My husband and I just came back from one of those trips where you're supposed to re-discover yourself...soul-cleansing...self-searching...spiritual healing...escape from the mad rush of the city. We chose to do this in a country known as the "cradle of civilisation" - Jordan.

Jordan hosts the famous Wadi Rum desert, a place imposing yet captivating for its miles of towering moonrock-surfaced mountains and ochre-coloured sand. For almost a week, we traveled along Wadi Rum and set camp next to a Bedouin settlement - a crazy idea considering it was winter time and temperatures dropped to freezing conditions at night. But for one week, the two of us stripped ourselves off the familiar comforts of modern living - no heater to keep us warm, no TV, radio or phones, no bed, no roof over our heads, no running water from the tap, and so-- no toilets. Living among the Bedouins, the original inhabitants of the desert, was just like living side by side with Nature. And we were determined to make peace with her.

But I digress. It's hard not too, considering the beauty and hospitality of Wadi Rum and its people. What I actually wanted to talk about is our eating experience there - of dining under the stars and the desert moon, every night we were there. Romantic it might have been, but it was actually more than that.

No stove and no cooker--but, no problem Surrounded by the hauntingly beautiful mountains, in the middle of nowhere, we had Shish Kebab (assortment of barbecued meat) every night, prepared in its original state, by the ever-chatty Arabs, our hosts. The mountains provided the perfect setting - looking like tall, dark giants in the night, with the moonlight shining only on the mountain tops, it was surreal, and looked almost eerie. But they somehow didn't scare me. They were like our guardian angel who was protecting us not just from the winds, but from the unknown that laid beyond.

Kebab served by the Arabs themselves was an exotic affair. While we warmed ourselves in front of a campfire, we watched the Arabs as they grilled a spread fit for a king. Fanned by the strong winds, the flames from the makeshift barbecue grill had an almost drugging effect on me, dancing in the darkness, casting a glow around our Arab hosts. Their chatter broke the silence and stillness of the night. And the stories they told each other, spoken in the beautiful Arabic language, were like music to my ears. It was a scene taken out of the famous journey of Lawrence of Arabia. We had chicken, beef or mutton, marinated just right with black pepper, salt and butter. We had a choice of eating the kebab with either habs (a kind of Arabic bread) or ruz (rice), to be eaten plain or dipped in labnah (yoghurt). All these served with a giddying spread of vegetables - tomatoes, onions, beans, mint leaves, spinach and aubergine, all cooked to a pulp, interesting but tasted kind of weird to us.

Anybody watching us from a distance, seeing us eat, would think that the Arabs and us were having an animated tete-a-tete while stuffing ourselves. But if you only knew how little we understood of what each other was saying. But amazingly, they in their halting English, we with what little Arabic that we know, somehow clicked.

Dessert, if we preferred, came in the form of hot tea mildly flavoured with mint leaves. We would drink it in the Bedouin tent. Made of roughly stitched together hand-woven wool blankets, the tent provided adequate shelter. Sitting by the fire, sipping tea while listening to the constant chatter of the Bedouins, was a hypnotic experience, soothing to the senses, despite us not being able to follow their narrative. And it was definitely a nice reprieve from the harsh coldness outside the tent. Still, it couldn't pull us away from the more curative effect of sitting under the moonlight, looking up at the stars, thanking the ones that made us lucky to be there. We were told that right above us was the zodiac sign of Scorpio. They also pointed towards what they claimed as the planet Uranus to us.

It was like that for us every night we were there. The night was always looked forward to. Time and money were of no relevance. Sitting under the vast expanse of the star-studded night sky, problems melt away; we felt at one with Nature and re-discovered the beauty of simple things in life. It was biting cold out there but visualise such a scene - good food and great company, in front of a campfire, against a backdrop of towering mountains which reminded you of how small you were. But beneath the stars and the bright desert moon, everything, including the mountains faded into insignificance...it was almost cathartic. And so, the aura of Wadi Rum at night remains with us to this day.

Story by Siti Rohanah Koid
Pictures by Rofi