BootsnAll Travel Network
Add this blog to: MyYahoo, Google, Bloglines, RSS


Archive for December, 2006

« Home

Eid Mubarak

Saturday, December 30th, 2006

Well, today is the first day of Eid, the multi-day Muslim holiday that occurs twice a year – once after Ramadan, and the other (this one) after the hajj to Mecca.

Eid is not turning out to be to a great time to be in Sana’a, as almost everything is closed and much of the population have gone back to their villages to visit their families for the holiday. I’m surprised that we even found an open Internet cafe. We had hoped to visit the national museum today but it’s closed, so we’re not sure what to do with ourselves! Tomorrow we’ll try to get out of the city again.

Anyway, some Eid observations:

It is tradition for Muslim families to buy a live sheep, goat or cow and have it slaughtered in your yard according to the halal practice. We have seen a few places in Sana’a with livestock being held on the side of a road next to a butcher’s shop in preparation for Eid. In fact, we’ve been told that even when it’s not Eid, butchers in Sana’a don’t have fridges and all meat is slaughtered and sold fresh, according to demand.

On a brighter note, it is tradition for Muslims to buy new clothes (or receive them as gifts) for Eid, so this morning everyone in Sana’a is immaculately dressed. The men have new, shining thobes and the little girls all have beautiful coloured dresses and henna tattoos on their hands and arms.

Anyway, that’s all for today. We’re hoping to go back to Kawkaban tomorrow and use it as a base to visit some towns we haven’t seen yet, and Wendy might be able to go to a wedding there on Tuesday, insha’allah.

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 1 Comment »

More exploring

Friday, December 29th, 2006

After our organised trip to Shahara earlier in the week, we wanted to go off on our own as we usually do (though it’s harder in Yemen than in most countries), so we spent the past two days exploring some places reasonably close to Sana’a.

Yesterday morning, we took a shared taxi to Shibam. (Sure, ‘shared taxi’ sounds organised and luxurious, but it’s really just nine people jammed into a station wagon, and if you’re in the back row, as we were, you have to crouch down the entire way as the ceiling isn’t high enough.) Shibam wasn’t an especially attractive place by Yemeni standards but two things really made it a very worthwhile stopover. The first was that a young man took us around town a little bit to show us various things without asking for anything in return. He took us to see their family’s primitive machine for making olive oil, and to meet his lovely little sisters. He also took us inside Shibam’s grand mosque, a rare treat as – like Morocco – non-Muslims aren’t usually allowed inside mosques in Yemen. The mosque dates back to around AD 850, making it the fourth oldest Islamic building I have seen, if memory serves correctly. Inside, some inscriptions in a non-Arabic language testified to its age.

The second highlight of Shibam was the insane market that was going on in the main street, which was especially busy as the Muslim holiday Eid begins tomorrow. The meat market was particularly gruesome – one guy posed for a photo while holding up a cow’s head. Hopefully the pictures will give you an idea of what it was like.

After exploring Shibam for a couple of hours, we jumped into the back of a pick-up truck headed for Thula, our next stop. Thula is an achingly beautiful walled town, one of the prettiest places I can ever remember visiting. The town is made up of stone tower houses and is set at the base of a dramatic rocky outcrop, upon which is an old fort. It’s extremely photogenic, and in Thula I took my best photo so far in Yemen (Edit: I still think this despite just finding out about the outrageous and totally unexpected popularity of the Shahara bridge photo on Flickr). The only downside to Thula was that it was a bit touristy. Of course, ‘touristy’ in Yemen needs some perspective. We were told that in the week before we arrived, on the verge of ‘high season’, there were 120 foreign tourists in all of Yemen. Now there might be a few more over the New Year’s period, but tourism is still very much in its infancy. For what it’s worth, my own estimates are that about 90 per cent of tourists in Yemen are package groups, and perhaps as high as 75 per cent of the groups are Italian, so much so that the shopkeepers selling souvenirs in Thula greet everyone with: ‘Ciao, come stai?’

In the afternoon we took some more local transport to get to Kawkaban, where we were fortunate to stay at a basic hotel owned by a very nice and helpful man, whose wife cooked the best meal we’ve had in Yemen so far. Kawkaban is not as pretty as Thula, but also far more peaceful, and dramatically perched on the top of a rocky plateau. This morning, we hiked for more than five hours from Kawkaban through a wadi (a dried up river bed), passing a few interesting villages along the way and seeing the most greenery I have ever seen in the Gulf (which, of course, is not saying much at all).

We’re pretty exhausted now after the hike, so we’ll probably take it pretty easy in Sana’a tomorrow before planning our next move.

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 1 Comment »

A couple more things

Friday, December 29th, 2006

Two things I inexplicably left out of my last entry:

- The road to Shahara is, for at least part of the way, the main pilgrim trail from Sana'a to Mecca. On the side of the road we often ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 1 Comment »

The real Arabia? I think we found it…

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

We've just come back from a two-day, one night trip to Shahara, a mountain top village north of Sana'a that's about 2000m above sea level. The only way to go is by hiring a car and driver, and while ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 1 Comment »

Lost in Time

Sunday, December 24th, 2006

Sana'a is magical.

I hoped and expected that I would be fascinated by this place, but I think it has exceeded even these lofty expectations, which doesn't happen too often. The old city is one of the most extraordinary ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | Comments Off on Lost in Time

What’s in Yemen, anyway?

Thursday, December 21st, 2006

Why, plenty of things, and thanks for asking.

Yemen is one of those places - and there are a few that we've been to - that doesn't have much appeal for the average tourist. But that's half ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 2 Comments »

Arabia: what’s it really like?

Saturday, December 16th, 2006

Mention of the Arabian Peninsula conjures up romantic images of exotic fairytales and far-away legends, of star-lit desert nights and camel-led caravans over endless, pristine sand dunes.

Arabia is one of the most fabled places in the world, but ... [Continue reading this entry]

Posted in Arabia, Travel, Yemen | 1 Comment »