Apr 19, 2019
Iuliana Marchian
We were hiking down along the Wadi Dana Trail, a remote valley in Jordan, when we heard a gentle pipe sound. We approached an acacia tree and saw a shepherd sitting in the shade, near his sheep. He was playing a pipe in the middle of the wilderness. When he noticed us, he stopped playing right away and invited us to sit down. He put an old black kettle with tea on a wood fire and started to talk with us in English – once again, in the middle of the desert.
He didn’t speak good English, however, but he knew a few words, enough to manage a conversation with his foreign guests. He lit a cigarette and told us his name was Sliman. When the language barrier compromised our communication, a wooden stick suddenly had miraculous powers.
When I saw he started to write with the stick in the sand, I grabbed my camera right away and quickly took some pictures of him. I used a compact, light camera – a Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-HX300 (20.1MP), easy to carry and with a 50x optic zoom. For shooting this photo, I used: ISO80, aperture priority – f/8.0, focal length – 35 mm, and exposure time – 1/80 seconds. I haven’t altered the photo by any means, I have just resized it to fit the current requirements.
In the fine sand, Sliman wrote the following numbers: 37 – and explained somehow this was his age, 3 – how many children he had, and 100 – how many sheep he had. Then he offered us hot tea, asked for some money in exchange, and started to play his pipe as we left and continued our hike along the valley.
Wadi Dana Valley, Dana Reserve, Jordan
Iuliana Marchian
Iuliana is a passionate explorer, travel writer, and blogger (www.travelingauthentic.com), based in Sibiu, Romania. Her life motto is simple: “We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting” (Khalil Gibran). Iuliana likes to travel at a slow pace and to remoter places. Riding a camel amidst sand dunes in a desert, that’s the moment she feels authentic. She has specialized in the Balkan /Middle Eastern countries, showcasing in her work remoter places of these regions.
Website : http://www.travelingauthentic.com/
Twitter : https://twitter.com/IulianaTravel
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Excellent – both the photo and the story behind it!