Petra and the Wadi Rum
In the winter of 1998 National Geographic Adventure magazine sent renowned adventure writer David Roberts and Gordon to produce a story about two of the most interesting places in Jordan: the UNESCO Heritage site Petra and nearby Wadi Rum, a grand desert where the epic Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. Joining them was Lisa Gnade, a renowned American rock climber, and the team’s goal was to mix scrambling on some of the world’s strangest rock with David’s deep knowledge of archaeology as an angle to talk about the region.
Every part of the trip was stunning, beginning with Petra, a long abandoned crossroad for camel caravans, literally carved out of a sandstone gorge with towering facades that resemble Greek and Egyptian temples. At the city’s zenith about 100 A.D., when it was conquered by the Romans, it housed 20,000 people, watered by miles of ingenious rainwater catchment channels carved into the surrounding crags. And then it just gradually disappeared, forgotten in the desert until 1812, when an archaeologist stumbled back upon what is now the most popular tourist destination in Jordan.
The Wadi Rum was just as magnificent, with a beauty echoing southern Utah, scattered sand dunes, rocky plains and steep mountains called Jebels, themselves rent with surrealistically eroded canyons and buttressed by cliffs that are more difficult and dangerous to climb than they seemed in pictures. Even though the team backed away and earned no mountain bragging rights, they were constantly awed to wander through such an oddly shaped world, photogenic at every turn.
What surprised Gordon most, however, was the warm reception they received from the Bedouins, a clan long reported to be suspicious of outsiders and infidels. “I almost choked on my tea,” he said, when we were sitting around a fire in a family's woolen tent, surrounded by men in keffiyehs, and the background BBC radio suddenly announced that the US had just bombed Iraq again. Instead of drawing scimitars, though, we all just shrugged as fellow humans, grumbled about governments and proceeded with sharing our lunch.”
The Enchanted Canyon is available as a Mini-Print!
Scrambling in Wadi Rum - A climber scrambles on strangely eroded sandstone in Rakabat Canyon, Jebel Um Ishrin, Wadi Rum, Jordan - Handmade Mini-Print, including matte, mount and frame, featuring photography by Gordon Wiltsie.
This image is part of: Adventure & Exploration - Set of Mini-Prints
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Mount Vaughan, Antarctica - Mountaineer surveys route on Mt. Vaughan in the Trans-Antarctic Range. - Handmade Mini-Print, including matte, mount and frame, featuring photography by Gordon Wiltsie.