Travel Tips

I needed to share the cost of a vehicle to travel to the far west of the wadi, where public transport was rare. With amazing luck several travellers turned up one evening and I hurriedly went about rounding them up and organising a minibus and driver.

I found one couple from Slovenia, whose name I now forget much to my embarrassment and two Polish friends, both called Magic! And no, I’m not making that up. So we all met early one morning and set off west toward Daw’an and the villages scattered along that area.

This had been the home to the family of Osama Bin Laden until they had moved to Saudi Arabia. Many locals from that area had worked in Saudi and the money they sent home helped to maintain the astonishing mud buildings that run the length of that part of the wadi, village after village. The architecture throughout Yemen is extraordinary , but here it just blew my mind.

After a fantastic time travelling around Wadi Hadramawt I flew to Sana’a. It was great to see the boys at the Old Sana’a Palace Hotel again and to be greeted by the friendly shopkeepers and tea shop owners like a long lost friend.

But it was the end of the journey in Yemen.

Learning Arabic, or at least my modest attempts to, had been a fun experience, though living in Sana’a I found frustrating. As beautiful as it was there was little to do and I had become bored.

Travelling around Yemen had been fantastic. From mountains to beaches to the desert, it had offered up such a variety of often surreal landscapes with architecture unlike anything I had ever seen before.

And the people of Yemen, possibly the most hospitable and friendly of any people I had met anywhere in the world, had made the journey a very personal and memorable experience.

But something had been missing.

I had felt the Passion reach out and touch me many times, but it wasn’t with me. Inside my heart. Something had changed and I felt an overwhelming desire to redefine what I wanted out of life at that moment.

So I made the rash decision to buy a flight ticket, jumped on a plane and late on Christmas Eve I found myself arriving in the dark back in Devon, unsure of even where I would sleep that night.

I knew I might feel embarrassed to be returning home early after I had said I would be away for several months more, but decided to take the risk. I didn’t want to waste time and money for the sake of pride and found myself thinking ‘who cares what anyone else thinks’.

Sat shivering in the corner of the local pub that evening, with the rain hammering on the windows, caressing a particularly fine pint of Guinness whilst talking with a friend, I knew I had without any doubt made the right decision. It was, in fact, an excellent decision. There was nowhere else more perfect to be at that moment.

So, that is it then? The travel days are over? What do you think! The journey in Yemen may be over, but I’ve said it before, the adventure never ends!

RETURN TO TRAVELOGUES