The Flight (Jordan, Wadi Rum)

Modern hot air balloons follow a principle unchanged since the 18th century: hot air is lighter than cold air. In 1783, in the midst of the French Revolution, the Montgolfier brothers tested their invention over Annonay with a balloon made of canvas and paper. It was the first manned flight in human history—and it was vertical, silent, and free of any engines .

The Wadi Rum desert, nicknamed the Valley of the Moon, offers one of the rare sites in the world where this ancient gesture finds a visual and symbolic echo: elevation rubs shoulders with the immemorial . The rocks of the Wadi are among the oldest in the Middle East, sculpted by wind and sand over hundreds of millions of years. Flying here is not fleeing the earth, it is rising above a geological memory , a base as old as continental drift.

The flame that emerges here is not a simple technical tool. It is a threshold . Between night and day, between the ground and the air. Each ignition marks an intention: that of tearing oneself away from gravity, from familiar landmarks, from visible borders. You don't pilot a hot air balloon: you accompany it, you let it follow the currents.

In a world that wants to rule everything, it is rare to climb not to control , but to observe better. This slow, burning, imperfect ascent is also a poetic gesture. A necessary setback.