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Monday 2007-04-09 - Wadi ’Adim, Yemen
Camping under the milky way
From Tarim we go into the valley of a side arm of Wadi Hadramawt, the Wadi ’Adim. The landscape is stunningly beautiful here: weird shapes both in the totally bare table mountains and in the water-eroded layers of sediment; in the middle of the wadi valley we see open water for the first time in this area. The available water enables the thick palm groves to be grown here (date palms); around the fringes there are fields with other produce. Although the surrounding mountains are bare, the wadi bottom is green and lush.
At a nice spot we go through a ford to the other side of the river where our drivers can have a quiet qat-chewing session in the shade, and we can go for a walk through the palm grove. Theoretically, we could walk to the village (that was the idea) but although we can see it in the distance, the water-eroded thick layer of sediment is hard going: you constantly have to find your way around deep grooves — there is no way to walk in a straight line. We only make it to a lonely little house; nobody home but a little goat. There are some small fields nearby so somebody must live here, but we see no one.
The qat session (and our walk) over, we go further into the wadi. Suddenly we go halfway up the mountain where there is a stony plateau. Here we set up our camp, with a nice view of the village Ghayl ’Umar in the middle of the lush palm grove. The idyll is somewhat spoiled by the sound of a generator belonging to the tank station at the foot of the mountain, but once it gets dark it’s offset by the sound of frogs calling to each other near the river — hearing that it’s hard to believe we are actually in the desert.
One of our drivers, Mohamed, cooks us a nice dinner, with some assistance from Hussein (mostly holding the lamp) and Khamal, as well as some of our group to chop the vegetables. Gradually the stars come out, and the Milky Way appears above us in all its glory — a sight we can rarely see any more in our crowded and light-polluted country. On Hussein’s assurance that it’s not going to rain tonight, I left off the outer tent when I set up my tent and go to sleep in my sleeping bag with a light breeze caressing my face.
