I wasn't prepared for this …
I was semi or a quarter prepared for the Pyramids, for the Nile Sailing, even for the Red Sea Snorkeling, from my experience, from pictures taken by my friends, from TVs…
But not this ...
When this massive redness revealed itself in front of me, my mind was totally blown away. I had never seen this kind of landscape before. Wadi Rum means Valley of the Moon in Arabic. Never been on the moon and probably will never be, but I am sure the Bedouins (native tribes who have lived in Rum forever ) had come out with the most appropriate name. A Valley Of the Moon, that is it, bizarre yet heart wrenchingly beautiful. Looking around, there is only this absorbing-everything emptiness and silence…
Riding on a bumpy, jerky jeep, I felt that I was attacked by this endless crimson color, powerful, forceful and intimidating. The grotesque monolithic mountains rise out of the red desert without any prediction. And those fine red sands themselves form a piece of irreplicable masterpiece … they just lie there, quietly extend themselves to the end of time and space, eternal and immense ...
We stopped by at Khazali Canyon, one of the many Canyons (“Siqs” ) Rum offered. We took pictures at the famous landmarks – Lawrence's Spring and Seven Pillars of Wisdom. We had the most fun at the rose red Sand Dune …
Three hour passed so very fast, at the end of the ride, people were at social mood, chatting and cheering … But me, slow me … was still totally lost in this grandeur and vastness, eventually dwarfed to nothing ….
Note1: Wadi Rum – one of the world’s most outstanding desert landscapes…is 3 hour drive away from Amman, the capital of Jordan. Even today it is still called the virgin landscape of Jordan with relative fewer visitors. On one hand, I really want the breathtaking beauty of Rum be appreciated by more people, on the other hand, I am so scared and worried, that Rum will be ruined by the destructive force of human race … Like so many beautiful places in China …
Note2: When coming to write anything about nature, I just feel inadequate, it seems there is just no way for me to accurately describe the strange beauty Rum posses and the shocking effect it downed on me… I thought of Chinese, but my native language did not come to rescue this time. I took quite a few videos, none of them came out satisfying. I took lots of pictures, few of them came out of satisfying either. It seems that the haunting beauty of Rum was just not capturable, neither words nor photos ...
