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Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Ghayl ’Umar, Yemen
Sleepy village
After breakfast at the campsite, we leave our drivers to eat and load the cars while we walk down the mountain and cross the river at a ford to go into Ghayl ’Umar. There’s just one paved (more or less) road that winds through the village, otherwise it’s all sandy paths. The village is nice, and I see (and photograph) many interesting door doors, but the people seem somewhat reticent. Not that we see many people anyway — apart from the few women at the village entrance who try to sell us some fans woven of reed, and three vegetable shops next to each other all selling tomatoes, potatoes and onions and seemingly not much else to no one in particular (no customer in sight), and one little shop selling drinks. The village square is a low-lying area shaded by many trees; one man sits there meditating, a donkey stands in the shade. Some boys are going to school, quietly. The only happening of note is that Thom manages to get into the mosque by pretending to be a Muslim — not very successfully, but they give him the benefit of the doubt and let him in. Otherwise, nothing much seems to be happening in this nice, sleepy village.
Tuesday 2007-04-10 - Al Hajarayn, Yemen
Horseshoe town
Further into Wadi Do’an we make another stop: at the other side of the valley we see a town halfway up the mountain, curving round the promontory in a horseshoe shape: Al Hajarayn. After we take pictures from this side of the valley, from where we can see how beautifully the village almost merges into the mountain, the cars bring us into the village where we can walk along its narrow streets; we’ll be picked up on the other side.
Although the houses are the usual Yemeni tower dwellings here, too, it’s completely different from Shibam. Again, I see many beautiful doors (I can’t stop photographing doors here in Yemen!). But, possibly because of how the town is such an organic whole with the mountain, and how it curves around it, we manage to get lost a little, not knowing whether to walk on, or where to go down - or where, in fact, our cars are going to pick us up again. Luckily the people are very friendly and some guide us to the right street, down many steps to the foot of the mountain. Then we walk along a dirt road through the fields, and are relieved to see our cars waiting for us at the road!
