The Desert Issue

We begin this volume in the south of Jordan, in the short spring window when the desert is neither frozen at night nor punishing at noon. March is the front edge of it. Petra and Wadi Rum sit roughly a hundred kilometres apart and ask for completely different things: one is a carved city you walk into through a gorge, the other is open red desert you cross by jeep and sleep in. This issue is about where to put your bed at each end, and why the order matters.

The argument we keep coming back to is patience. Petra is not a photograph of the Treasury; it is a full day and a half of walking, and the climb to the Monastery repays the traveller who starts early and rests through the heat. Wadi Rum earns a whole night, with the stars close and a fire going, and gives nothing to anyone who treats it as a scenic stop on the way to Aqaba. Treat either as a quick tick and you get the crowded middle hours and none of the good light. We would rather you saw fewer things slowly.

On the desert bed, we come down somewhere unfashionable. The transparent domes that appeared after the valley stood in for Mars are comfortable and photogenic, and they cost several times what a traditional camp does. For darkness and quiet, a simpler tent with a family who cooks the zarb properly usually wins. The value of a Wadi Rum night lives in the people running the camp far more than in the tent, so we spend these pages on how to judge them rather than on thread counts.

This is Amorielli's charter year, and Volume Zero is where we set the rule we will keep: two questions per place, where to stay and when to go, answered directly and in plain English. Southern Jordan is a clean test of it, because the season is narrow and the routing is easy to get wrong. Come in spring, base by the Petra gate, sleep out in the desert, and end toward the Red Sea. That is the whole of it, and the following pages are how.

Vivienne Hartwell, Editor-in-Chief