By GEORGINA BREWSTER
Last updated at 4:09 PM on 1st September 2010
Tintin had a dream job. At a moment's notice, the intrepid cub
reporter would be dispatched across the globe in search of a
cracking news story: Tibet, South America, Russia, the Middle East,
India. His itinerary knew no bounds.
It was remarkable in an era when
commercial flights were only just taking off. Tintin even trumped
Neil Armstrong by some 15 years with his lunar landing in the
adventure Explorers On the Moon in 1954, his faithful companions
Captain Haddock and Snowy the dog in attendance.
Dog days: Tintin enjoyed many a great adventure - and even made
it to the moon
Some of his exploits make James Bond's
assignments look like pleasure cruises. Confronting drug dealers,
oil barons, despots and arms traders was all in a day's work for
the quiff-haired teenager.
So it was only a matter of time before two
things happened. First, that Hollywood would bring this Belgian
cartoon character to the big screen - and what better directorial
pairing than Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson, to make the Secret
Of the Unicorn. Jackson is busy digitally animating Spielberg's
live footage filmed with a host of British actors.
Jamie Bell plays Tintin, Daniel Craig is
Red Rackham and Andy Serkis takes on Captain Haddock.
Should the first film prove successful
next year, Spielberg plans to make two more. The second
inevitability was that an enterprising tour operator would be
inspired by Tintin's perpetual jet-setting. Step forward, please,
On the Go tours which, with the backing of Moulinsart (the
rights-holder to the Tintin adventures), now offers guided holidays
to three of his favourite destinations: Jordan, Egypt and
India.
As a long-time admirer of my brother's Tintin albums, I
couldn't resist seeing first-hand some of the locations depicted in
the Red Sea Sharks and Land Of Black Gold, largely set in Jordan
(or the Emirate of Khemed in the stories). i joined a party of nine
like-minded souls, including Michael Farr, our official Tintin
expert, Eid, a local guide of Bedouin decent, and 11-year-old Ben
from London, an ardent fan of Tintin travelling with his
father.
The start of our eight-day tour began
gently enough with a night in a spa hotel and a relaxing morning
soak in the warm salty waters of the Dead Sea, 1,300ft below sea
level. This was just to soften us up for the cartoon capers which
lay ahead.
After lunch, a minibus drove us for two
hours south over twisting mountain roads and empty plains, stopping
briefly at Shobak castle, once home to the Crusaders.
Eventually, from out of nowhere on a
deserted side road, we drew up alongside a gathering of horses,
saddled up and held by men in traditional robes and keffiyeh
headscarfs. Nervous glances were exchanged in the bus, until Eid
leapt out and greeted them like old friends. These fine Arab
thoroughbreds would transport us along the side of a valley into
Wadi Musa, the village surrounding ancient Petra, and supper would
be served in a Bedouin tent half way along our two-hour journey. I
loved every minute in the saddle, my new keffiyeh billowing over my
shoulders and my mare trotting at the lightest touch of a
heel.
As the sun set behind the dusty hills with
the lights of Wadi Musa ahead, my heart sank a little; our ride was
coming to an end.
Michael, on the other hand, could hardly contain his
excitement: 'This couldn't be more like tintin and Haddock's
arrival in the city,' he exclaimed. At one point, i thought he was
going to utter the Captain's catchphrase: 'Blistering
barnacles.'
Michael had grown up reading Tintin in the
Fifties, and later, living in Brussels as a foreign correspondent,
he'd befriended Herge, Tintin's creator. He's since written many
books on Herge's cartoon characters, studying the artist's archives
in detail.
Herge (real name Georges Remi) first
introduced Tintin in a Belgian newspaper in 1929 and wrote 24
albums of his adventures, now translated into 70
languages.
Back in the saddle, we rode up to the
gates of our hotel in Wadi Musa feeling elated, but somewhat stiff.
All the healing effects of that morning's black mud massage had
evaporated.
The Beit Zaman hotel, a brief bus ride
away, was to be our home for two nights.
