Welcome to the second annual GSS Desert Week! In time-honoured tradition, we’ll mostly be posting about deserts. For about a week!

The beautiful Wadi Rum is a mere 720 square km desert valley located in the southern part of Jordan. Once submerged under the Red Sea, it is now home to the native Bedouin people and is a favourite spot for foreign travellers looking to explore the vast desert wilderness. Wadi Rum was also the set of the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia the story of T.E. Lawrence, a British officer during WWI.

Wadi Rum is surrounded by some spectacular mountains of sandstone and granite, which cater to all kinds of adventurous activities if you decide to take a trip there. Although the Bedouin¹ were traditionally a nomadic tribe, today most have built homes and adopted a more stationary lifestyle – with many living off the revenue generated by local tourism.

It wasn’t until the 1962’s Lawrence of Arabia that Wadi Rum became widely known to Western society. In the film, British officer T.E Lawrence spends time in Wadi Rum during the Arab revolts of WWI, helping the Arabs fight against the Turks and eventually conquer the Ottoman Empire. While the movie is a bit misleading, Lawrence did at least spend some time in Wadi Rum during the war. Nevertheless, because of the amazing scenery, Wadi Rum was an excellent choice of location.

Check out Wadi Rum’s official site, or Wikipedia for more info.

Completely unknown to the Western world until 1812, this is the ancient city of Petra in Jordan.

Although nobody knows for sure when people first settled here, the incredible architecture that survives is thought to be at least 2,000 years old – and the most impressive thing is that much of what remains wasn’t built, but actually carved directly out of the sandstone cliffs – like this entire amphitheatre for example.

Ground level photo

Probably the best preserved part of the ancient city is Al Khazneh, or The Treasury, which is sheltered at the end of a tall, narrow gorge known as al-Siq. The shelter afforded by the high walls explains why the Treasury hasn’t been sandblasted away like many of Petra’s other architectural features.¹

Although the angle these images were taken at doesn’t allow us to see the façade itself, we can see a crowd milling around in front of it.

The Treasury is at the top of this thumbnail, and the pictures that the crowd are taking would look a lot like this.

If you’re thinking this place seems familiar, perhaps you recognise it from 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, in which it played a part as the fictional “Temple of the Holy Grail”.²

If you’d like to explore more, here’s a good map of all the local sights, or read Petra’s Wikipedia page.

Thanks to Jason Griswold and Dan Kuck.

At this air base in Jordan we find six C101 jets on the runway, and although they’re not yet flying, they are in formation! These jets are actually Spanish-designed CASA C-101 Aviojets, which are currently in use by the air forces of Jordan, Chile, Honduras, and of course Spain.

C-101s are actually also used by the Spanish aerobatic display team, Patrulla Águila which is based here at the Spanish Air Force Academy, San Javier.

So are these planes part of the display team? Difficult to say, but there’s a lot of them here, so it’s more likely these are just air force pilot training planes.¹

More on the Royal Jordanian Air Force, aerobatics and the CASA C-101 jet at Wikipedia.

Thanks to Ramez Yaghnam and acalorado.

We’ve previously featured Mexico’s giant flags but this is the world’s largest unsupported flagpole in Jordan. Narrowly beating the previous record holder in UAE, the flagpole is 126.8 metres tall, is illuminated at night and can apparently be seen from as far as 20km away. Basically, it’s very big.

But it’s not that big! The world’s tallest supported flagpole is on the border of North and South Korea and towers over the land at 160m. Basically, it’s very, very big.

Thanks: Jerry Mills & Me