Mehedi’s email is very clear. Ominous even. Buy your ticket inside the visitor center and don’t listen to the people outside the gate. “These people spend the whole day waiting to ‘catch’ tourists and they will lie with you quite happily and tell you they are me, or work for me!”

OK, message received. Ignore the people at the gate.

“My friend! My friend! Where are you from? Who are you looking for?” A man approaches our car as we park outside the visitor center. He wears traditional bedouin garb with a long brown tunic and a checkered red and white kafiyeh around his head. We’re an hour late and the sun is beginning to set behind the the sandstone cliffs looming overhead. I can’t help but wonder, did Mehedi send someone to pick us up? I look questioningly at my brother, who has flown in from California to join me on the trip, and we silently decide to ignore our eager new friend.

Wadi Rum sits in far southern Jordan, in the middle of the great desert that stretches across the Arabian Peninsula. Jordan designated Wadi Rum a protected area in 1998, but it has been a place of imagination and allure since long before Jordan was a country. For centuries, natural springs have brought Bedouin nomads to Wadi Rum, and provided respite for their families and their flocks. The Bedouin are still here, but the springs are no longer the main attraction. Today, it’s Wadi Rum’s towering cliffs, endless dunes, and star filled nights that attract travelers.

Our new friend follows behind us as we walk to the visitor center. There’s no threat in his gait, but he exudes an off-putting persistence. “Are you looking for Mehedi? I’m his cousin. I am here to take you to the village.”

Wait, how does he know Mehedi? Now I’m confused. “OK, thank you. We will buy our tickets and call Mehedi,” I respond weakly as we quicken our pace to the visitor center door.

Refuge. Our eager friend gives up and speeds off in the back of a pick-up truck. Inside, two men wearing government uniforms and thick black mustaches take our entrance fee and compliment our fortitude. “You were right not to give them you’re money,” they tell us. “They’re all liars.” Sure enough, when we reach camp later that night, Mehedi’s “cousin” is nowhere to be seen.

As it turns out, Mehedi does in fact have a cousin. A real cousin. His name is Abdallah, and Mehedi tells us to meet him at Wadi Rum village. As we drive through the gates, the scale of the place starts to become clear. In arabic, wadi means “valley,” but this is no mere cut through two mountains. Surrounding us is an intricate maze of rock spires, buttes, and sandstone towers of unbelievable size. The sides of each cliff face are painted with striated rock in desert hues. One senses time differently in such a place, as if the desert were telling tale of many millennia gone by.

To the east of the access road rise the Seven Pillars of Wisdom, so called for T.E. Lawrence’s memoir of the same name. The pillars are the first of several sites named for Lawrence, and provide a fitting welcome to such a monumental place. Lawrence figures prominently in Western lore of Wadi Rum, and he camped there alongside Prince Faisal and his army of Arab irregulars during their revolt against the Ottoman Empire. As we pass by, I think back to the Viennese cafe where I once devoured The Seven Pillars of Wisdom over the course of a long weekend. Although credit for the victory against the Ottomans must certainly go to the Arabs, Lawrence deserves praise for his efforts to understand and advise the inscrutable tribes of the desert. I wonder if perhaps I too will gain some small bit of that knowledge.

Down the road in the tiny Bedouin village of Rum, Abdallah ushers us into the back of a jeep and we set off into the desert. The road disappears behind us, and ahead there lie only sand and mountains. How Abdallah, or anyone, manages to navigate such a place is a mystery to me. The Bedouin have always been masters of the desert though, and what seemed to me an incomprehensible maze of valleys and dunes, must have been as natural as anything to Abdallah. As we race through the desert the sun dips down below the horizon, tossing us into darkness.

Just as my eyes are adjusting to the night, Abdallah turns abruptly between two tall rock slabs and carefully maneuvers our jeep through a narrow passageway. On either side, the light from the jeep’s headlights reflects off sandstone walls, and in the distance I can just make out a campfire throwing shadows against a rocky backdrop. The place seems a sort of dream, a desert fortress built by untold years of eroding winds and floods. Above, the stars are brighter than any I’ve seen, and I am reminded of the things that cities have hidden from our daily lives. A moment later, Abdallah ushers us out of the jeep and begins unloading our bags.

The camp is small, with just a few large free standing tents for sleeping and a communal tent decorated with woven rugs and cushions. This is not a place of colonial luxury, but it’s comfortable, and most importantly, it’s peaceful. Abdallah shows us to our tent where we drop off our bags, settle our things on freestanding cots, and then head over to the sitting area.

In spite of their nomadic ways, the Bedouin are a communal people. Relationships matter and hospitality is an important way of building and maintaining bonds. When you live in such a harsh environment, it pays to know your neighbor, and it pays even more to be on good terms with them. Inside the communal tent we are greeted with sweet tea, freshly brewed over an open fire, and choose a set of cushions in the corner. To one side, British tourists are exchanging stories about diving in nearby Aqaba. To the other, a group of Germans chatter away while reclining on a pile of cushions. Looking around the tent, it’s clear that Wadi Rum hasn’t attracted just a single kind of traveler, easily identified and stereotyped, but rather, all manner of people. There are friends. There are young couples. There are parents being peppered with questions by their young children. All of them are at the camp to maintain their bonds, just like the Bedouin, by way of food, conversation, and new experiences.

