Rock till you drop
Wadi Rum is one of the most spectacular landscapes in the middle east, but the path to its recent recognition as a UNESCO world heritage site began in Yorkshire
WORDS | MATTHEW TELLER
YOU NEVER FORGET YOUR FIRST TIME. I don’t remember the date or the occasion; I don’t even remember who I was with, but I do remember my first glimpse of Wadi Rum’s stupendous mountains. Sheer walls of granite and sandstone jostled a thousand metres into vivid skies above a little desert-floor village. Heat bounced off every surface, hanging in the air like a curtain.
I squinted to try and make out detail on the cliff face opposite, but my eyes couldn’t find a decent toehold on its shadowless surface. Silence thundered. That was 15 years ago – and I’ve been lucky enough to return many times. Today, Wadi Rum, which is easily accessible from Amman, is one of the world’s leading centres for desert tourism, recently declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Visitors explore on four wheels or, more traditionally, on camelback, some opting to trek across the sands, others choosing to climb the reddish dunes or weathered rock faces. Local Bedouin, chiefly from the Zalabia tribe, act as guides, driving their guests out in battered 4WDs to view ancient inscriptions in remote canyons before hosting them in black goat-hair tents for dinner and a night under the stars.
But how did this patch of Jordanian desert come to global prominence? The story points in an unlikely direction – to Yorkshire, home of British explorers Tony Howard and Di Taylor. Born and brought up in Saddleworth, the couple were neighbours as young children, Di chuckling that Tony used to ‘stick his head through the fence and gaze up at us in the big house on the hill’. They met first in the 50s as teenagers in the local climbing club and initially went their separate ways, but have now been together for more than 30 years, making their home on a farm overlooking the same rugged moors they’ve known all their lives.
It was a chance viewing on Christmas television of Lawrence of Arabia, back in 1983, that led them to Jordan. ‘I’d already climbed in desert countries – Morocco, Algeria, Iran – and took a keen interest in desert climbing,’ Howard says. ‘Seeing those amazing mountains, I kept thinking, “Nobody’s been there!”’
He did some research and made the connection with Wadi Rum, a place Lawrence himself described as ‘Rum the magnificent… vast, echoing and godlike’. Howard then approached the Jordanian embassy in London about gaining access.
‘I wrote three times without getting any reply,’ he recalls. ‘Then, one morning, I was sitting in the office as usual when the fax machine started up. A royal crest emerged.’ It was the reply he’d been hoping for – an invitation to visit Rum with a team of climbers to explore routes and publish their findings.
In 1984 Rum was predominantly a village of tents clustered around a desert fort: there were no phones, no utilities and no asphalt road. Despite its cinematic fame, virtually nobody visited. Howard has written about the first person to greet the team – ‘a young man, in his early 20s, with swashbuckling good looks, long black hair and a knife in his belt.
He asked us why we had come, then invited us out to his father’s desert camp.’
The young man turned out to be Difallah, son of Sheikh Atieg, one of the elders of the Zalabia. That first night, Howard sought the sheikh’s permission to explore, pointing out that if the mountains were as good as they looked, the publicity would almost certainly bring more outsiders. ‘I said that if he thought that was a bad idea, we would leave straightaway, but he was very welcoming,’ Howard recalls. ‘I think he saw the potential for his people. They had never been wealthy. Now, of course, many of them are.’
Howard, Taylor and their climbing companions Mick Shaw and Alan Baker stayed for two months, exploring routes with Difallah and his brothers Sabbah, Eid and Mzied. To the visitors’ surprise, though, Difallah revealed early on that all the mountains had already been climbed by the Bedouin themselves, mostly on hunting trips. The expedition took on a competitive edge.
‘They used to take us to the bottom of a mountain, point out the route and leave,’ grins Howard. ‘It was partly a test, but also partly modesty about their own capabilities. They were so fast. Once, they told us a particular ascent would be an easy four hours – but we were still on the mountain at sunset, making our way down in the middle of the night. We arrived back at camp for breakfast, with everyone laughing and asking us where we’d got to!’
Another breakthrough was the presence of a woman on the climbing team. Taylor remembers how early discussions of route finding would invariably end with one voice or other declaring, ‘Not possible with madame.’ She persisted, wearing an ankle-length skirt in the village for modesty but then, once the team were alone in the mountains, stuffing the skirt into her backpack and climbing in tights.
Since then, the couple have returned to Rum every year, spending weeks at a time climbing and exploring. Their pioneering guide Treks & Climbs in Wadi Rum appeared in 1987. Along with their other work, this book – now in its fifth update and still unparalleled for its insight – has contributed directly to Rum’s economic development, notably its fame as a tourism destination. The village, grown far beyond a tent encampment, is today the centre of an environmentally protected reserve. Howard and Taylor have remained engaged with local issues, campaigning on behalf of the Bedouin and, under sponsorship from Jordan’s Queen Noor, bringing guides from Rum to learn advanced techniques at the UK’s National Mountain Centre in Snowdonia.
The pair have also pioneered exploration of other wilderness areas around Jordan, publishing guides to new walks and climbs around Petra, the Dead Sea and the beautiful highland forests of Al-Ayoun. They have opened routes in Palestine, Oman, India, Egypt and many other destinations, and the stirring account of Howard’s 1965 success in conquering Norway’s Troll Wall, the tallest rock face in Europe, was published to great acclaim earlier this year.
But the intrepid couple always return to Wadi Rum. What stands out for them after all these years? Howard pauses. ‘It used to be the rock,’ he says. ‘Now it’s the people.’
Taylor nods. ‘The best thing you can do is go out into the desert with a Bedouin family – they know all these wonderful places. The women pick herbs, the kids play. It’s such a close, loving family context.’
How long will they keep coming back? ‘As long as possible,’ beams Howard. ‘It’s “rock till you drop”. Even now we can be exploring somewhere, turn a corner and realise what a stunning place Rum is – wildflowers in spring, red sand, mountains glowing in the sunset. It’s like nowhere else.’
RUM FOLK
Tony Howard and Di Taylor are directors of NOMADS (New Opportunities for Mountaineering, Adventure and Desert Sports). See www.nomadstravel.co.uk. Their books include:
• Jordan: Walks, Treks, Caves, Climbs & Canyons (Cicerone UK, 2nd edition 2008)
• Treks & Climbs in Wadi Rum, Jordan (Cicerone UK, 4th edition 2010)
• Troll Wall: Europe’s Tallest Rock Face (Vertebrate UK, 2011)
• Walks, Treks, Climbs & Caves in Al-Ayoun, Jordan (Vertebrate UK, 2012)
