wadi Rum

These very old mountains are quite different from those sexy, sinuous curves of red rock, but a nice lesson in geology, and how time wears us all down eventually.

Rock of ages cleft for me

More Wadi Rum.

Monday flashback: Wadi Rum

A different kind of rock art, made by wind and weather instead of human hands.

And speaking of languages I don't understand...

I've been pleasantly surprised to find a lot of interesting pictures of Wadi Rum I'd never processed -- I'll post some of them this week.

I'm fascinated by these petroglyphs. I see a symbol for the moon, I think, and a stick figure that's probably a man, but that's all I can understand.  Some of the rock art in Wadi Rum is more than 5000 years old, and the people who wrote the message, and the people it was meant for, are long gone. But they considered it important enough to justify the time necessary to incise it into bare rock, and that makes me wish I could read it, even a little bit.

There was a man. He would have lived in the desert, surrounded by mountains. A crescent moon rose in the black sky. 

That's all I can tell you, of a much longer story that no one now remembers.

Flashback: Jordan

And moving on to 2017 in my photo cleanup project, here's a lovely shot I can't believe I missed: morning in the Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum.

A last look at Wadi Rum

Bubble tents

These Space Age tents are designed for stargazing, so I'm glad I didn't waste money on an upgrade -- I loved my little pointed tent with the rugs and draperies, and there weren't any stars to be seen anyway.

But they do look very cool against the mountains in the morning fog.

Morning in the desert

I'd really wanted to see the stars in Wadi Rum, but it started to get overcast as soon as it was dark, and they were only bright glimpses behind the clouds.

The next morning it was drizzly and gray, and the rain on the stone made bright colors under the dim sky.

Evening view from my tent

Overnight

This is my tent in the  camp in Wadi Rum where I spent the night.

The toilets were a five-minute walk away, which was fun at 4 o'clock in the morning when it was pitch black dark and way below freezing.

Fortunately the tents had heaters, and fur throws to pile on the bed and thick Bedouin robes to wear. And the beds had carved headboards and embroidered pillows and silky draperies. So I wasn't exactly roughing it.

In fact it was so warm and comfortable that I fell asleep and missed dinner.

Not the Lawrence Train

This train is actually parked at the train station just outside Wadi Rum, but since I was writing about Lawrence of Arabia, it's on topic. 

I don't think they do it anymore, but this is a replica of the old trains that used to travel through the desert here (complete with a red Turkish flag, which you can just see at the back of the picture on the right) used for re-enactments of the famous train battle scene in the movie. Just in case you've ever fantasized about being attacked by Bedouins while you were minding your own business on a train. 

Now if I got to be one of the Bedouins doing the attacking, that might be fun.

Lawrence House

Not exactly a house -- actually ruins around an old Nabataean cistern -- but T.E. Lawrence probably stayed here at some point during the Arab revolt and so it is now and forever named for him. Along with a large puddle known as Lawrence's Spring, and a rock formation near Wadi Rum Village called the Seven Pillars of Wisdom after Lawrence's famous book (I counted only four and a half pillars myself.)

Supposedly the movie Lawrence of Arabia was the reason tourists started visiting Jordan in large numbers, but it's odd that in such a beautiful place, in a region not lacking in history, so much fuss is still made over a random Englishman who did not actually look much like Peter O'Toole.

Life on Mars, part 2

This is probably my favorite panorama (after this one.)

Life on Mars

Plus there were camels

A camel at one of the Bedouin camps we visited.

Tea in the desert

Suleiman and a friend at a camp where we stopped for tea.

Petroglyphs

Carvings on one of the canyon walls.

Um Fruth

Two looks at Um fruth, one of the natural stone bridges in Wadi Rum, with slightly different light. And me.