It’s at this moment that I meet Mehedi for the first time. Like the rest of the staff, Mehedi is dressed in a long cloak and a checkered kafiyeh, which sits atop atop long black hair that falls around his shoulders. Mehedi has the look of the desert about him, and he smiles mischievously as he says the words that every tired traveler yearns to hear. “Dinner time. Please, come with me as we retrieve dinner.”

Outside, Mehedi leads us to an empty corner of sand at the edge of camp. The light from the campfire is faint here, and we stand silently in a circle around Mehedi. Like a true showman, Mehedi is playing to the crowd, “who wants dinner?” He has the air of someone with a secret, and we can all feel it.

Kneeling down, Mehedi begins to scrape at the sand, pulling away piles of it with cupped hands to reveal a blackened iron lid with a thin handle on top. One of Mehedi’s crew comes over to assist and out of the sand the two pull a long metal cylinder and set it to the side. Mehedi smiles and twists off the top. Inside, orange embers flicker, illuminating layers of grilled chicken, lamb, tomatoes, onions, and peppers. Buried treasure, I think to myself as we return to the tent. And so it was.

There is something almost visceral about camp food, and this meal was no exception. Rice appears from out of nowhere, and before long we are piling plates high with meat and vegetables. The ever-present tea makes another round, followed by rows of sweet Arabic pastries. Mehedi plies those seated next to him with stories, and before long Bedouin men with drums and stringed instruments begin playing. The word ethereal comes to mind, as if those perfect moments might slip through my fingers and wash away with the next desert storm.

Later that night, my brother and I walk back out through the sandstone passage, and into the desert. We climb to the top of a nearby rock formation, and silently consider the sky above. “This is not a place I ever expected to be,” I think to myself. But I’m glad that I am.

The next morning, I wake up early and go for a long solitary walk outside camp. As I emerge from the passageway, now in daylight, I get a good look at the desert for the first time. In every direction I see nothing but red sand punctuated by monumental rock formations leaping into the horizon. I know there’s an end to this place. I’ve seen the maps. But standing there, alone, in the middle of the desert, it feels as though the sand, and rock, and wind, might continue forever.

When the tours start the next morning, my brother and I turn out to be two too many for the main tour vehicle. This seems, at first, to be a bad thing. But it’s not. Mehedi soon advises that he has arranged for Abdallah to take us on a private tour, and 10 minutes later we’re bumping yet again across the desert floor and into the wilderness.

As it turns out, Abdallah is not only a great driver, but a great tour guide as well. The desert is a confusing place, and Abdallah seems to know the answer to every question we throw at him. More importantly, he lets us feel as though we’re on our own, exploring the desert like so many travelers before us. At one point, Abdallah drops us off in front of a long canyon, endpoint unknown, and simply says, “OK, I’ll meet you on the other side,” before turning the jeep around and disappearing behind a dune.

It should be said, somewhat obviously, that Wadi Rum is definitely not in America. There are no handrails. No ropes. No signs. For just this reason, Wadi Rum feels unspoiled. To cover it in paved roads would be to remove the thing that makes it so magical: wildness. In Wadi Rum, you are your own traveler, and though the guide will keep you out of any real harm, you have to experience the place through touch. My brother and I do just this, scrambling up mountainous rock after mountainous rock— all at Abdallah’s urging. And from atop each cliff we are rewarded with new vistas. In the distance we see solitary trees amid the hills, and roaming groups of camel slowly plodding across endless sand. There is life in this place, and beauty in seeing such life triumph over hardship. At the top of each cliff we stack stones atop one another in the form of small towers. The stacks serve as signposts of sorts, documenting our journey. And we’re not the only ones. High above the dunes, even on the tallest rock formations, there are hidden gardens of stacked stone monuments. At each I think about the eyes to have taken in such magnificent views before me, and lament that so few on this earth get to experience such beauty.

At mid-day, Abdallah stops aside a shaded cliff and announces lunch. “At home, my wife is cook,” he says with a smile, “but in the desert, I am cook.” We light a small fire and feast on a stew of tomatoes and lamb with unleavened bread before continuing on our way. Although there are few rules in Wadi Rum, there is one important maxim: respect the desert. Everything that comes in with us, comes out again.

The desert is a strange place— at once both devoid of life, and teeming with it. It’s a place of contradictions, and the more time we spend traversing across the dunes, the more we realize how much is hidden beneath the surface of our expectations. In the afternoon Abdallah shows us petroglyphs and Anfashieh inscriptions made during pre-Islamic times by the Nabateans and the Thamud before them. The symbols are unrecognizable to us, but the inscribed images of camel herds and caravans are as clear as anything. Abdallah explains that the glyphs are signposts for travelers, leading the wayward towards water and other important sites. Even now, long after our trip has ended, it’s hard for me to comprehend the richness of Wadi Rum’s history. All I know is that when I looked at those glyphs, I was standing in the same place that travelers stood two millennia ago. There’s something magical about that. Something that makes me feel incredibly small, but also inextricably tied to the entirety of the human experience.

In the late afternoon, when Abdallah drops us off at our car in Rum village, my brother and I are exhausted. It’s a long way back to Amman, and a day of hiking and climbing in the desert sun has left us drained of energy. We take no souvenirs with us. No Bedouin trinkets from the shops at the base of Lawrence Spring. The memories of what we saw there are more than enough to leave a lasting impression. Since returning home, back to work, and back to civilization, I think now and then about our short time in Wadi Rum. I remember that the world is still a wild and mystical place. I remember what it feels like to explore, and to discover, and to be free from the chains and hindrances of modernity. Wadi Rum won’t be my last adventure, but it will always be one of my most memorable.