The low-rise stone built bedrooms were
once houses within a 17th-century village and nicely echoed the
look of Wadesdah, an imaginary town in The Red Sea Sharks where
Tintin takes refuge from the Desert Police.
We swam in the pool, then settled quickly
into the bar to hear more anecdotes about Herge.
In contrast to Tintin, Michael explained,
Herge was essentially 'an armchair traveller'.
His newspaper strip kept him too busy to
go abroad; so he hoarded postcards, photographs, cuttings and
travel tickets to replicate in his stories.
World Wonder: Petra is an amazing sight for cartoon explorers
and modern tourists alike
A main source of inspiration for his
distant landscapes was the brilliant colour photography of National
Geographic magazine.
He always made his narrative topical,
writing about war in the late Thirties and Middle Eastern oil and
land conflicts in the Fifties.
In The Red Sea Sharks, Tintin and Haddock
ride into the Rose-Red City in search of an exiled Emir who's taken
refuge in the caves.
Early the next morning we re-enacted their
passage through the sylph-like Siq, this time on foot.
The path is about a mile long and at the
end sits one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.
On first sight of it, Captain Haddock
declares: 'Thundering typhoons! ... A Roman Temple, hewn from the
rock! ... Incredible!'
We all agreed the Treasury was indeed
incredible and that the monumental pink sandstone facade has shades
of classical architecture.
In fact, it was built as a tomb in the 1st
century BC by the Nabateans, a nomadic Arabian tribe which
established a base at Petra for trading precious goods between East
and West.
Further round the corner we found a
sprawling city of tombs, an amphitheatre, market place and palaces
(a legacy of the Romans who settled in the 2nd century AD) and
Byzantine churches.
A chance encounter with an U.S.
archaeologist revealed that barely two per cent of Petra's ruins
have been excavated in 200 years.
We did our best to see most of the
current treasures over a day-and-a-half before our next appointment
with the minibus.
The hour's drive took us further south to
the gated entrance of Wadi Rum (Wadi meaning valley; Rum the
imposing 5,698ft mountain) where we surveyed a blanket of red sand,
flanked by towering peaks.
During the Arab Revolt of 1916, Wadi Rum was the home of T.
E. Lawrence. One peak he christened The Seven Pillars of Wisdom,
later to become the title of his famous book.
We swapped our minibus for jeeps, leaving
tracks in the sand like the Thomson/Thompson duo in Land Of Black
Gold, and arrived at our overnight base in the valley at sundown,
quickly scrambling up a rock face to gaze at the mountains,
suffused in a purple haze.
The semi-permanent camp was highly
civilised with flushing loos, showers and raised tents with wooden
beds.
Supper was a spectacle: zarb chicken
cooked in a round barbecue buried deep in the sand.
Floating voter: Georgina learns more about Tintin's adventures
while taking a dip in the Dead Sea
Later, around the campfire, we stared at
the stars and listened to our Bedouin hosts singing, accompanied by
the oud guitar.
Morning broke to the call of camels
echoing around the valley, so before the sun burned too fiercely we
mounted our dromedaries and set off along the valley.
But not before Eid, a man of impeccable
camel-riding credentials treated us to a surprise impersonation of
clumsy Captain Haddock by toppling off his steed in his haste to
get going.
The camel train edged us slowly towards
the end of Wadi Rum, then our minibus sped us down to Aqaba on the
Red Sea.
Tintin tackled all manner of foes on these
open waters, but we had nothing more taxing planned than two nights
in a five-star hotel and a day trip cruising to Pharoan Island to
look at a Byzantine fortress, eat lunch and snorkel above the coral
reefs.
Our last night was spent in the capital
city Amman, where we'd first landed.
It had been an amazing adventure, one of
which Herge would have been rightly proud.
On The Go's guided Tintin tour of Jordan
and Petra starts at £2,029pp, including six nights in four- or
five-star hotels, one in Wadi Rum, some meals, flights, transport
and activities (020 7371 1113, www.onthegotours.com).
Check for family tours and those
accompanied by one of three 'Tintinologists'