Sundowner: Spring/Summer 2019

do with a sandstone canal. The devil is in the detail. Or in the
desert. My final stop, Wadi Rum, is relentlessly spectacular, and
relentlessly harsh.
I experience it in the safe hands of Mahmoud Zawaideh.
The Bedouin guide, raised among the sun-burnished cliffs
and multi-hued dunes with a sheikh for a grandfather, uses a
contemporary ship of the desert: a 4x4 Toyota Hilux.
We roam across interplanetary landscapes – inspiration for
film directors from David Lean and Ridley Scott to Michael Bay
– study ancient petroglyphs, and the towering slash of a valley
where TE Lawrence is said to have spent shady days among the
forces of the Arab Revolt.
The tour ends with tea beneath the pillowy dusk outline of
the Rum mountains. “I couldn’t live anywhere else,” whispers
Mahmoud. “The desert is my heart.”
Although only 45 minutes from Aqaba, I’d strongly
recommend staying in one of Wadi Rum’s camps. Not just for
the lamb, roasted in a traditional zarb earth oven, or for the
billion-tog duvet of stars, but for that sunrise camel ride. Yes, my
mount might have interrupted the immense poetic silence with
a mighty burp. Yes, I may have been serenaded by the timeless
ring of Bader’s mobile phone. But that magnificently abrupt
brushstroke of wilderness paint, followed by the eye-popping
speed of the sunrise – from sliver to burning orb in 60 seconds –
will remain with me to the end of my days.
from top: Wadi Rum; Black Rock Jetty, underwater in Aqaba; Dead Sea;
Petra’s Treasury; Aqaba Gulf at night
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