the blue horizon

I caught a shared taxi to Aden without hassle though again it stopped on the outskirts of Town. For the first time in Yemen I was mobbed by taxi drivers as I got out of the car. I played quiz show host trying to ascertain who was going to be the least hassle. The winner was a fraud. The only English he knew was "I know that Hotel, only 500 rials." He was also a liar. We had to stop twice for directions and he asked me for 'only' 2000 rials when we finally got there. I stayed at the Rambow Hotel. Named after the French poet Rimbaud not the fictional Vietnam Veteran Rambo. It might have been quite grand once but now you would say it had character. It wasn't too bad but became uncomfortably hot the second night when the electricity failed to kick/be turned on. Aden was a lot less interesting than I thought it would be. Once occupied by the British I was expecting they would have made left more of a mark on then town than a store that sold Argos products (seriously) a...

From Zabid I caught a minibus to nearby Hays, a market town at an intersection on the main road. One way went to Taizz the other went to Al Mawka which is where we supposedly get the term 'mocha' from. Apparently coffee was 'discovered' in Yemen, something about a goat, anyway you wouldn't think it as every coffee I've had so far has been beyond shite. I long for Nescafe. The tea's not much better. It took a while for the taxi to fill up in Hays. To the extent that the driver had to cruise up and down the main street to fill the remaining seats. Again I didn't mind. I could easily fill a day watching the goings on in market towns. Eventually we got going and headed back into the mountains. The annoying thing about shared taxis is that they stop on the outskirts of the larger towns and you have to pay almost as much again to catch a taxi to the city center. Overcrowded minibuses usually don't bode well with backpacks. Taizz had nice setting in the mou...

There's nothing like a big travel bag to attract anyone in sight who speaks English. This guy was a teacher keen to ask me about Australia. Like most who asked he couldn't believe that Australia only had 20 million people. He bought me a juice, helped me find the taxi stand for Zabid, asked if there was anything else he could do for me and went on his way. The drive to Zabid was another of those 'anywhere to Port Augusta' drives. The hotel was pretty basic and was the first on this trip to have the cold water only shower directly above the squat toilet. Zabid is the second UNESCO world heritage site in Yemen but walking around the streets you wouldn't guess it. So this was one those occasions I was glad to have a guides approach me. Again with the 'ask you like' payment. I knew where it would end but atleast it would work in my favour. With a guide you got to see inside some of the court yards and they were truly impressive. You even got to see inside some o...

I asked the hotel manager in Manakhah about getting to Al Hudayda. He assured me I just had to catch a taxi to Al Magraba on the main road and wait for a taxi to pass by. And so I waited. And waited. And waited but of course taxis don't leave Sana'a until full so I wasn't having much luck. Not that I minded much. I just sat in a road side cafe drinking tea,watching what was going on around me and answering the same three questions to anyone that cared to ask. With the help of a local I eventually managed to hitch a lift as far as Banjil. Turned out for the best really. Its must more comfortable on the bends when you have the back seat of a land rover to yourself. The drive out of the mountains along a wadi was quite impressive but once out of the mounatins the drive to Banjil and the shared taxi to Al Hudayda from there was like the drive from anywhere to Port Augusta. Long, flat, hot, featureless, boring. During the day Al Hudayda is dead. There might have been a bit going...

It was market day again in Shibam so the main street was packed with vendors. A few people saw me with my back pack and offered me a lift to Sana'a for 2000 riyals. On the face of it this doesn't sound too bad considering that was the fare from the airport but I found the shared taxi and it only cost me 300 riyals. I got back to the edge of Sana'a and caught a minibus back to Bab Al-Yemen, found the shared taxi for Manakhah and waited for it to fill. And waited. And waited. A man waiting in another taxi for Al-Hudayda said that if I didn't mind paying twice as much (a few dollars more) a could buy a seat to Al-Hudayda and they would drop me off halfway. This sounded reasonable since no one had joined me (I needed eight more people to leave) in the hour I had been waiting. It was a very scenic drive to Manakhah through the mountains and I may have even enjoyed it if I wasn't sharing the front seat with the fattest man in Yemen throwing his rejected qat and nut shell...

I said my goodbyes to Wadood and the other staff at Sana'a Nights and set of to try and find the shared taxi stand to Shibam hoping that The LP wasn't too much of bum steer. So I got to where it said it was on the map, it wasn't there, I asked around a bit , got put on a minibus and taken 2km up the road to a wrecking yard, no my mistake, the taxi station. I asked which one was going to Shibam and got pointed towards an old peugot wagon. There were already nine people in it including the driver who looked older than Grandpa (96). He must have been quite funny as he had the other passengers in stitches the 40 minute trip. Of course it was all lost on me but I'm pretty sure some laughes were at my expense because they kept on looking at me with sheepish grins. Shibam sits at the bottom of Jebel Kawkhban which towers 500m above it. Just as I got in the markets were closing for the afternoon and the town went quiet so it was just me, the goats, stray dogs, donkeys and some ...

I didn't trust London Public transport to get me to Heathrow for five in the morning so I caught the last Piccadilly tube and set myself up in a quiet place for a few hours sleep. It seems A quiet place at midnight is a major thoroughfare at 5am so I woke to find hundreds of people walking past my head. I flew to Sana'a via Frankfurt and Riad with Lufthansa. After flying with Singapore Airlines and Emirates Lufthansa was a bit of a let down. Coach seats, average food and no personal entertainment system, just a less than inspiring movie with Catherine Zeta Jones which couldn't have been more predictable to me than had I written it myself. I was however treated to one of the joys of flying, a sunset from 35000ft, watching the colours change as the sun disappears below the cloud, then silhouetted a dull orange for a few minutes before disappearing below the horizon. I managed to sleep through the brief Riad Stopover and only woke when the plain hit the tarmac at Sana'a In...