It is so quiet I can literally hear the blood rushing through my veins. Absolute silence. I open my eyes and see the milkyway bend over me. Millions of stars, and I stare at them, trying to capture the beauty of this sight. The air is chilly and clear. We lie on our self-arranged bed of mattresses and blankets beside a Bedouin tent in the desert of Jordan – and it feels awesome!

Picture taken around midnight with our mighty Sony alpha 7

We found Eid on Airbnb (what else). He offers probably the most authentic Bedouin experience for tourists in Wadi Rum: A stay in a tent with actual Bedouins. One of his cousins (everyone is everyone’s cousin or brother there, the families are huge) picked us up with a jeep in a village nearby and drove us to the tent. The sun had already set. Eid’s sister and her daughter and niece were waiting for us and served us coffee and tea. We sat on carpets in the sand around the fire and communicated mainly with our hands and feet. That was actually the first time our little booklet with pictures from our homes and relatives came in quite handy. Later that evening, someone brought us a plate of food and we ate dinner on the floor with our hands (I will definitely do that again: It is a very pleasant approach to “feeding”).

The next day, we decided on a camel trip to get to know the desert the slow way. A cousin named Stihui picked us up with two camels after breakfast and we started our ride. The sun was already burning. We visited different places in Wadi Rum, listening to his stories of the desert. We saw amazing rock structures, sand dunes, lizards and anything else creeping and crawling through the sand. We had lots of fun with Stihui and the camels. He impressed me the most during our lunch break: First, he put blankets on the sand beside a rock in the shade so that we could rest. Then he started preparing the food, lit a fire and cooked a perfect meal with vegetables, fish and pita bread for us. After lunch we had tea, followed by a great nap. When we continued our desert exploration, there were no traces left behind of our lunch break except a little coal from the fire. That’s how Bedouins live in the desert: They leave the nature virtually untouched.

Check out my ride chewing the cud:

That evening, Eid and his cousin Sultan visited us and we were introduced to Bedouin traditions. We learnd how to make Bedouin coffee, smoked Shisha together, I got a hennah tattoo from a girl on my hands, we had interesting conversations (in English, for once), ate dinner (again with only our hands), drank tea and shared experiences and stories. The Bedouins are very peaceful and relaxed people, who made us feel very welcome and shared some of their natural wealth with us.