From the editor: The following article is a detailed trip report written by Inertia Network Co-founder Matt Reichel during a February 2020 trip to Oman and Yemen. Follow him @matthew.reichel.

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Dhofar, Oman. Al Fazayah Beach, near Oman’s border with Yemen. Matt Reichel.

Salalah to the Surfait Border

I met Azam in the morning just as we planned outside the Belad Bont Hotel in Salalah. Azam is an Omani fixer whose roots are in Yemen. As an ethnic Mehri, Azam is a member of a group that has historically inhabited the region of Dhofar, straddling the Oman-Yemen border. Today Mehris still speak their ancient South Arabian language.

I loaded my things into the trunk of Azam’s car and we sped off towards the border. The drive took us through small pastoral villages, herds of goats and camels, and stunning coastline, winding through the rocky mountains all the way to the Surfait border post on the border with Yemen’s Al Mahrah.

Al Mahrah is Yemen’s easternmost governorate (like a province), bordering Oman and Saudi Arabia. Historically and culturally, Al Mahrah has more in common with the Archipelago of Socotra and Oman’s Dhofar region than the rest of Yemen. Before joining the Protectorate of South Arabia, Al Mahrah had its own semi-independent sultanate that also included Socotra Island. The royal family exists still to this day and there is a small yet visible independence movement in these parts.

Al Mahrah is one of the safest regions of Mainland Yemen to visit, as it is under stable control by the Hady Government, and has a significant UAE and Saudi military presence. Forgetting politics for a second, the result has been a greatly improved security situation.

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Hawf, Yemen. This fishing village is the first settlement on the Yemeni side of the border. Matt Reichel.

Crossing into Yemen

The border crossing itself was rather uneventful. I waited in Azam’s car while he took my passport into an office, first on the Omani side. After about twenty minutes an officer came out to the car and he asked a few basic questions about where I was going and why I was travelling to Yemen. I gave him the easiest, most direct answers I could come up with: “I’m going to Seiyun and Socotra, for tourism.” He nodded his head, told me to wait in the car, and walked back into the office.

After a few more minutes Azam returned with my passport, freshly stamped out of Oman. A man in a military fatigue turban lifted a metal gate marking the end of the Omani side of the border and we drove to the next gate— the Yemeni one— a few seconds down the road.

At the Yemeni side, a few border guards were busy chatting with each other from a guard post next to their gate. They didn’t bother opening it. Azam walked out of the car and said something to them, prompting them to open the gate and wave us in. I was beckoned into a small office on the right-hand side of the gate. An officer was seated behind a desk. Azam handed him my visa approval letter from the Ministry of Tourism in Seiyun, my passport, and a fresh $100 USD bill.

Stamp, stamp. Done. Back at the car, a group of customs officers were looking through the suitcases and bags in the trunk. After about a minute or two they gave up and waved the car through. We drove for a few more minutes where Kais and Wagdi were waiting for me. I swapped vehicles, bid farewell to Azam, and continued along with Kais.

From the border at Surfait, the first town I entered in Yemen was Hawf, a small fishing village with white sand beaches, its fair share of plastic litter, and a few currency exchange offices and local provision shops.

It’s not a bad idea to exchange some cash here, or in the main city of Al Mahrah, Al Ghaydah, as having local currency is needed for most transactions. At the time of writing (March 2020) the Yemeni Rial was trading at about 660 per USD at these exchange shops, plus or minus around 10 Rial. Like many developing countries, the currency exchange guys will only take perfectly clean, unmarked, new US Dollar notes and they prefer larger denominations ($50s and $100s).

From Hawf, the drive continues along the stunning Arabian Sea coastline towards the dusty city of Al Ghaydah. Local fishermen can be seen going about their daily life and it’s an easy two-hour drive to the city.

