Wadi Rum - Fifty shades of Red.

Fifty shades of red

The colour range actually starts at yellow and graduates through orange to red and onwards to brown.

Marie and I were lucky enough to visit Wadi Rum recently, a desert area in the south of Jordan and we spent a night in one of the luxury fixed camps.

We have visited the desert around the Anti Atlas mountains in Morocco before but this was a very different experience.

It has a feeling of wider, open spaces. The mountains are like rocky islands in a sea of red sand.

The area first became famous in the west during the 1920’s after the publication of the book by T.E. Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) “The Seven pillars of wisdom.” This was his account of the Arab uprising against the Ottoman empire during the First World War.

Later in the 20^th century, British mountaineer Tony Howard explored the rock climbing on the desert sandstone mountains and published two guidebooks.

In more recent times, Wadi Rum has become a destination for those making Hollywood blockbusters. It was the planet Mars in “The Martian” (which starred Matt Damon) and has now become the planet Arrakis in the most recent versions of Frank Herbert’s novel, “Dune.”

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