Gabriele Boiselle´s trip to Jordan

A dream is about to come true...or turns out to be a nightmare?!

It is long time since I am dreaming of flying again to Jordan and to visit Princess Alia and her beautiful horses.

I have had this idea of taking picture of her horses in the middle of the dessert now for over 25 years when I visited her for the first time; in combination with the famous Wadi Rum would that make an ideal scenery...

The Wadi Rum however is more than 400 km away from Amman and I thought that it would be an impossible project to transport Princess Alia´s horses over there...

But when in December 2009 a French Publishing company asked me to work on a book about Arabian horses, I knew immediately with which pictures that book should start:

Arabian horses in the dessert!

And as fortune wanted, the staff member of the publishing company who was responsible for this project came from Jordan...

And just this man named “Barakat”, what means “fortune”, had exactly the same idea. And as luck would have it, many more coincidences came up: The publishing company accepted the costs for the shooting and Barakat was related to a Jordanian General who was able to get all the necessary permissions and authorizations.

And best of all: Princess Alia agreed on transporting 5 mares and 2 stallions exclusively for this project to Wadi Rum. I couldn´t believe my luck and was heading straight to Amman to meet Barakat over there who already did a lot of preparatory work.

But we were pleased too quickly: God, or also “Allah”, left some surprises for us before I was able to realize my dream...

When we arrived, we were warmly welcomed with beautiful weather but as soon as the preparations were about to start, storm, rain and floods came over the land...

In order to be able to realise our project, we had to meet different members of the police and army and had to present ourselves to many people. So we spent many days in the office searching for the right departments and people. Without the support of the royalty family that would have been an impossible venture...

Then we head off to Wadi Rum to organise some last details. The mounted camel - police were already expecting us with great pleasure because Princess Alia informed them in advance that they also would form part of the photo models.

 Wadi Rum fascinated me immediately, although of his unusual view...

7 years no rain at all and all the animals and people were happy about the rain falling down on the dessert...The rocks turning into red and rivers flooding through the sand, lakes rose from nowhere and waterfalls coming down from the cliffs.

I came with many expectations to Jordan, but never in wildest dream I thought of something like this...

Depressed and freezing we drove back to Amman, praying to God to send better whether...

Many telephone calls and meeting later we established all relations and had all the permission in our pockets and were ready to start...

But weekend was coming, so our long-awaited shooting had to wait once more...

Time was running fast; I didn´t calculate 1 week of preparation for the shooting...

I was asking myself if everything would turn to good account....

  And yes, it would

During the shooting we were facing strong sandstorms, we had to take of our equipment and in the middle of this chaos horses, camels, Bedouins, natives and policy...

Everything was extremely amazing, but I was glad having brought my sleeping bag along. The heat of the dessert turned into extreme cold...

TO BE CONTINUED...