Sunrise on the Mujib Rim

This is the dry one, and we say that twice on the phone because people book it expecting the river. There is no water on this trail. What there is: a 05:30 start from the Adventure Centre, ninety minutes up the escarpment on a stony switchback path, and then the gorge opening four hundred metres below you while the sun comes up behind the Moab plateau and puts the Dead Sea in flat pink light. You can usually see the Palestinian side from the top. On the way down we stop at the RSCN ibex enclosure, which is the honest version of ibex-watching in Jordan - the animals are part of a breeding programme and they are behind a fence. Wild ones do live on these cliffs and we see them perhaps one trip in five, usually at distance, usually as a shape moving on a ledge. Cardamom coffee at the turnaround. We are back before the heat properly arrives, which by June means before nine, because after that the rock radiates and the walk stops being pleasant.