Wadi Rum Desert, Lawrence of Arabia and Bedouin

My visit to Wadi Rum is a highlight of the Middle East share of my entire trip. Wadi Rum is an enormous and dramatic sandy desert with the most extraordinary desert landscape and huge mountains of sandstones and granite rocks. For me, it imposes such ultimate fascinations and inspirations that my words are simply incapable of the description. At the first sight of the desert, I thought I was in a movie set. It turned out I was. Part of "Lawrence of Arabia" was filmed here.
Like desert camels, our "barely standing one piece" jeep, amazingly accustomed to desert life ran crazy throughout the desert. We sitting in the open truck, embraced the baking sun, harsh desert sand blowing wind and a variety of spectacular desert landscapes revealing in front of us while I let my mind roam between the fancy of the imaginary film scenes of Lawrence of Arabia where I was part of the Arab Revolt and the myth and solitude of the present imposing landscapes. We slept at Bedouin's tent that night. Desert life is revolving around the movement of the sun. Time doesn't mean anything here. A day is ended with a spectacular desert sunset. The desert went into a deep darkness and soon enough, a lively night skies and stars came to shine! My day in Wadi Rum was one of my life experiences. I was deeply enchanted.
My inspirations from Wadi Rum go along the way to more reading and research on T.E. Lawrence and the film "Lawrence of Arabia". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._E._Lawrence. As fascinating as Wadi Rum, T.E. Lawrence had lived an extraordinary and unconventional life. His book " Seven Pillars of Wisdom" tells the account of his service in Arab Revolt.
Bedouin and their black goat-hair tents are still a fixture on today's desert. Bedouin have distinguished appearance and personalities though few can still be regarded as truly nomadic. They appear in a very thin figure and have a beautifully structured tanned face. Many Bedouin young men I saw resemble Johnny Depp in Pirate of Caribbean. Their traditional nomadic lives once relied on their goat herds and now mainly on tourism services.They are lovely and friendly people. Our Bedouin jeep driver Soloman is a lovely happy young man who cooked us great Bedouin dinner, entertained us with his instrument,took a great take care of himself, loved to look at himself in the broken mirror from his jeep, changed his white robe during the day and washed it while he's waiting for the pot to boil. His face is glowing with innocent smiles. When he doesn't need to take care of us, he will be either playing the Bedouin music or looking at himself in the mirror.
On the second day when we were packing for leaving, Soloman asked me to stay with him. My friend William joked that it might be a good idea and that when he comes back to visit the desert again, he would find me a typical Bedouin woman at a Bedouin tent with several kids and some camels. I laughed. But for me, Wadi Rum is sacred. Only Bedouin is able to continue their existence as an integral existence of the desert. They understand the desert and desert embraces them. Few from outside is able to be accepted by the desert. If any, that will be T.M. Lawrence.