Wadi Rum

Made a protected area in 1998, this vast expanse of sandstone and granite desert — nicknamed the Valley of the Moon for its almost Martian landscape — was the real setting of the Arab Revolt of 1917-1918 against the Ottoman Empire, led by the British officer T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) alongside Prince Faisal, an episode later immortalised in the celebrated 1962 film of that name, shot in these very sands. It is still lived in by semi-nomadic Bedouin communities who run much of the present tourism through traditional camps, and its likeness to Martian landscapes has made Wadi Rum a shooting location for films such as The Martian and Dune. It was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2011, for its natural and cultural value alike, holding as it does thousands of petroglyphs and inscriptions over 12,000 years old.