The wadi is one of a sequence of parallel faults forming valleys in the sandy desert south of the Shara mountains, characterised by giant granite, basalt and sandstone mountains rising up to 800m sheer from the desert floor. T.E. Lawrence ('of Arabia') called it 'vast, echoing and godlike'.
Although there's only one road in, signposted east off the Desert Highway at the village of Rashdiyyeh, it's not the easiest of places to find. The road skirts the mountains and a couple of hamlets for about 17kms to a fork in the road marked by a police post. The village of Disi is to the left but you have to take the right fork eventually leading to the Visitor Centre. All vehicles have to stop here and pay the entrance fee. We'd arranged with a tour company to be picked up by jeep and taken to the camp where we were staying that night, so after paying the entrance fee we had to turn all the way back and retrace our steps and find where we were to be picked up. No mean feat!!
As you can see, the car park was far from full.
To be honest, we weren't to see very much of the terrain during our time here, the novelty for us being more the opportunity to sleep under canvas in the desert for a night, so the jeep ride to the camp over spectacular sand dunes was a treat to behold.
The camp was in a perfect position:
Thinking we were in for an evening of quiet and tranquility, we were a bit disappointed to arrive just at the same time as a coach party of children and teenagers. But how wrong can you be?? This was no common-or-garden coach party, but a class of music and dance students and their teachers on a day trip from a school in Aquaba.
Most of the other non-local tourists missed a treat, staying in their tents until the meal was served, but we sat in the open, plied with delicious green tea and enjoying the excellent impromptu entertainment of singing and dancing:
The meal was weirdly reminiscent of the Maori meal we had had in New Zealand (digging a hole and cooking the food with the heat of the ground)..... even including the traditional silver foil to keep the food hot!!
No bread-making like this in New Zealand, though.
Before we ate, the sun set: perfect!!
The meal over, we retired to our comfortable tent with all mod -cons: well, the toilet and shower were in an adjoining tent.
No comments:
Post a Comment