Into the desert

Stephen Williams recalls MacCannell's view on the tourist experience as a quest for authenticity, to 'see life as it is really lived'. In his view, the tourist experience is distinct from day to day life, the modern life regarded as inauthentic.[1] Then visiting the Bedouins must be a good way to fulfill this quest for authenticity, right?

When we arrived at Hillawi Camp, everything was much larger than I expected. I thought we were going to sleep in tents. Instead we slept in a bed in a cross-over of a hut and a tent. There was even wifi(!) at the camp, which I purposely did not use. The world is small enough because of the internet already, I could go a day without it.

Figure 1: Sunset in Wadi Rum. In the lower right corner is Hillawi Camp

After watching the sunset from the top of a rock, we had dinner. The meat had been cooked in a hole underneath the sand, it was great. There were many Jordanians from Amman who would spend the evening in the camp, and travel to Aqaba later that night. Together with Omar, Jos, and Jelle I joined the dancing men. I later learnt that the dance we performed was also danced at weddings.

The next day we went on a tour on the back of jeeps. We stopped at several tents, where we were welcomed with tea. I quickly noticed that they had souvenirs for sale, it was all set up.

Figure 2: Jeep tour through Wadi Rum

So did we experience the real, authentic Bedouin way of life? I think not. We were experiencing the 'front' area, where we were presented staged performances of authenticity, for example the stops during the jeep ride.[1] These encounters with locals were also formal encounters. The informal encounters with locals, during the dancing might have been more authentic.





[1] Stephen Williams, Tourism Geography - a new synthesis, 2nd edition, Routledge, 2009