Jordan, Palestine & Israel 2015 Photography Travels Travels with Mami

Jordan, Palestine & Israel Part 4: Staying with Bedouins in the Wadi Rum desert

Wadi Rum, Jordan

We found Obeid on Booking.com, after having read great reviews of his Bedouin camp online. Obeid offered to pick us up from Petra in the morning, which was perfect, and we drove 1.5 hour south to reach the Wadi Rum desert and his camp. We went for a drive to have a look around the desert the same day – the dunes were very beautiful and the sand was red and soft. We ended the trip with watching the sunset and having tea in the desert, and then Obeid pointed to the horizon “see the lights over there? That’s our camp” .. “Do you mind driving the car back while I have my evening run?” I was so excited I hopped right in, and driving the 4×4 in the dunes was great fun!

My mom and I were alone in the camp apart from the family, and in the evening Obeid and his two very friendly sons had prepared dinner. We sat by the fire and spoke about things, and they played some music and sang, which was nice. As I mentioned before, there was 3g everywhere in Jordan – even there deep out in the desert, the guys kept uploading photos to Facebook and showing us different pictures and videos. It was quite funny and a bit of a contrast to what we had imagined in terms of what “Staying with Bedouins in the desert” would be like, but “that’s what Bedouin 2.0 is!”, the men explained laughing. Of course.

The next morning was insanely cold and I got a big jacket from one of the boys, “you look like Daesh!” he said laughing. They laughed a lot about IS in the camp, which kind of gave an insight into how they felt about it, it wasn’t going to reach the south and it was mostly crazy people with an impossible mission. I was thinking how some of the satire and comedy on IS maybe had reached them. The two brothers told stories about their family who lives in the town nearby, about how their sisters study and how one of them is getting married soon to a teacher “Do you have any photos of your sister?” we asked. “No, of course not! What if one of my friends takes my phone and starts flipping through the photos?” was an answer delivered with such “but, duuh, don’t you get it?!” that both my mom and I decided to not take the conversation further. There were still significant contrasts in the way Bedouin 2.0 looks at life.

We headed off to see the sunrise from the backs of our camels, it was cold, cloudy and windy, so after a while we decided that we preferred to head back. Just a couple of minutes later, the rain started pouring down – and Nayel, one of the brothers, came rushing with his 4×4 and picked us up. We came back to the camp where one of the tents had been prepared with breakfast and the fireplace was nice and warm.

After breakfast, we packed our things back into the backpacks and Obeid dropped us off in Aqaba, just by the border to Israel.

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, JordanWadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Wadi Rum, Jordan

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>