It traces the stunning, extraterrestrial landscape featured in films like Star Wars and Dune, while helping to preserve traditional Bedouin culture.

My Bedouin guide Abdullah led the way up and into the crags of Jebel Umm Ishrin (1,753m), the sheer, eastern wall of Jordan’s most spectacular valley: Wadi Rum. Though it’s considered one of the world’s most breathtaking desert landscapes today, few outsiders had ever heard of Wadi Rum in 1917 when British archaeologist and writer TE Lawrence travelled through, describing this eastern wall as “one massive rampart of redness”.

Forty-five years later, his journey inspired the film Lawrence of Arabia, which effectively introduced Wadi Rum to the outside world.

Long before Lawrence, local Bedouin scrambled to dizzying heights on these cliffs, blazing vertiginous paths to needle the mountains’ narrowest gaps, reaching their innermost fissures and skirting their dome-capped summits on the hunt for ibex.

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As Abdullah and I followed in their footsteps, clambering up the cleft of Umm Ejil (also known as Rakhabat Canyon), the passage narrowed and rock walls popped with weathered niches and delicate natural columns, as if marking the approach to an ancient shrine. Panting, I dropped to a black sandstone bench to rest beside Abdallah. We were deep in the heart of Jebel Umm Ishrin, engulfed in its silence, until a human-like whistle suddenly broke the quiet. I craned my neck to scan the surrounding cliffs. Such high, hidden reaches have long been considered the hideouts of magical jinn (genies).

Abdallah smiled: a starling, he explained. Their two-part whistle is a familiar sound in the surrounding Hisma plateau.

Of the area’s hundreds of miles of red-sand desert, the bulk of which stretches beyond the Saudi border, it’s Jordan’s fortuitous sliver that is by far the best known. It’s this stretch, centred on the Unesco-inscribed Wadi Rum Protected Area, that a bewitched Lawrence described as “magically haunted” and “vast and echoing and God-like”. In recent decades, this extraterrestrial terrain has served as the backdrop of numerous blockbuster films, including Prometheus (2012), The Martian (2015), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) and Dune (2021 and 2024).

It was here that a new long-distance hiking route was launched in February 2023: The Wadi Rum Trail. This 10-day, clockwise circuit stretches for 120km starting from Jebel Umm Ishrin and showcases the prime features of Wadi Rum’s surreal landscapes, journeying beyond the usual 4×4 routes deep into the Protected Area. According to Ben Hoffler, one of the creators of the trail, it integrates various Bedouin paths including walking tracks, shepherding tracks, camel tracks, hunting routes, smuggling routes, and segments of the old pilgrimage route (darb al-hajj) to Mecca.

Hoffler has dedicated over a decade to developing mountain trails across the region, from Egypt’s Sinai and Red Sea Mountain trails to the Bedouin Trail – a vast 1,200km route that connects Jordan to Upper Egypt. But Wadi Rum holds a unique charm for him, with towering mountains that exhibit a magnificence unmatched in other parts of the Hisma plateau. The area also sustains a Bedouin culture that is notably more traditional than in the Saudi Arabian sections of Hisma, imbuing it with a remarkable ambiance.

Much like the resourceful Nabatean civilization, which constructed Petra centuries earlier, the Zalabieh tribe—the most prominent Bedouin group in today’s Protected Area—was attracted to Wadi Rum by the perennial springs at the foot of Jebel Rum, which faces Jebel Umm Ishrin. These springs, surrounded by rocky walls adorned with ancient Thamudic and Greek inscriptions as well as several Nabatean shrines, sprout lush wild mint thickets.

However, as recently as a few generations ago, the Bedouin village at the base of Jebel Rum was merely a cluster of goat-hair tents. With governmental initiatives since the 1930s, most of the Bedouins here, like others across Jordan, have settled permanently, favouring SUVs over camels and 4×4 tourism as a main economic driver, with tours typically heading southward along a populated track through the valley.

By contrast, the Wadi Rum Trail climbs east into the twisting bowels of the mountains, losing the crowds from the start. Ten days later, it ends where it began, with increasingly hair-raising abseils down the face of Jebel Rum landing you back at the springs.

Climber and adventurer Tony Howard was first drawn to Wadi Rum in the 1980s and has since played a pivotal role in putting Wadi Rum on the tourism map. In exploring and publishing the region’s first climbing routes, he struck up lasting friendships with Zalabieh members and was deeply impressed by their hospitality and knowledge of the steep terrain.

