Sands of Time and Rocks of Ages: A Journey Down Jordan's Desert Highway

Two of my favourite aspects of travelling that fascinate me particularly are how nature’s journeys, geological and meteorological, can be seen and experienced and how ancient civilizations, including the Inca (Quecha) of Peru and the Khmer of South East Asia have mastered the local climate, landscape and resources enabling not just survival, but also sustainability over a long period of time. My latest adventure, this time to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan saw both these aspects interweave when visiting the ancient city of Petra and the Wadi Rum Desert.

Remains of carvings depicting camel caravans along the Siq

Established around 2,500 years ago, Petra became a major trading hub for camel caravan trade expeditions trading luxury goods, including frankincense and silk, for the ancient Nabatean Kingdom. Now recognized as one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, in present times Petra brings journeys of a different kind, that of modern tourism with thousands of visitors entering the ancient site via the Siq. Some of the first examples of how the Nabaeteans were able to control water supply can be seen walking towards the ancient city along the Siq, a kilometer-long narrow winding sandstone gorge, where carved water channels can be seen, that directed water from a water channel at its entrance to where water was otherwise scarce. As well as great physical journeys, conceptual journeys from an individual’s perspective can also occur. Carved into the cliffs along the Siq are caravan expeditions. Seeing this felt to me like that past merging with the present.

The Treasury (Al-Khazneh)

Of the qualities that sandstone has are visually, its shades of colouring, and practically, it can be carved into elaborate shapes including the first building the visitor sees peering through the end of the Siq, the famous Treasury Building (Al-Khazneh). The iron oxides deposited by waters that flowed through the rocks millions of years ago and the different densities of grains of sand the rocks are made up of gives Petra’s buildings their famous rose colour and on closer inspection, some darker veins. The skills of the Nabaetean craftsman can easily mistake the modern visitor into thinking that the Treasury, with its ornate pillars was built, but rather, it is carved into the rock. Looking closely at the pillars, the ochre and purple coloured veins can be seen swirling around them, their natural composition retained within a humanized image blended into its natural landscape.

The Treasury, so named as it is said to contain the treasure of one of Egyptian Pharaoh who ruled during the time of Moses, is generally considered Petra’s most recognizable structure, partly thanks to the film Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). But going further beyond the ‘wow factor’ it no doubt had when seen by Swiss explorer Johan Ludwig Burckhardt (the first European known to have seen it) in 1812 as it still does with many of today’s visitors including myself, further Nabatean grandeur gradually reveals itself. After climbing over 800 stone steps, including swerving around donkeys who regularly go up and down the route, I eventually arrived at Petra’s largest monument, the Monastery (Ad-Dayr), said to have served as a temple dedicated to the Nabaetean King Obodas I, who reigned around the first century BC. To see it from higher up, I still felt I had enough energy to climb up some steeper steps to a nearby hill. By time I reached the top of the hill, I felt a need for refreshment, which I found in the form of an Arabic coffee from a resident Bedouin vendor. The refreshing rich taste of the coffee combined with the spectacular view of the monastery made me feel like I had found ‘Shangri-La’ in the Middle East!

Shangi-La in the Middle East, Petra's Monastery (Ad Dayr)

As well as good attention to detail and a liking for patterns, being in tune with constantly altering conditions and in touch with the sensory aspect of the landscape, including the elements it is comprised of would also have been vital to ancient civilizations like the Nabaeteans, as their daily survival needs would have been so heavily. But it was ancient art and wisdom relevant to present-day Jordan that I felt opened me to the sensory aspect of Jordan’s desert landscape. Staying at a Bedouin camp, I learned about and experienced some of way of living of Jordan’s native Bedouin tribespeople.

Though many Bedouins have since abandoned the nomadic lifestyle of herding and driving sheep and goats across the desert their ancestors lived for more contemporary ways of life, they have preserved many of their centuries old traditions, including poetry. To some people with Asperger’s Syndrome, poetry is a way of expressing and coping with emotions, meanwhile to the Bedouins, it has been a way of coping with both the physical and mental hardship that living a nomadic life in a desert can often bring, as well as for survival purposes. As a nomadic people, the Bedouins traditionally don’t have a settlement or geographical center. Acting as a means of both communication of information regarding weather conditions or the location of the nearest spring along caravan routes and entertainment, the ancient Bedouin tradition of oral chanted poetry serves as their settlement or center. Effectively, it almost acts like a social network without technology. Rather than digital data though, its existence is dependent on being in tune with conditions in the present moment, including the movement of animals. In some Bedouin tribes, chanted poetry also helps stimulate animals to walk in time.

