On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
TKH
Let’s bring this series home and fast forward to Wadi Rum and the final stretch to Aqaba.
After climbing out of Wadi Aheimar I found myself on a high plain with Jabel Kharaz and Wadi Rum on the horizon. The plan was to explore the area around Jabel Kharaz and then head cross-country to the entrance to Wadi Rum. I had pre-deployed some supplies in Rum Village for the last five or six days that it would take me to explore some of Wadi Rum and the hike from its Southern end to Aqaba.
The last week of the hike was dominated by hiking in sand, deep, very fine (because wind-blown) sand.
Here I am walking on solid sand towards Jabal Kharaz. Whenever you can you walk on sand containing shards of rocks, a surface much easier to walk on then pure sand. This is what one calls micronavigation, figuring out as you walk where you want to be walking 50 ft hence. Doing this well saves a lot of energy. The landscape here had a gentle up and down to it, crossing shallow wadis every couple of hundred yards. You just walk by compass bearing after having picked some landmark on the horizon that, at a minimum, you can pick out as you come out of one of the wadis to make sure that you are on course.
I would be crossing the Desert Highway, one of two highways linking the port of Aqaba to the rest of the country, within the next few hours. I had seen some shops along the highway, so there would be good water, which I very much looked forward to.
When I saw this arch, I knew that I had done my orienteering correctly.
Notice the tire tracks in foreground. This is apparently a standard destination for the jeep tours. Although in Fall of ’24 there hardly were any jeep tours and the Bedouin camps where people stay for a night in cabins or Bedouin tents were closed. The Bedouin were hurting because, unromantic as it may be, they make their living from tourism.
On the side of Jabel Kharaz the map highlights a Nabatean well. This is it, but it’s very much a contemporary take on the Nabatean well. The Nabateans picked the location and had a well there, 2000+ years ago. What you now see is what the Bedouin made of it.
The way this works is that the rain water runoff off the bare sides of Jabel Kharaz is collected here. You see the hole at ground level on the left. That is where the water enters the cistern.
The five-gallon plastic jug and the piece of barbed wire are used to retrieve water through the top hole. The mattress support prevents particularly thirsty animals from leaning over too far and going down the “hatch”. When I was there, the water level was about 20 ft below the rim of the well. I carry a throw line on my hikes, a 2.5 mm Dyneema rope, so I could lower a weighed-down stuff sack and retrieve water that way. I doubt that the Bedouin use this water as potable water rather than as water for animals.
Here you see the original Nabatean water diversion from the side of the mountain in the form of a groove carved into the bulk rock. The Bedouin have “improved” on that by cementing in place smaller rocks to deepen the groove. The improvement may also have been necessary to compensate for erosion of the original Nabatean groove. 2000 years of sand and water erosion will do some damage, I would think.
Mushroom Rock is a popular site to watch the sunset and since I happened to be there on a Friday night ( the equivalent of Sunday night in Western countries) it was a bit busy with local families. Once the sun was down I had the place to myself.
To lighten my load I had brought a tarp on this trip rather than a tent. A tarp is a A-frame tent minus the side walls and the floor. This is good enough for protection from rain, which I did not experience at all during this trip, but it really sucks at protecting you from wind-blown sand and that was a real problem in Wadi Rum. For the entire trip I had slept under the stars in just my quilt on an air mattress. In Wadi Rum, however, for the next few days I would be spending the last hour of daylight to find a spot where natural features like rocks would shield me from the wind. Once or twice I had to build a rock wall to sleep behind
Here I camped near the aptly named but long-abandoned Sand Storm Bedouin camp. The sand you suspended in the air comes from off-frame to the right and has been deposited in this massive dune.
Nearby to the canyon with the giant sand dune ids a slot canyon, Siq in Arabic, that I wanted to hike. I made it through with a hair’s width to spare on top and on the sides of my through-hiker backpack. This would certainly be much easier if you were dropped off by Jeep and picked upon the other side, but where’s the challenge in that?
This is near the Southern end of Wadi Rum where I would be taking a right and walk for three days through the Gulf of Aqaba coastal mountains to Aqaba. There was going to be one small town on that stretch which supposedly had a supermarket, but one with irregular hours. It was critical that I would be able to get water there since I could not get any along the way, there simply is no water source, however disreputable, shown on the map.
In Wadi Rum the Bedouin camps are supplied by water trucks and I saw a few of them on my hike through the valley. However, there were no more camps beyond the Southern border of the heritage site. On the advice of a local I had entered the empty camps in Wadi Rum and served myself whenever I could figure out how the plumbing worked. So I loaded up one more time and got moving.
I have left the World Heritage site of Wadi Rum and will now be crossing a day-and-a-half’s worth of desert to reach the coastal mountains. These mountains are tall enough to appear as distinct contour lines on my electronic map. I just have to read the shape of them and, if they are elongated, determine their direction via compass and I can find out where I am. I was a bit nervous, but it really worked very well if I took the time. When I did not, not so much. I learned very quickly to triple check any decision I made.
