Travel Tips

I spent the day on my own wandering around Tarim, marvelling at the stunning palaces and exploring the ruins of wonderful fort-like homes long abandoned.

Wandering around one ruin, overcome by a noxious stink, I was gazing up at the mud walls when “slosh!” Ever stepped in something you really wish you hadn’t? I looked down to see a half decomposed dog with my boot submerged in it’s stomach and covered in a thousand wriggling maggots. Oh yuk.

There were five or six dead dogs scattered nearby and a sudden, short burst of gunfire from the far side of a compound wall made me feel a little uncomfortable and I quickly left. I had been haunted by the image of a teenager with a Kalashnikov suddenly seeing a lone white guy wandering around and being unable to resist taking a pot-shot, just to see if I jump.

Yemen is one of the most heavily armed countries at peace in the world. There are more than three weapons for every man, woman and child. Only just before I arrived in the country laws were brought in banning the ‘bearing of arms’ in public in all major cities and towns and men who had always carried a Kalashnikov over their arm as a macho status symbol were now forced to leave them at home, though some in the smaller villages still proudly carried them. This was an attempt at curbing the increasing number of ‘revenge killings’.

The laws had gone through with little fuss, though the police checkpoints either side of Shibam were attacked and blown up by mortars the day I visited, apparently in protest at the laws which is a little ironic, but fortunately not as I was passing.