The LAST CRUSADE

Getting beautifully lost in the deserts of Jordan...

- NICOLAS STECHER

1916 as he prepped the Great Arab Revolt — as dramatised in David Lean’s legendary 1962 epic Lawrence of Arabia — and we’re now pulling up to a towering edifice of stone called the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The moniker is an ode to Lawrence, but it’s not because he named it; rather it was dubbed so after the British Army officer’s death, as an homage to his memoir of the same name. Let’s just say that Lawrence’s shadow looms large over Wadi Rum.

Sitting on the warm hood we watch the sun slowly disappear, lighting up the Seven Pillars with a torch. The land here is ruddy, a rich ochre that meets the orange sky like a Rothko painting. The hue is unlike any you’ve ever seen. It’s been described as everything from blood to brick red, but that doesn’t quite do it justice. It’s more like a pungent rust. The sky as well; both are so rich it’s as if God turned the saturation slider on His Instagram filter up a notch too high.

When the sun has completed its burlesque show we jump back in the QX80s and point our bows to another corner of Wadi Rum. Nestled in an alcove deep in the canyons, the Memories Aicha Luxury Camp encompasses an array of geodesic domes, their glass facets shining like weird diamonds in the gloaming. For dinner that night we eat in a cave on the cliff wall, and someone pulls out a bottle of Moët & Chandon from a bucket of ice for a celebratory toast. Exhausted, we stay up smoking shisha, taking long pulls of the sweet tobacco as the curls of smoke rise up into the darkness.