Everyone dreams, but not equally

Visiting Wadi Rum from Israel

The title of this post is a quote from Lawrence of Arabia (yes I changed it a bit to make it gender neutral), “All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes to make them possible.”

You may ask how this is related to a travel blog post on Wadi Rum…

Well firstly, I just thought it was an awesome quote, and secondly Wadi Rum was home to T.E. Lawrence during the Arab Revolt. You can even visit his home / rock cave that he lived in while in Wadi Rum.

T.E. Lawrence’s home in Wadi Rum

Our journey to Wadi Rum started out somewhat stressfully. We left our beautiful hotel in Tel Aviv early in the morning to get to the domestic airport Sde Dov.

Carlton Tel Aviv

The first potential problem was with our flights from Tel Aviv’s domestic airport Sde Dov to Eliat.

I had booked tickets with Israir online but they never sent an electronic ticket, just a email with the word “prn” and a line of digits. No “Dear” or “Good Morning”, never mind a sign off. When I later tried to call and email for more info I got no response.

Fortunately, our one line sketchy email worked and we checked in with no problem. The same could not be said for the security. Bear in mind that we were already IN Israel at this point and we were flying to another location IN Israel.

One would think that if they wanted to ask questions they should have done so before letting us into the country. However, this was not the case and if you plan on doing the same its worth bearing in mind that security takes A WHILE! On this particular occasion we were questioned and searched for a solid 45 minutes, approximately the flight time from Tel Aviv to Eliat.

Once in Eliat we took a taxi to the Wadi Araba border crossing. We had arranged visas beforehand and simply had to pay an exit fee of 100 shekels. *Tip: it is worthwhile arranging visas beforehand so that you don’t get an entry stamp from the Jordan / Israel border as this can be evidence that you have visited Israel and may make future travel to Arab nations difficult.

Equally it is worth noting that currently no visas are being issued to independent tourists at the Wadi Araba border only to those who are travelling as part of an organised tour.

Jordan

Compared to all the hassle at the airport, crossing the land border was a breeze. Once at the other side we got a taxi into Aqaba, the nearest town on the Jordanian side, and rented a car.

Thankfully it was straight road from Aqaba to the turn off for Wadi Rum. I say thankfully because a lot of the road map was in arabic.

Road to Wadi Rum

Once in Wadi Rum we opted for the 3 hour jeep tour and swiftly handed over all responsibility to our guide.

I wrongly thought that the tour would consist of us chilling in the back of the jeep, taking in the sights, and occasionally getting out to take a photo.

Within about 10 minutes we were climbing up this rock face..

At the top was a spring, aptly named ‘Lawrence’s Spring’.. but to be honest all eyes were facing the other way.

Next was a massive sand dune.

As you can see I wore excellent clothes for hiking up rock faces and trekking through sand.

‘Desert Chic’ I like to call it.

At some point I even abandoned the shoes.

Despite the lack of active wear, our afternoon at Wadi Rum was incredible. It was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen and I simply can’t praise it enough.

I know a lot of people are wary about travelling to Jordan and I will write a full post on travelling to the region later, but briefly, we had no problems in Jordan at all and I would highly recommend it!

Summary of our trip Wadi Rum:

1. 9 am Flight from Tel Aviv to Eliat

2. Taxi from Eliat to Wadi Araba border = approx 35 shekels

3. Israel exit fee = ~ 100 shekels

4. Taxi to Aqaba = 15 JD (we were ripped off – a fair rate is between 5-10)

5. Rented a car at Avis and drove to Wadi Rum, took about 1 hour 30

6. 3 hour private jeep tour = 110 JD (more expensive than usual but we saw everything you would usually see in the 5 hour tour -> Lawrence Spring, sand dunes, Khazali Canyon, Little Bridge, Um Frouth Rock Bridge, Lawrence House, and Burdah Rock Bridge

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