Now That's What I Call Adventure ... Part I

Well, there's been a short break in service recently, partly due to a lovely two week road trip with all my fabulous pals from Europe, and partly due to a slightly unexpected end to the trip which has put the Middle East adventure on hold for a bit. I'll come back to the road trip later (I'm going to have plenty of time on my hands!), but for those who like juicy details, I thought I'd tell you all about how I have managed to spectacularly break my leg … it's quite a long tale, so grab a cuppa, settle back and enjoy!

So, with a French family of four (Michel, Lolo and the kids Enzo and Magali), my friend Mike from the UK and two girls I know from Amman, Vanessa and Gemma, we set out from our camp in Wadi Rum at around 9.30 in the morning to go and climb Jordan's tallest mountain, Um Adami. I've been wanting to do this climb for a while, but had waited because I wanted to do it with my visitors, and both the Bedouin and other tourists had told me that it was an easy enough climb to do with kids, about 1.5 hours each way, and with amazing views from the top over Wadi Rum in one direction and over the Saudi border in the other. I had already been up the mountain opposite Adami with my folks and so had some idea of the treat in store in terms of wilderness landscapes and wide open spaces – all very exciting.

The journey from the camp to the bottom of Adami took about an hour in a jeep, through some beautiful valleys with carpets of flowers and even the odd mushroom poking up out of the sands – not what you expect to see in the desert, and the colours of the flowers mixing with the different coloured sands and rocks was just gorgeous.

When we got to the bottom of Um Adami, I have to say that it looked kind of daunting, but we had the whole day to get up and down again, and the lure of the views from the top and being able to say 'I climbed Um Adami' spurred us all on, so we happily abandoned the jeep to start the hard slog up. We'd bumped into another jeep with a couple of Aussie tourists and their guide who were also doing the trip, and as our guides seemed to know each other we became unplanned climbing partners – boy, was this going to turn out to be useful later on!

The climb up wasn't easy, but it wasn't too hard either – sometimes having to use hands and feet together to get up some of the rocks, but it wasn't anywhere near rock-climbing and the dry sandstone gave pretty good grip. The two kids scampered up like little mountain goats and the fitter members of the group got further and further ahead, but we weren't in any hurry, taking time to look at plants and views, and we waited for each other so that we finally got to the top altogether …



As you can see, the panorama was amazing and everyone reckoned was well worth the climb up, which we did in about 2 hours. We spent a leisurely half hour at the summit sitting in awe, taking photos and just relaxing, but keeping in mind that the sun was getting hotter and that our full lunch was waiting for us at the bottom of the mountain ...