#024 : LIFE ON MARS / WADI RUM, JORDAN

Original publication date: Jun 1, 2021

Hey ‘Space Jam’ bae.

Hey desert graffiti!

And hey you—curious, creative and terrific BEAUTYSHAMBLES subscriber.

It’s the home stretch of our travelogue that began with flying out to NBA Paris in January 2020—and which also took us to the Republic of Georgia, England, and Malta. We’re up to our last 36 hours in Jordan—the small, dry, mostly landlocked country bordered by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Israel and the West Bank of Palestine.

Oh, it was a magic day. A special night, too. Read on!

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Wadi Rum sounds like a delicious alcoholic beverage, but it is actually a sprawling desert—full of sandstone and blood-colored rock—in ‘Jordan South’.

They call Wadi Rum the 'Valley of the Moon'. But it looks more like Mars. Wadi Rum is so aesthetically-similar to the Red Planet that J.J. Abrams filmed Star Wars: Rogue One on site. And 'The Martian'—starring Matt Damon—was filmed there.

In me—truly, the only important person at any given time—Wadi Rum conjures memories of a childhood obsession, Calvin and Hobbes:

If you get it, you get it.