Across Lawrence's Desert: Riding Wadi Rum and Petra on an Arabian Horse

Some rides in this series are about the horse. This one is just as much about the ground you cross on it. Wadi Rum is the red desert in southern Jordan where they filmed Lawrence of Arabia, and riding an Arabian horse across it, camping with the Bedouin, and finishing the week at Petra is about as cinematic as travel on horseback gets.

Here is what it actually looks like, and one honest thing about Petra I want you to hear from me first.

The place: the Valley of the Moon

Wadi Rum is a protected wilderness of towering sandstone and granite, natural arches, and narrow gorges the color of rust, so otherworldly that Jordanians have always called it the Valley of the Moon. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2011, one of the few places on the list honored for both its natural beauty and its human history, with rock carvings here going back twelve thousand years.

You have almost certainly seen it. T.E. Lawrence rode through this desert during the First World War and wrote about it, David Lean filmed Lawrence of Arabia here in 1962, and Hollywood has kept coming back ever since. Wadi Rum has stood in for Mars and for far-off planets in The Martian, Dune, and two of the Star Wars films. Riding into it in person, at the pace of a horse, is a completely different thing.

The horse: the original desert athlete

You ride Arabians here, and this is their home ground. The Arabian is one of the oldest breeds on Earth, shaped over thousands of years by the Bedouin of the Arabian Peninsula into a horse that could survive the desert and carry a warrior all day: hardy, sure-footed, spirited, and famously bonded to people. Jordan takes this seriously. The country's royal stables run a breeding program that pulled the Jordanian Arabian back from the brink, and the riding stables out at the edge of Wadi Rum keep a string of Arabians who live out in the open desert year-round, exactly as the breed was made to.

The days: canters, camps, and a sky full of stars

There are two very different ways to do this, and which one is right depends entirely on how much you ride.

A short desert ride, a few hours out among the rock formations to places like Khazali Canyon and Lawrence's Spring, is gentle enough for a beginner on a calm horse. The multi-day expedition is a different animal. The classic route rides point-to-point across the desert over several days, four to six hours in the saddle, with long canters and the occasional flat-out gallop across open sand that you will remember for the rest of your life. At night you camp Bedouin-style, eat food cooked over the fire, and sleep under a sky with no light for a hundred miles in any direction.

The honest bit about Petra

Petra is the natural finish to a Jordan riding trip, and it earns every bit of its fame. It is the rose-red city the Nabataeans carved into the sandstone two thousand years ago, one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, and the first sight of the Treasury glowing at the end of the narrow Siq canyon is one of the great reveals in all of travel.

Here is the honest part. You cannot ride a horse to the Treasury, whatever a photo somewhere may have implied. The short horse ride included with a Petra ticket only covers the first few hundred yards from the gate to the mouth of the Siq, and the handlers are not allowed past that point. The walk through the Siq to the Treasury, about three quarters of a mile of towering pink canyon, is on your own two feet, and honestly you would not want it any other way. The riding is the desert. Petra is the reward you explore on foot at the end of it.

Who this is really for

The short rides at Wadi Rum welcome just about anyone, so even a nervous first-timer can feel the desert from the saddle. The multi-day crossing is for confident riders who are fit, secure at the canter, and happy to spend long days in the heat and sleep rough in a very beautiful place. It is not a trip for someone who needs a hot shower every night, and it is absolutely a trip for someone who has always wanted to ride straight into a David Lean film.

Spring and autumn are the seasons. Summer in the Jordanian desert is brutally hot, and I will steer you to the right window for your dates.

How we book it

Jordan is a specialist ride, run by a small number of good desert outfits and Bedouin operators rather than a big tour company, and matching the trip to your riding level is the whole game. That part is mine to handle. Tell me whether you want a gentle few hours among the rocks or the full multi-day crossing, when you can travel, and whether Petra is on the list (it should be), and I will build the week around you.

If riding an Arabian across Lawrence's desert has been sitting on your list, email me or send me a DM and let's talk. And if you are still weighing Jordan against the rest of the world, the full series recap puts every ride in one place, sorted by skill level and dream.

Talk soon, Cindi