Preparing Bedouin Tea

Chanted poetry enables the Bedouins to not just be in tune with the present, but also the reality of the present, on which the outcomes of their journeys is dependent. Being at one with divine reality is also key concept of Sufism, the mystical aspect of Islam, the religion of many of the Bedouins and Jordan’s present day major religion. As someone who practices mindfulness, the concept of being at one with reality through the Sufi route is an aspect of Islam that interests me greatly. Staying overnight in a traditional Bedouin goatskin tent, I felt was the first part of my journey into experiencing and opening to the sensory aspect of the reality of nature of Jordan’s desert landscape and weather conditions. Sufism starts with the cave, where one resides, something which is part of the natural landscape. The tent took the place of the cave in this case, and its exposure to how conditions change dramatically at night including the drop in temperature. After opening to the sweet and spicy taste of traditional Bedouin tea in the main tent, when going to sleep, the wind grew stronger and noisier with the tent exposed to it. One who is not used to such conditions may find ear plugs helpful, but I found that by opening to the sounds of the wind against the goatskins as well as grains of sand blown against them, it sent me to sleep quicker than usual which saw me wake up early to a spectacular star-filled sky being removed from light pollution after the camp lights were turned off!

Seven Pillars of Wisdon, Wadi Rum

Whereas poetry provided an ancient social network for the Bedouins, the stars acted as an ancient sat-nav for the next part of their constantly continuing journeys. With many of the night sky stars being hundreds to thousands of years light years away, the past once again merges with the present appearing as they were when many ancient caravan journeys began. The present day convenience of Highway 15, also called the Desert Highway, saw the next part of my journey head south to Wadi Rum, where I was welcomed by the sight of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, a spectacular rock formation made famous by the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962). 

Wadi Rum's Mars-like landscape

The arid landscape of the Wadi Rum desert, is an eye opener to the kind of environment that is the norm to Bedouins on their journeys by camel temporarily residing in goat-skinned tents or caves. Even today, some Bedouins temporarily make their homes in caves here. Looking more closely at the sand and rocks, the winds and plate tectonics have brought longer journeys over millions of years of shifting fault lines from the start of the Great Rift Valley in what is now Mozambique while the winds and rains over time have shaped dramatic rock formations in the shapes of columns and arches, while the presence of iron oxide in its sands transported and deposited by ancient seas give it its distinctive rusty red colour, making it a popular choice with film-makers to simulate Mars, as in The Martian (2015).

The way to get around Wadi Rum!

Ascending the sand dunes, one quickly begins to realize not only how deep the sand is, but also the effect on your calf muscles! To gain a different experience of the texture of Wadi Rum’s sand, I took a camel ride. Camels continue to be a lifeline for many Bedouins, being dependent on them to cross routes that it is otherwise not possible to cross, sometimes even in a modern jeep. Adapted to live and survive in the desert, an advantage that camels have is the flat spread of their feet enabling them to trek across the sand with relative ease and very quietly. Largely thanks to the very placid nature of the camel I was assigned, I found the experience surprisingly smooth and very peaceful, allowing me to take in the spectacular scenery.

Within the canyons and gorges of Wadi Rum appear traces of Bedouin journeys through thousands of years in the form of petroglyphs, images carved into the red sandstone of images (including humans and animals), symbols and characters. It is thought that they are instructions or guidance left for different tribespeople, perhaps indicating nearby springs. What is also visible within the sands of time and the rocks of ages at both Petra and Wadi Rum is the effects of time, brought by ongoing travelling through the desert over thousands of years and millions of years of geological activity continually renewing the lansdacspe. When tuning into the reality, we also experience the effects of time being at one with how it is in the present, with journeys ongoing into a continual now.  

Journeys through time, petroglyphs, Wadi Rum

A huge thank you to Abraham Tours for making this experience possible and to our  fantastic Jordanian guide Mahdi, for his eye-opening introduction to Jordanian culture, including the Bedouin way of life.