Al-Hawta and The Hike

So on Friday afternoon we decided on lunch at the Al-Hawta Palace Hotel in nearby Al-Hawta. It really is a palace - or, it was a palace, for a long long time. Now (as the name suggests) it's a hotel. It's a huge walled property with many buildings, all surrounded by the most green we've seen since coming to Yemen. In olden days it would have been self-sustaining; inside the wall is the palace proper, as well as towers, servant-buildings, barns, gardens, wells... incredible.




We spent a couple hours in the swimming pool before we left, constantly attended to by juice-bearing employees who had nothing else to do, as the entire place was empty and we had it all to ourselves.

The couple pictured here were travelling with us - relatives of a fellow Yemen-based teacher (also travelling with us).





By and by, in wandered Martin - a French-German-Australian fellow who asked us if we'd hiked the canyon wall over Shibam yet. We said no, but we would probably do it later that day. So he came with us:) It was a lot of fun, and good to have a guide. It was hot that day, hovering steadily around 44 degrees.



The view was amazing! The ridge is really high, and we could see everywhere - across the Wadi, up and down it for miles.



Imagine what a mighty river once carved this place out!

It was getting dark near the end, and we figured that, as tricky as the ascent was, the descent would probably be harder, so we should definitely do it before nightfall. A bit of a shame, as we would have loved to stay longer in that breathtaking panorama.


We were right about the descent - it was really tricky; the rocks in the last half were very loose, it was getting dark fast, and the trail was hard to keep track of. And we were all wearing sandals. Martin took a flying head-first leap when the rocks gave way under him; he sort of twisted in the air and landed on his feet again, so I gathered he's not new to this sort of thing.

We reached the bottom a little while after sundown - our legs were trembling from the exertion (this cricket should get in shape:) and we were very dusty, but it was a lot of fun and it all felt wonderful; a wholly enjoyable hike.