a stravaig across wadi rum

Sat, 19 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

At the beginning of May we headed over to Jordan for a bit a holiday in the heat. As it was Dawn’s 50th it was her holiday really, horse riding across Wadi Rum with Ride World Wide and I was being given my own Bedu guide for some walking and scrambling (Bedouin is the plural of Bedu). I initially asked whether I could follow on the mountain bike but they said the desert wasn’t suitable and how right they were. Also the overnight camps were dependent on the wind direction so they couldn’t give me a GPS track to follow either. I was completely easy though and in the end they arranged a guide, Mahmoud, half my age and fit as a butcher’s dog! A Bedu born in Wadi Rum, he knew the place like the back of his hand and the plan was, near the end of the trip we would be near the border with Saudi Arabia, so we’d go up Jebel Um Adaami, the highest in Jordan, if the valley was open. The army close the area when they’re training and when we arrived at the flea pit hotel in Amman, the word on the streets was the area was closed. Probably due to the ongoing stooshie in Syria giving the Jordanian army some cause for concern. I say flea pit but Liwan was a fairly alright hotel in a shabby suburb of Amman and the food was great. The downsides were the chain smokers in the lobby and the bed bugs which made fair work of one of the group. Another sprayed the bed with deet before she got in!

Jebel Al Hash on eBothy Blog

a stravaig across wadi rum