Al Ghaydah itself has most of the feels of a border city-- lots of wholesale shops, a bustling souq (market), litter-filled streets, half-finished buildings and plenty of traffic. Many people arrived here from other parts of Yemen during the war and lots have decided to stay. Being a border town, there is a degree of prosperity in Al Ghaydah, but overall it’s a pretty unattractive city. The central souq is definitely worth a wander, especially when all the shops come alive after dark.

Al Ghaydah is also a great place to purchase local clothing-- I strongly recommend dressing local-- it’s both appreciated and will keep you safer by drawing less attention, especially for women.

Dressing local will also help get you through roadblocks, as you’ll want to blend in as much as possible in the car to avoid long checks and paperwork reviews. I don’t exactly “blend in” in Yemen-- meaning I cannot really pass as a local-- but on numerous occasions, I was told to put on a turban and take a sip of water as we passed through military roadblocks to avoid our car from being stopped.

This is less because getting stopped would be a problem, and more because sometimes roadblock checks can take a long time (the longest I experienced was about 40 minutes, but I met two American women who were held up for 5 hours by the UAE army at a checkpoint).

There’s not much more to Al Ghaydah, to be honest. There’s a good restaurant in town with excellent seafood, but there’s really not much here in terms of places of interest.

The southern Yemeni coast is speckled with diminutive fishing villages, each one is honestly worth exploring, but time and security may be an issue for local guides. I’d definitely recommend getting into some of them and trying to get onto a fishing boat in the early morning or to a fish market. It’s a great way to experience a slice of life here along the Arabian Sea in Al Mahrah, as I did on my first trip to southern Yemen last year.

Rub Al Khali, Yemen. A Mehri bedouin family milks their camels. Matt Reichel.

Camping in the Yemeni Empty Quarter

From Al Ghaydah, I drove north, past the second border town of Shehn (mostly used by truckers) and into the desert near the tri-border between Yemen, Oman and Saudi Arabia.

Al Mahrah is a great place to explore the Yemeni side of the Rub Al Khali-- the Empty Quarter desert. As you travel north in Al Mahrah, the beaches lead to stone mountains, which in turn give way to sand and scrub desert. Here, Mahri bedouins raise their camels and goats in relative isolation.

They still speak to each other in Mehri, an ancient South Arabian language, and live a traditional life with their camels, tribal territories, Bedouin tents, small towns, and goats. With the right connections, it’s possible to really get into this area and explore.

I got to stay with a Mahri Bedouin family on the land for two days. This particular family owns over one hundred camels and they graze them in the scrubby desert on the southern fringes of the Empty Quarter, a stone’s throw away from Oman (at one point I was about 200 metres from the unmarked desert border with Oman). The men milked the camels around sunset and I spent one night camped out under the stars with a bonfire to keep us warm (until that fire went out around 3 am and it was freezing out there).

The second night I travelled with them to the town of Haht, where they have a permanent house now. This family only moved into the house around 10 years ago, but before then they just stayed in their camel-hair tents in the desert. Now they spend their time split between the house and the desert, as their camels are in the desert and their wives, children and goats are around the town.

The house was divided into men’s areas and women’s areas and they had a bedouin tent pitched in their yard, just like their tent in the desert near their camel pen. We slept in our gender-segregated areas of the house. I was not allowed into the women’s section.

After breakfast, I bid farewell to the family and then set off along the desert highway to Hadhramaut, passing by a few dusty trucker towns along the way. The coastal road is nicer and goes to Al Mukalla, but slower, whereas the desert road leads directly to Tarim and Seiyun.

Exploring the Hadhramaut

Hadhramaut is the cultural heart and soul of south Arabia. Historically, the Hadhramaut region included nearly all of eastern Yemen, much beyond the borders of the Hadhramaut Governorate, which is still Yemen’s largest province.

The people of the region are referred to as Hadhramis, and they mostly live in densely built mud-brick towns within the valleys, centred along traditional watering stations and semi-fertile valley basins. Hadhrami society is still tribal (as is much of Yemen), they have an old Seyyid aristocracy-- meaning people descended from the Prophet Muhammed. Fun fact: the town of Tarim has the highest density of claimed Seyyids than any other place in the world.

Hadhramis are by and large strict in their Islamic observance-- the Hadhramaut is considered to be the most religious part of Yemen-- they value education, and their influential diaspora can be found along maritime trading routes as far as the east African coast all the way to India and Indonesia.

Hadhramaut is a fascinating region to explore, but much more so than Al Mahrah, you have to be especially vigilant here. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has carried out attacks here against both government forces as well as tourists, and some of the remote parts of the province may still have a small AQAP presence (although at the time of my trip, AQAP had been pushed out into rural areas of Shabwa, Abyan, Baydah and Marib).

The largest town in the Hadhramaut is Al Mukalla, a large port city on the Arabian Sea. When I first travelled to Hadhramaut in October 2019 it was still a bit too dangerous to visit Mukalla, so I drove through the area and continued north into the heart of the province. It is worth noting Al Qaeda held the city for over 9 months back in 2015.

Tarim, Yemen. A market stall sells dried fish. Matt Reichel.

The Sufis of Tarim

After about 8 hours of driving along the desert highway, I reached my first true stops: Einat and Tarim.

Einat is known really for its Sufi shrines and cemetery, while Tarim is famous as both a pilgrimage town and centre for Sufi religious learning around the Islamic world.

Einat is worth a quick stop to check out the Sufi cemetery, while Tarim is worth a good half-day to explore, and if you’re lucky you may catch a Sufi music and dancing ceremony (best chances are on Thursdays and Fridays, but they are also seasonal).

Tarim is home to Dar Al Mustafa, a religious academy that attracts scholars and students from around the Islamic world, so it’s not uncommon to bump into Malaysians and Indonesians studying at the academy here. While I was wandering around the old city, I also met a teacher from this academy who invited me to visit, but I ran out of time in the city so I had to turn him down, unfortunately.

The Al Muhdhar Mosque in Tarim’s old town is striking, with a massive white mud-brick minaret, and while non-Muslims are not allowed to enter the actual mosque, you can see it from the outside. The small, yet bustling souq is definitely worth wandering around, and it’s located right in the old town. Tarim is best enjoyed on foot, as the town is peaceful, conservative and pleasant to walk around and observe daily life.

I really enjoyed wandering around the souq and old city here in the morning. It is a fantastic place to observe local life as the town wakes up, and it incredibly photogenic as well.

Seiyun: The Commercial Hub of the Hadhramaut

Continuing by car west from Tarim through the valley, I first arrived in Seiyun, about an hour and a half away. Seiyun is the main commercial hub of the Hadhramaut Valley and at one point in history housed Hadhrami rulers.

Today, Seiyun is the home of a large Saudi military presence in southern Yemen, and they’ve turned the famous Kathiri Seiyun Palace (the building on the 1,000 Yemeni Rial bill) into their base, so visits are out of the question.

Seiyun itself does not have much in terms of places to visit, but if you need to pick up any supplies, do some shopping, exchange money, and enjoy some restaurant meals, Seiyun is perfect for that. Seiyun is also a useful transit spot, since the city has one of Yemen’s last remaining commercial airports, you can fly from here to Socotra Island (on Wednesdays) or to Cairo, Egypt.

Seiyun is also the jumping-off spot for a visit to Shibam. Shibam is, at least somewhat understandably, one of the main reasons people want to visit Hadhramaut.

During this trip, I zipped by Seiyun for a late lunch and then went straight to Wadi Doan, as I’d hit up Shibam on the way back.

Al Hajjrain, Yemen. A man forms mud bricks in the Do’an Valley. Matt Reichel.

Experiencing Local Life in Wadi Doan

Wadi Doan was my favourite of the valleys in Yemen’s Hadhramaut region. Nestled between the table-top Hadhramaut Mountains, semi-fertile valleys have been carved out by ancient rivers and streams. Over centuries, locals made their villages along the bottoms of these narrow valleys using local materials. Besides power lines and satellite dishes, not too much has changed from times past in these fabled valleys.

Wadi Doan stretches tens of kilometres along a mostly evaporated riverbed, with a single two-lane road leading down the valley.

As I drove down into Wadi Doan from Seiyun, the first jaw-dropping mud town I reached was Hajrain (the villages are all picturesque, but Hajrain is really beautiful). I decided to stop and walk around for a while, seeing as how the sun was low and the light beautifully golden.

While walking around town, I came across a man making mud bricks-- the bricks that nearly all the buildings are constructed with-- and stopped to chat with him for a while. He’s from the village originally but had gone to Sana’a to work as a vegetable seller before the war forced him back, and with few opportunities, he turned to brick making. The work is difficult and hard on the body, but he earns a decent income from doing it-- about 9,000 Yemeni Rials per day to support his family.

Just on the outskirts of the town, I stopped at a Doani honey shop. Hajrain is famous for small-scale high-grade honey production. The honey from Wadi Doan is called Sedr honey and the highest grade retails locally for over $85 USD a kilo, a small fortune.

One nickname for this honey is grooms honey as it is said to possess special nighttime powers useful for a groom on his wedding night. Sidr honey is quite famous throughout the Gulf as being one of the most sought-after high-grade honey, and the specialty local honey shops can tell you all about the different kinds of honey and grades.

My stop for the evening was the mostly empty Hayd Aljazeel Resort. The resort itself is perched upon the top of the canyon and has sweeping views over Haid Al Jazil and nearby villages. It’s a beautiful, secluded, safe spot to unwind and soak in the beauty of Wadi Doan. It also acts as a base for exploring the nooks and crannies of this incredible region.

Al Khuraiba, Yemen. Youth play an afternoon football game in the shadow of their village. Matt Reichel.

Looking for the Bin Landen Village

I watched the sunrise from the Hayd Aljazeel Resort, and it was easily one of the most beautiful I’ve ever experienced. I highly recommend waking up early just to watch the sun rays enter the valley down below.

While most of Wadi Doan and the surrounding valleys should be visited by car for safety, there are two short hikes (three hours each) you can take from nearby the Hayd Aljazeel Resort down into the valley, one to Haid Al Jazil village and the other to the town of Hufa. I took the one to Hufa and it was a great walk down into the town. Hufa itself is a fascinating town to visit, with mixed architecture and impressive mud buildings built snugly against the sandstone cliffs of the valley.

One-stop on most trips into Wadi Doan is the Buqshan Palace-- built by a local aristocratic family who now lives in Saudi Arabia, it’s a massive home that was at one point converted into a hotel, and is now more like a museum. Visiting allows you to experience a bit of Hadhrami architecture, paintings, colours, and a slice of aristocratic life in this unique region. The family owns a second palace just behind this one that’s visible from the rooftop.

As I drove through the valley, I noticed some of the towns had massive palaces and well-maintained buildings next to abandoned ones. This is because the Hadhrami diaspora is known for being economically successful-- one of the most famous Hadhrami overseas families is the Bin Laden family, who hail from the Wadi Doan town of Al Rubat. So, of course, I tried to find it.

I was on my way to their ancestral village when I was stopped just two kilometres away by the local security forces. The General in charge of Wadi Doan was not in favour of me visiting Al Rubat since he said my safety could not be guaranteed there, and he was fearful some Al Qaeda sympathizers may be poking around there looking for people who visit the Bin Laden house.

While likely still fine, I decided not to push it and turned back towards Al Quyara and Budah, some of the larger and less frequently visited towns near the southern fringe of Wadi Doan.

As Wadi Doan is still not completely safe to travel at night, I returned to the hotel just before sunset to enjoy dinner and some relaxation with the team overlooking the valley below. Haid Al Jazil is a nice break and stress reliever to gather your thoughts, do some reflection, journaling, meditation or yoga, whatever you please. It’s a beautiful property with its own little museum of artifacts, and wonderful picnic areas overlooking the valley (not to mention a pool). There’s a good chance you’ll have the entire hotel to yourself.

Sif, Yemen. Yemeni girls pose for a photo outside their school. Matt Reichel.

School Exchange in Sif

After a leisurely breakfast, I began the drive back towards Seiyun, first stopping in the friendly town of Sif, the cultural capital of the region.

I knew a few of the English teachers from the Sif boys and girls schools from my last visit to Yemen, so I spent the morning at both schools, visiting classrooms, meeting students, posing for selfies, and talking with their amazing teachers.

It was really a heartwarming experience, especially at the girls’ school, where everyone was so excited and welcoming. I’d really encourage more people to visit Sif and not simply take a photo of the town’s famous “white castle house” during a quick pitstop from the side of the road.

The people in this town, in particular, were so warm and open-minded and I can definitely see myself continuing to visit and support projects in the village. When I travel, I truly value meaningful interactions with local people and our time spent with the teachers and students in Sif was one of the most memorable and touching experiences I’ve had in Yemen.

This was my last day in Yemen, so I had to keep going to be able to spend enough time exploring Shibam.

Shibam, Yemen. The sun sets over the UNESCO world heritage city of Shibam. Matt Reichel.

Touring Shibam: The Manhattan of the Desert

Shibam, population 7,000, is a remarkably well-preserved walled town of tightly constructed mud skyscrapers. It’s been dubbed the “Manhattan of the Desert” and while the highest building is about eleven stories, that’s an impressive feat considering everything has been built with mud bricks and wooden beams from the valley.

Shibam itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site, having earned the designation in 1982 and was subsequently added to the “cultural heritage at risk” list in 2015.

The town has not fully escaped the war and due to its natural touristic draw, has been the target of several extremist attacks carried out by AQAP, including a suicide bombing in 2007 at a viewpoint that killed several South Korean tourists. In 2015 AQAP attempted to take over Shibam and detonated a car full of explosives at a checkpoint leading into the town but were thankfully repelled by Arab coalition forces.

All this being said, Shibam is spectacular, but you should definitely be extremely aware of your surroundings when visiting and ideally travel with an armed guard. Wandering around the cobbled streets of Shibam is amazing, and I was able to experience bits of local life around every corner. The city is also full of goats and cats-- goats are kept in many of the homes on the ground floors and they graze just outside the city walls.

If lucky, you can catch herds of goats being watched over or led around by local Hadhrami women wearing traditional conical straw hats. They look like witches in the hats and black abayas and niqabs-- but they most definitely do not like to be photographed, they will yell and throw rocks at you if you try.

I spent the full afternoon wandering the streets of Shibam, led around by the caretaker of the local museum (he did not have any other visitors). As we walked past the mud high-rises and mosques, storefronts and tea shops, I could feel the spirit of the city through its inhabitants. At one point I heard a lute being played from one of the high-rises and after yelling up, a man came to his window and invited us into his home to listen to him play.

There’s a square just past the main gate to the city where old men sip tea and play dominoes, and before leaving I sat watching them for a while. This served as a great reminder to me-- despite all of what has happened in Yemen, life goes on.

From the main gate, I walked out of the walled city and across the street to a sandy field where youth were starting to kick around a soccer ball. I continued by foot up into the adjacent village, following Kais up a winding pathway to a gated viewpoint to enjoy a spectacular sunset. The warm light from the lowering sunbathes the brown and white village in a beautiful golden colour.

The viewpoint is gated since this was the location of the 2007 suicide bombing attack against tourists and Kais stayed behind with a gun slung across his shoulder manning the gate. As the sun set behind the canyon wall, the calls to prayer echoed from the mosques surrounding me. It was a magical feeling and a remarkably spiritual way to conclude my trip to Yemen.