Wadi Rum

About Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum is a green space in Wadi Rum, Jordan, offering a peaceful escape. Perfect for walks, picnics, and outdoor relaxation.

Wadi Rum, also called the Valley of the Moon, is Jordan's largest wadi and its most celebrated desert: a protected area of 720 square kilometres in the far south, about 60 km east of Aqaba, where mountains of sandstone and granite rise out of red and orange sand. It holds the country's highest summits, Jabal Umm ad Dami (1,854 m) and Jabal Rum (1,734 m). UNESCO listed it in 2011 as a mixed natural and cultural World Heritage Site: alongside the scenery it preserves thousands of Thamudic and Nabataean inscriptions and rock drawings recording thousands of years of human life in this desert, including the famous carvings of Khazali Canyon, and a Nabataean temple near Rum village. The valley's name is tied to the Great Arab Revolt and the passage of T. E. Lawrence, and then to cinema: Lawrence of Arabia was filmed here in 1962, followed by many films that chose it to stand in for other planets, such as The Martian and Dune. Its people are the Zalabia Bedouin of Rum village, who run the tours and camps; eco-tourism has been their main livelihood since the protected area was created in 1998. The places most tours visit are Lawrence's Spring and the Khazali inscriptions, the Umm Fruth rock bridge and the Burdah bridge some 80 m high, the red dunes, the Seven Pillars of Wisdom formation near the visitor centre and Lawrence's House. A night in a Bedouin camp under a sky thick with stars, with tea on the fire and zarb meat cooked in the sand, is what most visitors remember best.

Where:

Wadi Rum, Jordan