After Howard and Hoffler hiked the Sinai Trail together in Egypt, the two began collaborating with Howard’s friends in Wadi Rum – among them Zalabieh elders – to create a similar long-distance trail in Jordan.

Like Hoffler’s other projects in Egypt, the Wadi Rum Trail was designed with both hikers and locals in mind. Though tackling the trail on your own is permitted, the creators are convinced that the most rewarding experience is to be had in the company of Bedouin guides.

“The Wadi Rum Trail first and foremost pays homage to the Bedouin of Wadi Rum,” said Howard. “They know the area, its flora and fauna intimately from ancestral knowledge – and they are always good company and good fun!”

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“There are many hearts in this path,” said one such Zalabieh elder, Sabbah Eid. “[It’s a] beautiful experience with nature and the life of the Bedouin, far from communication and modern life… it gives a special spirit to the place – complete calm.” As Eid explained, much of the impetus for the trail’s creation was to support the Bedouin community, connecting “a new generation of young people to work on this path – instead of working with tours on cars”.

Hoffler believes that Bedouin-led efforts like the Wadi Rum Trail can help preserve the Bedouins’ natural environment and cultural heritage. “If history have shown us anything it’s that the Bedouin known how to live sustainably in the wilderness,” Hoffler said.

Hiking the trail

While hiking the entire trail takes 10 days, those with limited time can explore it in sections, as I did, starting with the first section: the traverse of Umm Ejil. This path leads to the breathtaking dunes of Wadi Umm Ishrin, surrounded by cliffs that conceal ancient petroglyphs and Nabatean and Thamudic inscriptions. Crossing another rocky ascent reveals the sandy expanses of the Khor al-Ajram basin to the south. Passing through the stunning Abu Khashaba Canyon, we climbed Jebel Birda (1,574m) to its vast rock arch. The panoramic views from the ridge of Birda showcase Wadi Rum’s impressive sandstone massifs.

Leaving the well-known landscapes of Wadi Rum, the trail turns east towards the remote Tablelands, one of the most solitary parts of the route. It follows south on an ancient camel path, skirting old burial sites, enduring inscriptions, and valleys filled with remnants of ancient caravans.

Jordan’s tallest peak, Umm ad-Dami (1,854m), near the Saudi border, is the next significant marker on the route. Reaching the summit, the sky explodes in color. Salman, my young Bedouin guide, shared that the peak’s name relates to an ancient Bedouin justice system, where blood feuds known as damm (“blood”) were settled. This tradition of justice still prevails in Bedouin communities like Wadi Rum, where tribal sheikhs continue to serve as arbiters of justice, maintaining their role despite modern laws.

From the peak’s summit, looking west to the crimson cliffs, I considered whether the name could be inspired by their rust-like hue at sunset. A cool breeze greeted me as I admired the landscape’s grand ridges and expansive sand waves. My phone vibrated, signaling a welcome message in Arabic from nearby Saudi Arabia.

The trail doesn’t actually enter Saudi Arabia, but curves north-west into the Hejaz Hills before approaching the final summit of the trail: Jebel Rum (1,734m). For at least a century, the Bedouin have scaled Jebel Rum’s summits, where rabbits and goats still flit through its wooded gullies. For hikers completing the entire trail, it’s a jaw-dropping finish, involving ropes, harnesses and multipitch rappelling down the mountain’s western face.

Upon leaving the village, I mentioned to a handful of guides my desire to return and complete the full circuit. In striking contrast to the fast-paced, formulaic 4×4 tours on offer in Wadi Rum, increasingly featuring stays in luxury space pods inspired by films like The Martian, the trail’s slow, deliberate meander offers a deeper, more visceral experience here – and in far more sustainable fashion.

Tatiana Haddad, a cultural anthropologist at the American University of Beirut, told me she was hopeful that the trail’s creation is “emblematic of a growing consideration towards the ecological fragility of Wadi Rum and the vitality of its protection”. Contrary to common assumptions, she noted that “desert ecology is in fact quite fragile, and many Bedouins are already having to change their lifestyles to adapt to Wadi Rum’s degradation”.

But alongside preserving Wadi Rum’s natural environment aside, safeguarding the rich cultural heritage of the Bedouin community is at the heart of this route.

“Bedouin culture stands at a crossroads,” Hoffler said. “If [the ancestral knowledge of this land] is lost, it will be a cultural tragedy for all of humanity.” To live on, he explained, “it needs to actually be used. It needs to be learned. It needs to be practiced. It needs to be passed on to the next generations.”

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