Camel safaris with cheerful Bedouins
I went exploring Wadi Rum in a jeep safari but would recommend you try a camel safari too. I would have too if I had the time. You can do so for any period of time – an hour to many days. They are conducted by the local Bedouins – a cheerful lot! They allowed me to click them, and not one of them pestered me for money or for booking a ride. They just kept grinning and smiling. And I did push my luck to get good angles with the camels – getting close to their backsides (thank God no vapours, explosions or gooey stuff came my way) and trying to get their dentures up close in the image foreground (none spat or bit me – but someone needs to present them with Colgate!).
Bedouins offering camel safaris across the Wadi Rum
The mesmerizing sunsets Wadi Rum is famous for its sunsets but you need to be positioned at a good vantage point in time. Find yourself a big rock, and clamber over it carefully for a view of the horizons around you. Already running late, our SUV refused to go over a sand dune just short of our chosen rock. It did not have enough power to go over the hump. We reversed, and raced in from a longer distance than before. Though we managed to cover a few more inches this time but apparently not enough. And then we really hit it – and voila, we made it even if all the bones got realigned in the resulting flying ship act. We parked below what seemed like a rock hundreds of metres high, and had to run / trudge our way to the top on a soft sand dune again. Trust me, it is no easy task walking on these dunes especially when laden with heavy camera equipment making your centre of gravity all wobbly. But once on top, there was no looking back. In front of me lay an endless desert, accentuated with a rising rock monoliths standing all by themselves. And behind one range the sun was setting – as the colours changed around me and the air 34
Sunset at Wadi Rum