Wadi Rum

It's the Sikh.

What I find truly special and unmatched is the Wadi Rum desert, which has been previously used in films to picture Mars.

So it does seem something like otherworldly when you're there but what is really special is the silence that you can experience there like the profound profound silence that i haven't seen anywhere else and it's difficult actually to find a place in this world that is so polluted with sound and with traffic and with people and machines and noise somewhere where you can really tune into this like inner silence that allows you to listen to your own inner voice, to your own inner wisdom without the clutter that is polluting our environment.

So that's one landscape that I think in Jordan is so, so special, especially for this reason, the silence and the contemplation that it gives.

gave her my

eye you gave her your eye yeah I gave her my eye in this Aini exchange and I released it a few weeks later This was in February.

A few weeks later in March, a friend of mine invited me to go to Wadi Rum to paint with some artists.

And I really had no clue about what the itinerary was about.

You- I mean, you'll be, you'll be brought.

And then we will be traveling all the way down through the Negev Desert, all the way to the border of Jordan at the Red Sea, and cross over into Aqaba, and then head into the Arabian Desert and to a place called Wadi Rum.

Th-this is along the ancient spice roads, the way that things like frankincense and myrrh would have traveled in, uh, into the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus.

But the an- they're ver- much more ancient than that.

Just the fact it's so unique and different.

Like Wadi Rum in the desert, Petra.

And the history

too.

Obviously, this is one to watch as Smart Traveller still gives the country an orange reconsider your need to travel warning given the ongoing Israeli-US war in the region.

So Jordan is continuing to diversify tourism beyond super busy Petra and Wadi Rum.

You know, everybody goes there.

Instead, the Northern Highlands are emerging as a greener, less visited region.

Petra is...

They have Petra, they have Vadiram, they have a lot of beautiful places.

I don't find the Emirates interesting.

Everything is just big and a lot of money.

Between, sorry, between when I graduated and moving to London, I also went traveling in the Middle East, um, and I went with a friend.

We went to-- We flew to Turkey, and then we got the train from Turkey to Syria, and then moved, traveled through Syria into Jordan, um, spent the night in the Wadi Rum, and then traveled over into Israel, into Palestine, flew back from Tel Aviv.

So that was a, it was a very formative trip for me, and it was the first time I'd been to the Middle East and to these sorts of places, and I was really fascinated by the history and the culture and the people and the language.

And so then I started learning Arabic.

No, I've never been to the Kalahari.

I spent some time in Wadi Rum, uh, with some Bedouin.

Where's that?

What?

Yeah.

It's, it's, yeah, I sp- yeah, I was in Jordan.

Uh, uh, Wa- I wanted to go to Wadi Rum, uh, because it's where they made the movie, uh, Lawrence of Arabia.

It's also where Lawrence of Arabia operated out of.