Random Sampling

Here is a collection of images from our drive to Shibam, which was, unlike last time, pleasantly free of car trouble.

Deep in the desert valley, next to nowhere, a successful irrigation project yields a vibrant field of hay in a world as dry as dust.

Close Quarters: Inside Shibam's ancient wall, narrow mud-brick buildings - "the world's first skyscrapers" - become a lot smaller when you learn that the walls are all one metre thick.



One of the larger houses in the tiny city, having withstood some 500 years of constant use, ruined by a single rainfall. In a mud house, as the locals informed me, if you haven't got a good roof you haven't got anything.



View from the third floor of the ruined house.



With a paintbrush made of straw, a young man whitewashes the top of his family's home with lime plaster to prevent it from looking like the house in the pictures above.



Resting on a roof.



Frankincense burns on a table of souvenirs old and new.



A weaver plies his trade on a homemade loom in a closet-sized shop.



For centuries, water houses like this were built, maintained and kept full by wealthy landowners for the free use of passers-by; they dot the landscape all over Yemen, on rural dirt tracks and city streets. The roof prevents evaporation while the small windows allow you to reach a cup - but nothing larger - in. Troughs and basins on all sides catch spills for camels and donkeys.



The wall surrounding the city - which you can circumnavigate on foot in under 25 minutes - is twenty feet high on the outside, two and a half on the inside. The dust of the ages gets trampled underfoot and the ground just keeps on rising.