Winter Jordan — Wadi Rum and Petra

Wadi Rum is harsh and beautiful at once, and you never quite decide which of the two wins. Writing this and thinking back on that week in the desert, I find I would go again tomorrow.

In a Bedouin camp

We stayed in one of the Bedouin camps that Wadi Rum is full of, and there was nothing grand about it. Cloth tents, two beds in each, a bathroom a few steps away. Everything else happened in the shared tent — a fireplace, carpets on the ground and people around them. That is where we had breakfast, where we came back after dark, and where the tea was poured again and again.

The tea deserves a paragraph of its own. Black, with herbs and enough sugar to stand a spoon in, served in small glasses that never stayed empty for long. After a morning spent in the cold it was less a drink than a rescue.

The desert is cold

Most people picture the desert hot, and by day that holds — it climbs past twenty-five degrees and shade is hard to find. But once the sun drops the temperature falls like a stone, and by morning it sits around freezing.

I slept in a winter bag and still wore thermals, two pairs of socks, a hat and a warm hoodie. The mornings were hard. Getting out of that bag took more resolve than the photography did.

Out on the pickup bed for sunrise

The alarm went at least an hour before first light. The camp owner, a local Bedouin, was already waiting outside the tents. We climbed onto the bed of his pickup, pulled on hats and gloves and drove off into the dark — out on the back, the wind multiplies that cold. A short while later we were standing in place, waiting for the first light to reach the horizon.

In the afternoon the whole ritual repeated itself, running the other way.

The night sky over Wadi Rum

If there was one thing I was really looking forward to, it was the sky. At this time of year the core of the Milky Way only climbed over the horizon a few tens of minutes before dawn, so the main course kept us waiting. Orion, though, hung above the desert all night.

So after sunset the shooting carried on as long as it could. I caught up on sleep during the day, between two drives out.

Petra

The second half of the trip belonged to Petra — a city carved into rock that has kept its distance for two thousand years. It held me completely.

Everyone pictures the Treasury at that name, the one façade from all the photographs. But Petra is a whole city, and three days are not enough to walk it, let alone to know it.

It is strongest after dark. The path through the gorge is lined with candles, you walk quietly and in the black, and at the end the square in front of the Treasury opens up, with the city's story projected onto the rock.