The white sand is actually in a valley much lower than the red sand. We had to go down a side of the sand dune (of red sand) to get there.

Sandstone rock formed this way thru erosion

Considered one of the highest rock bridges in the world, the Burdah Rock Bridge stands a clear 115 feet (about 11 floors) above ground. We did not climb it.

In the tea stall below, we had some free tea and cookies. And made some friends with fellow tourists. Got some photography tips from Zoltan who was visiting from Hungary with his Canon DSLR EOS 6D.

Also, met Pam and Greg.

“Where are you visiting from?” (I must have used this line 50 times this trip and made all sorts of new friends)
“America”, the gentleman replied. “And you?”
“We are from America too. Atlanta”.
“We are from DC. We have 2 of our children in South Carolina”.
“And we have a daughter in DC!”

… and the conversations and exchanging of notes from places visited started. Turns out Pam and Greg are avid hikers and talked about some of the most difficult treks they have done.

I suddenly had a doubt.

“Did you guys go up to the top of the bridge?”

“Yes. We cam down 10 minutes back”

“Wait a minute… blue shirt, black shorts … I wonder….”, I mumbled and quickly scanned thru the pictures on my camera. And then stopped at one. Zoomed in as hard as I could…

And then showing the picture to both of them, I asked – “Isn’t that you two?”

Turned out that it was them!!

Just as we had reached the area, I had taken a few shots. In the very first one, I had managed to capture my new friends from Washington DC!!

We exchanged phone numbers to send the picture!!

Standing near the Lawrence of Arabia place, straining my eyes way out into the desert, I thought I saw something moving. At first I assumed, it was somebody on a camel. But the image was too thin for that. Then, it appeared that whoever it was, seemed to be running.

I asked Sharmila and Mahmoud – “Do you think, he is running this way?”

In the top picture, you can see the small image in the middle of the picture.

As I trained my zoom camera lens on the person, it became evident that it was a runner. In fact, he took a right turn around the mountain and I got a clean shot of him running.

That was awe inspiring. Running in that heat, in the middle of the desert on a hard to run surface like sand. And look at the perfect gait with the ankles thrown up high (unlike me).

Just as I was getting inspired, Sharmila put cold water on me… “Don’t get any ideas!!”

I was hoping that our four wheeler will cross path with him again. I wanted to ask him why was he running in the middle of the desert. Also, if he had any prior experience in ignoring his wife’s advice!

This rubble is reputed to be Lawrence of Arabia’s (British general who fought successfully with the Arab rebels against the Ottomans) house and armory storage. It cannot be independently verified whether this was indeed where he stayed, nonetheless, this location was used in the movie “Lawrence of Arabia”

The Wadi Rum desert lies right in the ancient path from Istanbul to Saudi Arabia. All over the desert you can see the inscriptions carved on rock paces by ancient travelers and original tribes.

This one is mostly petroglyphs of camels that dates back to the Thamud people (eight centuries before Christ).

The last one I did was in Mongolia. Those were the two humped, big ones (Bactrian). These were smaller and single humped (Dromedary)