Jordan
Wadi Rum in the warm evening sun
After settling on going to Wadi Rum in Jordan, Lenny managed to find details for a local, Mzied, who would be able to take us out into the desert and show us the ropes with camels. After repeated attempts to call him, we finally got through the day before we left. Bill asked where we would be sleeping, to which Mzied replied, “We sleep in the high places, like caves.”
We were sold.
Objectives of the trip
We were looking to gather whatever information we could about walking through the desert with camels. Our combined experience to date was pitifully small, a camel ride along the beach on a family holiday at most.
Expectations were high, Bill had already made a list of the skills he thought would be required for the main crossing and he hoped to start work on them in Jordan:
- Astro-nagivation
- Camel handling
- Basic desert survival
- Unarmed combat
- Firearm handling.
Bill and Len waking up on the floor at Heathrow
Arrival in Jordan
The trip began in typical fashion. After a night on the floor at Heathrow we flew to the capital Amman. We then tried several times to phone Mzied while waiting for an 11pm bus to Aqaba in the south of the country.
Having slept on the bus I was amused to learn that Bill had been kept up all night by the passenger behind him stroking his leg (or trying to pickpocket him, we weren’t sure which).
The bus reached Aqaba at 3.30am and the next departure to Wadi Rum was 7am, so we headed to the beach to get some sleep.
Negotiations
After arriving at Wadi Rum we located Mzied and sat down over a glass of tea to discuss the coming days. Our negotiating position was weak, having flown to Jordan with the sole purpose of using him as our guide. The conversation went something like:
Having fun on a sand dune
Us: “So how much is this going to cost?”
Mzied: “How much money have you got?”
Laying out all our cash on the floor: “We have 300 pounds.”
Mzied: “It will cost 300 pounds.”
Us: “Ok.”
Conclusions
After five days of walking around Wadi Rum we hadn’t learned any of the skills on Bill’s list. We were walking with the camels, leading them and sometimes riding them, but not really learning how to look after them or control them with any competence. Bill came closest to the Bedouin tribe, spending the fourth and fifth days in a Bedouin tent, incapacitated by diarrhoea.
Bill examining the tea fire
We did, however, get a taste of what a desert trip would be like, walking alongside a camel through barren and hostile scenery. There was a stark beauty about the desert and we were hankering for more.
We also established a possible route after Lenny and I found a rudimentary plywood map of the Arab world in a skip one evening. Time and money constraints meant we realistically wouldn’t be able to cross the entire Sahara, but Mauritania was emerging as a good place to start.
Massaging the camel’s hump after a hard day’s walk
Starting on the Mauritanian coast in Nouakchott and heading deep into the desert as far as Timbuktu in Mali was about 1200 miles as measured by our fingers. It felt like the right distance and Timbuktu seemed a good place to finish. It would sound good when we told people, remote and mysterious. We felt pleased with ourselves, everyone would have heard of Timbuktu even if they hadn’t heard of Mauritania.
Next steps
Len gazing down the valley at the way back to camp
Until now there had been a lot of chat at university (mainly in the bar) about our crossing of the Sahara but no one knew if it would ever happen. Even this trip to Jordan was a bit of a holiday in its own right and wasn’t confirmation that we would go ahead with the main trip.
But after this brief taster we were curious to learn more about life in the desert. We returned to university with our potential route into the Sahara in hand, inspired and determined to make the crossing a reality.
Where to go next: