Just got back from a 3-day trip to three Yemeni cities south of Sana'a: Ibb, Taez, and Jibla. We left super early in the morning...I almost didn't wake up because a couple of us were out until 1 in the morning at the British compound's "Lion and Jambiyya Club" singing karaoke and drinking things that facilitate the singing of karaoke....wow, that was a nice change. Anyways, Yemen has very interesting roads. There aren't really speed limits or guard rails...or traffic police. The roads are treacherous...some of the worst I've ever been on because they are very narrow, have no lanes and are meant for 2-way traffic. And they are full of hairpin curves round the sides of mountains. And our driver was psycho and was driving waaaay too fast. Plus there are tons of military checkpoints along the way, and we had to wait 5 or 10 minutes at each one because we were a big group of foreigners. Finally we get to Ibb and have lovely chicken and rice and mushekkil veggies for lunch. Ibb is almost 200 km away from Sana'a and it is surrounded by mountains. Ibb is also the wettest place in Arabia, so a lot of qat and coffee and other unimportant crops are grown in this area. Also according to my fact sheet about Ibb, "it is also considered one of the worst areas in Yemen for landmines"...didn't get to see any of those. Outside of Ibb, we drove up Ba'adan Mountain and visited Hosn Hab (Hab Fort), which is a huge stone escarpment that is in a severe state of disrepair. Visiting a site like that made me appreciate the lack of tourists...something like that in Turkey would be swarmed with people, but we had the place completely by ourselves except for a few kids from the nearby village who followed us around, gawking. It rained a little bit on top of the mountain, but the views were gorgeous and it was nice to be able to wander around and explore something that old.
Next we returned to Ibb and had a brief tour of the old city/souk. We also visited the Jalaliya mosque, which supposedly dates back to during the lifetime of the Prophet Muhammad. Like the Grand Mosque in Sana'a, it is undergoing restoration, but is currently in a state of gross disrepair (rotting, bird-infested wood ceiling, chipped paint, rot). Despite its age and the fact that it has not been very well-preserved, it was gorgeous.
Afterward, we got back on the road and headed to Ta'ez. Ta'ez is Yemen's third-largest city, and it is huge. The architecture is not as beautiful as that of Sana'a, and the city is by far a lot newer and dirtier and less organized. But overall, Ta'ez was great...the people and the souk and the buildings are all a lot more "Arab/Middle Eastern" than in Sana'a...I don't know how to explain it, but they just look more Arab, and the architecture is a lot more similar to that found in other Arab countries that I have visited. For dinner we had lovely chicken and rice and mushekkil veggies. We had some free time to explore, but we didn't get too far from the hotel because of how tired we were from going out the night before, climbing mountains and being crammed into a van for hours. Our hotel was an experience. My roommate and I were on the 5th floor, and because of this, there was no water pressure. The water came out of the faucet in drips...literally.
The next morning, we hopped back on the bus and drove through a very rural area to Shijirah al-Ghareeb (the strange tree). This is a 3000-year old baobab tree and it is huuuuge. It is the only baobab tree in Yemen and no one knows how it got there. Driving through rural parts of Yemen was very interesting because we were able to see how Yemeni women used to dress until very recently (when Saudi influence grew and now all the women wear all black niqabs and baltos), and in the country, all the women are wearing very bright dresses and headscarves, and many do no even have their faces covered.
Then, as we were driving along, we came across a little stream, and we decided to go hiking through it (note: I was not dressed for this) until we came to a grove of wild mango trees. We stopped for a little while and had an impromptu lunch of....lovely chicken and rice and mushekkil veggies. When we got back to Ta'ez, we went for a walk around the old city/souk and went to the Ashrafiyya mosque/madrassa, which was built in 628. It is big and white-washed and also in a state of disrepair, but it is very majestic and is undergoing restoration. Next, we went to the Qala3 al-Qahira (Qahira/Cairo Citadel) which sits atop a steep rocky hill in the middle of Ta'ez. Technically, the main part of the citadel is closed off for renovations...but of course, because we are foreigners, we were allowed in and got to explore and have the place completely to ourselves. By this time, the sun was setting, and from the citadel, you can see all of Ta'ez stretching out to the edge of the valley. When we returned to the hotel, a group of us decided to go out exploring and we roamed the fruit/veggie souk and wandered around the old city.
The next morning, we drove up to the top of Jabal Saber (Mount Saber), which is one of the tallest mountains in Yemen, and we went exploring and climbing around the top. I met a shepherdess little girl at the top and we talked to her for a bit...she was maybe around 10 years old and has never been to school a day in her life because her father divorced her mother after she was born, and since there are no other children in her family, she has to stay home to take care of the animals and protect the family's livelihood.
Next, we went to the small city/town of Jibla (after a lunch of lovely chicken and rice and mushekkil veggies). This city used to be the home of Queen Arwa, and was once the capital of Yemen. The old palace was unfortunately closed for repairs, but we were able to look inside of the mosque that she built. As we were waiting for the bus to come pick us up, it began to rain and a friend and I took refuge under a little overhang over a doorway. As we were standing there, a woman walks up and needed to get through the door to enter her house, and she insisted that we come in for some tea/orange tang. No one else in the group was near us, and we were kinda pulled into this house. This was one of the highlights of the whole trip for me, because it was the first time I've been invited inside a Yemeni house (apart from the crazy wedding), and it was really cool to see Yemeni women at home. One thing I have noticed about Yemen is that you are not invited in as much...I was dragged into so many Jordanian and Syrian houses for tea that it was weird in Yemen, not being able to talk to the women or interact with them at home. We talked for a little while, until the rest of our group came looking for us because they had been waiting in the bus for a while. Then we got back on the road and returned to Sana'a...with a military Humvee escort, complete with mounted machine guns, because we were foreigners.
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