We were
finally given permission in order to travel outside of Sana’a. How it works is the person who does sponsor
the visa needs to apply for permission to travel. They submit paper work a few days before the
travel and it will be confirmed or denied usually the late night before the
actual proposed day of travel. For some
time now the permission has been denied.
Various reasons were given but ultimately it is the government is wary
of having foreigners travel outside of the city.
After
finally getting permission we do load up on the Friday morning at around 7:30
in the morning. The smell of fresh
petrol in the bus is a good thing and lately is hard to come by within Sana’a. We start heading out of town and are anxious
to get out and see some of the country side.
Sana’a is sort of situated in a bowl with mountains on both sides of the
city. We start heading up one of the
mountains to get out of the city and the view from up there was pretty
neat. One downfall to the view was the
pollution that was hanging over the city.
Once over the mountain we do come across one check point. Now to see if our permission would be
honored. Along with the foreigners we did
have two of the tourist police and so one of them went and talked to the
officials. After about a twenty minute
wait they came back to our bus and let us go through.
Off we went
pretty quickly before they changed their mind.
Roads in Yemen are not always the cleanest or smoothest roads. In order to get on the main road we had to
change about three different times and when changing that mean playing chicken
with the oncoming cars. The rest of the
way it was one road for cars going both directions. Plus the route we took had us going up
another mountain, then down a mountain, and then back up another mountain. So it basically was mountain up and down then
a valley with a desert type environment and then back up another mountain to
our destination.
We did stop
for breakfast on the side of the road and had a traditional Yemeni
breakfast. This breakfast consisted of bread
which was then also dipped in either a milky type liquid or in fooool (beans). Plus
also some Yemeni tea which is very sweet with a lot of sugar. At this particular stop we weren’t all the
way up the first mountain yet but it was already very green. Of course as we went further along it did get
greener and greener. We stopped not too
long after in order to take some pictures.
When going
through the valley with the desert environment we had to keep the shades
drawn. This was so that way that
particular tribe wouldn’t recognize that there were some foreigners going
through. We eventually made it up the
second mountain to our destination. The
city is named Manakha. When Yemen has
more tourist this is a big destination for people to visit not that far from
Sana’a. It basically is this village
that is hanging on the side of the mountain.
The view was really neat and mainly includes seeing green fields. These fields were various things such as:
coffee trees, saharic fields, citrus trees, and qat (a product that Yemenis
chew, I will post about it another time), along with some other things.
Majority of these fields were side by side of each other and weren’t mixed
together. We walked around the mountain
and had some the locals follow us offering us advice and pointing out the
different things. Plus they did want us
to look in some of the shops and buy some products. A couple people did purchase some things
which is good since they don’t see many tourists.
After the
mountain we were still in the same town but went to one of the bigger mosques
in the region. It was a newer mosque and
was very well built with some very neat architecture. It was Friday (which is the holy day for
Muslims) and so we didn’t really go inside.
This particular mosque was still on the side of another mountain and so
the view was really neat.
Our last
stop was a restaurant in the town. Here
we ate some more Yemeni food. After
eating the locals did a traditional dance for us. They did a couple of dances that did go along
them playing some of their local instruments.
It was pretty neat to see. After
the restaurant and relaxing we headed back to Sana’a. We went straight back without stopping and
made it back to the city as the sun was starting to set. Overall it was a great trip. Next week it is the finals for the
students. Then there will be some time
off of class for the students. I am in
the process of planning a trip for the time off. I will post pictures of the trip later when
the internet will upload the pictures. I
will write later.
