Finding Tatooine

A FAR AWAY GALAXY, JUST NEXT DOOR.

“Use the Force Luke!”

That’s all I could think about when I took a picture of this grand vista during Christmas 2016. It was almost dusk and clouds slowly started to dot the sky. A day later these would grow into a fully-fledged desert storm, but right then the whole thing was just pure magic. It was like a scene taken directly from the original Star Wars movie.
The high desert scene spread out in front of me was out-worldly. Towering sandstone mountains pierced the flat Orange expanse of fine sand. Glowing in the red of the setting sun the only thing missing were a bunch of angry Tusken Raiders and a fast desert speeder.

We had none of those, although the Land Cruisers and Discovery off-roaders could have been considered as a close approximation. The Bedouins, however, were not. Unlike the scary Tuskens of the original movie, these semi-nomadic people were as friendly and hospitable as one can expect. They made us strong hot tea with lots of sugar to warm our bodies as the high elevation and the cooling air were chilling our bones solid. It would drop close to freezing point later that night, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

A twist in the plot

Like any good movie plot, this one’s got a twist too. Ok, I admit, this was not Tatooine. I guess you figured that one already. Hardly a twist there. It was, however, a mere stone throw away from my Mediterranean hometown. Now that’s a surprise! So close, in fact, that unlike any other exotic trip recorded on this blog, it didn’t even require a ticket to an airplane. Wadi Rum is located in southern Jordan (pronounced like “Sun” – not like “Mojito”) and is best accessed from Israel by car through the Yitzhak Rabin Border Crossing in Eilat. I got there almost by chance. Earlier that month a friend of mine invited me to join him on an off-road weekend out with his buddies. We packed few warm cloths, a passport, a portable coffee kit, some crackers and hydraulic wrenches and headed out to the dunes of Jordan.

A few hours later, we were already traveling near an imaginary Mos Eisley.

We didn’t find Obi-Wan Kenobi nor Han Solo.
We didn’t encounter Jawas or stumbled on a pair of wandering droids.

Who cares.

If director J.J. Abrams needs a shooting location for part eight of the Saga, I think I got the right place for him.