Journeys
Journey with Wind, Sand & Stars
Turn your dream into reality
Many of you who have ventured with Wind, Sand & Stars into the desert or mountains, on journeys or expeditions, travelling or working, have responded with tremendous honesty to the transformation that these places can bring to people’s lives. The Bedu themselves are aware of this desert effect and the desert silence and are proud of their land.
Wind, Sand & Stars and the Bedu invite you to journey with us, to revel in this beautiful land, enjoy the adventures and activities, marvel at the history or enjoy the silent contemplation. Whether you are eight, eighteen or eighty, a gentle traveller or a desert adventurer, you can discover Sinai and the other areas we visit at your own pace.
E H Palmer, the British explorer said in his Desert of the Exodus in
1871;
“The mountains are striped with innumerable veins of the
most brilliant hue, thus producing an effect of colour and fantastic
design which
it is impossible to describe. One part of a mountain will glow with
a ruddy or golden hue, while the rest is plunged in deepest shade.
Sometimes a distant peak will seem to blend with the liquid azure of
the sky, while another stands out in all the beauty of purple or violet
tints”.
Just over a century later I first sat crossed legged in this strange wind, sand and star filled place which has since become so much a part of my life and the lives of others who have joined the team. Sitting by the fire is an experience so many of you have shared with us. It has been an exciting and pioneering time and we celebrate both the joys and the difficulties we have come across as both have brought new learning and further ventures, but more than anything have cemented friendships across a gulf which many had deemed unbridgeable.
These trading friendships which are a particular and special form of friendship, have crossed gender, race and religious divides. And when people ask me to name one aspect of our work in which I most delight, it must surely be that we are a small part of men and women, boys and girls, educated and uneducated, Christians, Muslims and Jews as well as Bedu, Egyptian and European working together to create a dream.
And that dream is a trading partnership which adds to the understanding of different peoples, brings work and income both this side of the water and in the Sinai desert and now other places too, as well as bringing fun and learning to those who journey with us.
If you have not already had the opportunity then journey with us to the Sinai or to the other areas where we now have trading partnerships. Let us take you on a journey that will change your understanding for ever; valleys carved out by the winds of a thousand years, mountain peaks that reach to the skies and ancient sites where past and present become one.
Dr Emma Loveridge
“The Bedouin of the desert, born and grown up in it had embraced with his soul this nakedness too harsh for volunteers, for the reason, felt but inarticulate, that there he found himself indubitably free” - Lawrence of Arabia.
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