My Tent in the Wadi Rum

My students will tell you, universally, that their favorite part of the our recent trip to Jordan was the stay in the Wadi Rum.  I've never led a trip - not to India or Sri Lanka or Spain or Jordan or Portugal - where the students agreed more uniformly on anything.  Truthfully, it was also my favorite part of the last trip as well.  So, expect several more Wadi Rum themed posted. I'll begin with some pictures of my way too posh tent where we stayed.  A couple times in the course of the trip we were upgraded - or poshified - simply because the size of our group got us squeezed out of our initial plan.  Petra Moon Travel just kept upgrading us at no extra cost, which is only one of the reasons why I would only ever consider using them on my trips to Jordan.  As much as my student Michael Manfredi wring our hands over accommodations being too posh I'm not going to complain about this upgrade too bitterly.

Now, before you get to your tent in the Wadi Rum you need to get into the Wadi Rum, which meant clambering out of the bus and switching over to jeeps.  We were hoping to get there earlier, but there were simply too many cool things to do that day so we didn't arrive until dark.  I have to hand it to my students, none of them seemed too nervous about heading off into the darkness of the Wadi Rum with their lunatic professor.

My jeep travelling companions Ines and Isa . . .

. . . and Kally and Rebecca.  It was a little chilly driving along in the back of a jeep in the desert at night but they were more excited than cold.

And, yes, my insanely posh tent.  Three years ago I slept on the floor of the dining hall tent because it had a plug-in next to a solar panel, which allowed me to power my CPAP machine.  I was quite happy then, and equally happy in this tent.  There is some essential life lesson there.

And speaking of my CPAP machine.  This camp powered off a generator which was shut off at 10:00 p.m. every night, which then gave us complete darkness and quiet.  That was wonderful, although if you need a CPAP machine to keep breathing all night it's a bit of a challenge.  Happily, Bedouin ingenuity triumphed and they hooked me up to a car battery for the night.

The view outside my tent.  Extraordinary.

And the view of the camp itself.  It's easy to spot my tent; it's the one with the white truck (and CPAP powering car battery) next to it.  This picture was snapped from the rock cliff above the camp, where I climbed, almost magnetically, early the next morning.

This is also the camp where the Bedouin leader gave me the coat off his back.  How does one even begin to process this experience?