This was the only macro fauna I saw, a bunch of wild camel. None of them had the rigging on their head that domesticated camels wear when they are released to the backcountry to fend for themselves in times of economic hardship. They were not bothered by me as long as I kept a 30 ft distance and I was all too willing to do so since I learned last year that a camel bite is really nasty.
Baud
Spectacular scenery.
MartyIL
Thanks for sharing. Looks like a wonderful trip
Scuffletuffle
I am in awe of your hiking, camping and orientation skills, not to mention your courage…
Betty
What an adventure! Certainly required stamina and know how to survive those conditions. You got to see and record some amazing scenery along the way.
stinger
My god, what an adventure! Were there times when you were mesmerized by nonstop plodding through an interminable desert, or were you able to keep your mind active? How many days at a stretch would you go before encountering another human? Did you talk to yourself along the way?
And what else might the locals make a living from besides tourism? I can’t see why there would be any locals at all! But the scenery is spectacular. Thank you so much for sharing this hike with us!
cope
Wonderful pictures and story, thank you for giving us a peek at this marvelous part of the world.
eclare
What an amazing journey. Much props to you for choosing to go and have an adventure. Thank you for bringing us along.
Xavier
Everything I know about Aqaba I learned from that movie…
pieceofpeace
Spectacular adventure of this mostly unknown part of the world, for me anyway…thanks much. I assume this took extensive planning and that slot canyon looks daunting with its minimal crawlspace.
oldster
Incredible tale.
Your “pre-deployment” — you did that in person, right? Like drove there, made an arrangement with the people to protect your supplies and not rob them, made an arrangement to pay them something up front and something later. How did you work that out? Did you have an assistant who could do the negotiating?
It’s all fascinating to me. I would have a hard time arranging that in the Southwest of the US, much less in a country and language I did not know. And why you were not tailed by the Jordanian police, I cannot figure out. From their perspective, I’d think your behavior looks suspect as hell. “I’m doing it so that I can post on Balloon Juice!” might not strike them as a convincing explanation.
arrieve
I am in awe of this heroic–to me, definitely–epic journey. I love this part of the world, but I will never be hiking through it, so thank you for sharing all these photos and explanations. Heading across the desert with uncertain supplies of water? Wow.
I have spent the night in a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum and loved the experience, but I know tourism in Jordan has really been hurting because of the Gaza war. My cruise last year ended in Aqaba and I was one of two non-Jordanians in an almost-empty huge hotel right on the water that could have accommodated hundreds. The hotel staff told me, Tell everyone you know Jordan is safe!
BigJimSlade
Great series!
I’ve been catching up with these… I don’t see a part 5? Is that missing, or are 6 and 7 just misnumbered?
If you go down the Siq in Petra, there are water channels on both sides. When I was there about 15 years ago, we got a tour from Ueli, who studied the hydrology of the Nabateans, so that really brought the place alive :-)
BigJimSlade
Regarding the sand dunes in Wadi Rum… I have bad knees (Chondromalacia), and going to the top of one of those and running down at full speed was the most free I’ve felt running in decades! I can highly recommend running down a big sand dune :-) I was taking huge strides an each landing was soft.
WaterGirl
Thanks for a great series, TKH!!!
Winter Wren
Great series – stark beauty captured in your photos!
JustRuss
Great photos. What an adventure!
TKH
@oldster: Yes, in person. Drove to Wadi Mussa and Wadi Rum from Amman. The Bedouin in both places speak English quite well, so no problem communicating and they were more than happy to help once I explained what I needed. Part of this helpfulness is the Islamic tradition, part of it is that they as kids or as adolescents have made treks through the desert to herd goats for example, so they know exactly what I was dealing with. In both cases I spent a night in the respective camps and paid for that.
in Petra the guys who rent out their horses for you to ride to or from the exit called me over when they saw me coming with my big packing. They may have been a bit bemused seeing me, but once they heard what I was doing, they asked me a few questions to determine whether I was an impostor and once they knew I was for real, they really were forthcoming with specific advice and knowledge that you can only give if you have been to these specific places ( likely with a donkey or a camel).
TKH
@BigJimSlade: part 5 was about Petra on Feb 25th. There have been lots of long threads these past few days, so easy to miss.
yes, dune jumping is fun!
TKH
@stinger: I do two or three long hikes a year, always solo, so I have a handle on dealing with the isolation (which I don’t perceive as that, but I am sure this is not for most people). Micronavigation decisions take up a considerable fraction of my mental bandwidth, in wide-open desert environments or in convoluted terrain in Utah/Arizona/the Sierra in California.
The Bedouin not working in tourism have herds of sheep and goats, or own/work in orchards, or own/work in fields growing vegetables and fruit. A hard life. I don’t understand the economics at all.
BigJimSlade
@TKH: Found it – thanks! (I’m adding a comment there now)
TKH
Thank you all for the kind words on this trip report. Glad that you enjoyed it.
I am about to take off on a long dive into the US Southwest to get away from it all.