Zabid and some markets
Another day, the same internet cafe in Sana’a…
We spent the past few days on another excursion, this time to the red sea coast. Our main reason for going was to visit Zabid, a world heritage listed site that, like Sana’a, is also on the list of endangered world heritage sites. It was easy to see why. Zabid is not a pretty town like Thula or Sana’a, and within its crumbling walls are mostly dirt alleyways and poor living quarters – this was the most poverty we’ve seen in Yemen so far. Among these houses are many old mosques, almost all whitewashed with some domes and small minarets. I guess you could say that Zabid was not as grand as we’d hoped when we first decided to go there, but I thought it was OK and worth a visit. I took some nice pictures, so I’m happy!
We visited two markets while we were in the area – the morning fish market at Al-Hudayda, which was quite good. We saw some stingrays and the rest of the fish were huge. The fishermen were almost all African and in this whole region, which is very close to Djibouti by boat, there was definitely a bit of an African feel. The other market was the livestock market at Beit Al-Faqih, which was also pretty cool and worth a visit. It’s basically a large field full of mostly cows and goats and bargaining Yemenis. We had met up with the Belgians Tin and Fre again in Zabid so we went to the market together and were the only foreigners there (which is always nice).
This afternoon, back in Sana’a, we went to the ‘rock palace’ just outside the city in Wadi Dhahr. It is (as you might expect) a beautiful Sana’a style tower house dramatically situated on top of a large rock. It was quite picturesque in the afternoon light and was more impressive than I thought it would be.
Tonight is our last night in Sana’a; tomorrow morning at 6:30am we’re taking a bus to central Yemen to see the country’s third world heritage site and one of its most famous places – Shibam, home of ancient skyscrapers. I’m not sure exactly how things will turn out over the next few days but with any luck we’ll be in Oman by Thursday or so, insha’allah…
Tags: Arabia, Travel, Yemen
Nick