Today, the head of the escarpment stands on the Egypt-Israel border, and in order to reach it you have to make the steep ascent from the Israeli resort of Eilat. Passing through Eilat on my way back to Egypt, I decided to spend a day inspecting the old Pilgrim Road from which Lawrence had first glimpsed the Rift Valley, hiring a mountain bike for the trip, which proved to be an even harder climb than that of Safed – a gradient of one in three and a half, as Lawrence himself recorded. The day was a very hot one, and, certain that there would be some kind of refreshment-stall on the way, I had neglected to bring any water. The road took me through Eilat’s ‘neighbourhoods’ and then up abruptly into a desert of arid rock, marbled abutments of granite, sharp sabre-toothed peaks, broken peduncles, cloven hoofs. I halted breathlessly on a curve to take in the stunning sight of the Gulf of Aqaba, and the great Wadi ‘Araba, where the African Rift surfaces from beneath the Red Sea, with its vast walls of cream-coloured limestone and sea-green granite, the perfect, crescent-shaped bay with its fuzz of palm-trees, and the neat crystal-porcelain wedge of Aqaba town lying to one side. I continued, pedalling and sweating, and the day grew hotter and hotter, and my mouth drier and drier. There were no people, no houses up here, nor even any traffic. There were few trees, little vegetation of any kind – just naked flint burning in the sun. At last I came to a signpost which pointed to a fissure in the rock, and read ‘Ein Netafim’. ‘Ein meant water of some kind, so I turned off the road and bounced for a mile down a stony track, only just stopping myself from plunging over a sheer drop into a ravine of 500 feet. Ein Netafim, it seemed, lay under the rock overhang, and to get there you had to climb down a perilous rock chimney. I was already shattered after my pedalling, but thirst was burning in my throat, and I knew I had to get down at any cost. The chimney was slippery and narrow, and I climbed down hand over hand: in places the rock had actually been polished glossy from the passage of people over the years. The wadi bed was clogged with broken blocks – the parings and crumblings of millennia – and the spring was no more than a wet seam where the rock wall touched the valley floor. Someone had made a tiny catch-basin to collect the liquid, which was full of bright green algae and mosquito larvae. I leaned over and scooped it into my mouth, larvae, algae and all: I cannot say that it was the best water I have ever tasted, only that I was so incredibly thirsty that I did not taste it at all. Then I collapsed in the shade of a rock, and listened to the calling and whistling of birds, which seemed deafening. I realized suddenly that this trickle was probably the only water-source in the entire area. I could have kicked myself for neglecting to take water in the desert, but the hardship involved in getting a drink had been, I thought, a salutary and timely lesson in respect. I climbed up the chimney and pushed my bike back to the road. A little farther on I came across a stretch of cobbled track, and a sign which read ‘Stop. Border beyond this point.’ It struck me that I was on one of the oldest roads in history: the Hyksos shepherd-kings had come this way in their chariots to invade Egypt 4,000 years ago: Cambyses III, King of Persia, had come here with his army in 525 BC and so introduced the camel into North Africa. The present road was hewn and blasted out by Selim the Grim – the Turkish Sultan who had finally smashed Mamluk power in the Middle East – in order to get his artillery up the escarpment during his invasion of Egypt in 1517. Down this road Muslim pilgrims had plodded for centuries on their way to Mecca and Medina, and down this road T. E. Lawrence had come in March 1914, taking just three hours from the plateau to the beach.

*

Eilat’s McDonald’s now stands amid traffic lights at almost exactly the point where the old Pilgrim Road touches the strand, but in 1914 there was no town called Eilat nor a nation called Israel. Instead of opulent hotels, ice-cream stalls, funfairs and bikini-clad girls lounging on the beach, Lawrence discovered only scrub and sand, a few dom palms, and a score of reed-built fishermen’s huts. In Aqaba, a couple of miles further on, he also discovered a disgruntled Newcombe. The local Governor had forbidden any mapping, Newcombe said, and though Lawrence was all for ignoring the order, the following day Newcombe rode twenty miles to receive a phone call from Lord Kitchener in person, who warned him strongly against precipitate action. Lawrence grasped the reason for the ban at once. Aqaba was the only major Turkish port at the head of the Red Sea, and thus of vital significance to any future operations which might take place inland. Automatically, he shifted into his attack-defence mode. Aqaba could be taken from the sea, of course, but any troops there, he saw, would easily have been able to retreat a few miles back to the sweeping mountains which hemmed in the port on both sides. An enemy force making a beach-head at Aqaba would be pinned down and would find it very difficult to advance. The key route to Aqaba was the Wadi Ithm, a great chasm of granite opening to the north-east of the port, so narrow and boulder-blocked in places that even camels could only pass in single file. He who held the Wadi Ithm held the key to Aqaba, Lawrence thought.

Forbidden map-work, Lawrence spent his time scouring the ruins of the ancient citadel of Ayla, where he picked up some sherds of pottery. He tried to hire a boat to take him to Pharaoh’s Island – the Crusaders’ Оle de Graye – about ten miles south of Aqaba, where there was a medieval castle. Unfortunately, the boatman he had engaged was immediately arrested by the police, and when Lawrence and Dahoum tried to take the boat out themselves, the police prevented them. Undaunted, Lawrence borrowed three ten-gallon water-drums from Newcombe, and hiked with his camels around the coast to Taba, from where the island lay only 400 yards offshore. He blew air into the tanks, and paddled across using a wooden plank as an oar, towing Dahoum behind him on one tank and his camera on another. Unfortunately, the ruins were not worth the effort, and on his return he was obliged to leave the district under military escort.

Lawrence decided to march north up the Wadi ‘Araba to Petra, the ancient Nabataean city carved in solid rock, which he had wanted to reach since his first expedition in Syria in 1909. Photography was forbidden, but despite his escort he managed to get half a dozen photographs by pretending to be suffering from diarrhoea and taking frequent leave. He sent his twelve camels and five camel-men on to Wadi Musa, at the entrance to Petra, and he and Dahoum stalked off fast, managing to lose their military guards in the maze of valleys around Mount Hor. While alone, they discovered a route through the hills which Bedu raiding-parties used when heading for Sinai. Lawrence found Petra itself a feast. Though he had read a great deal about it previously, he was unprepared for the overwhelming effect of the place. It was not the rock-cut tombs and temples which awed him, but the natural beauty of the site, with its marbled colours of red, black and grey, its great cliffs and pinnacles, and its gorge, or Siq, like an undersea cavern, abrim with oleanders, ivy and ferns. For once he felt his powers of description inadequate: ‘Be assured,’ he wrote Edward Leeds, ‘that till you have seen it you have not the glimmering of an idea how beautiful a place can be.’³ Although the rock city was mercifully unmarred by the thousands of visitors who flock through it today, there already existed a tourist camp run by Thomas Cook, and there was a slow trickle of privileged sightseers. From one of them, a Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Lawrence managed to beg the train fare from Ma’an to Damascus, while making a slightly snobbish mental note to have his mother look her up in Who’s Who to find out ‘what’ she was.