A couple of weekends ago I went with a group to Shaharrah and we had fantastic time. It was probably my favourite trip in Yemen so far and it really shouldn't have been such a surprise because the Lonely Planet lists it as the #2 place to visit in Yemen. Shaharrah is approximately 160km from Sana'a but although it's a short distance it takes over 5 hours to get there due to a long stretch of extremely rough roads and the steep climb up to the top of the mountain where Shaharrah is situated. We decided to go with the Universal Tour Company and paid $200US shared between the four of us for 2 days hire of driver and car. By Yemeni standards this price sounds a bit expensive but it's necessary to take a 4WD which adds to the cost and also you have take another 4WD owned by the locals from the bottom of the mountain to the top. Usually the car up the mountain would have cost about 7000YR had it not already been encorporated into the price.
We set off in the morning on the Thursday (1st day of the weekend) which we had to do because Universal told us the Tourist Police wouldn't let foreigners out of Sana'a on the road to Shaharrah after 11am. On the way we stopped in a little town called Huwth for lunch. The food was fine but the locals were less hospitable than we were used to. I went to the toilet around the back of the restaurant and since I didn't see anyone around I told my girlfriend it was safe for her to go there too. Real bad advice on my part though as a teenage boy saw my girlfriend and then showed her his zibd. Then another young boy felt another of the girls in our group's leg while she was sitting in the car with the door opened. Following those few dramas my girlfriend and I spotted a puppy (jarw) near a car. We noticed it had a string tied tightly around it's neck so we both felt compelled to cut off the string and then rescue the puppy. So we did, and we took our new puppy who we named Chloe up to Shaharrah with us.
The car to the top of the mountain was a big Land Cruiser ute and the four of us plus our dog rode in the back in the open topped tray. The road was really rough for about 2 hours going up, not something I think my parents would enjoy but I think they could tolerate it ok from inside the cabin as some of the other 60ish tourists we saw were doing. The views were really spectactular and all the mountains were extensively terraced which made them look like they were part of enormous amphitheatre. We stopped a couple of times on the way up and kids crowded around the car to look at us: the intruders. Everytime the kids spotted we had a Yemeni dog they'd yell out 'Jarwi' which means my puppy and many of them repeatedly said 'No', 'Jarw, no' which would be because dogs, especially native dogs, are considered unclean to them. But that didn't stop them wanting to look at Chloe and for some of them to taunt her. Their feelings seemed a mix of fear and curiousity. I asked one why he didn't like dogs and he said dogs barked at them and weren't nice. I'd say that's a result of most people throwing rocks and being cruel to dogs in other ways.
We set off in the morning on the Thursday (1st day of the weekend) which we had to do because Universal told us the Tourist Police wouldn't let foreigners out of Sana'a on the road to Shaharrah after 11am. On the way we stopped in a little town called Huwth for lunch. The food was fine but the locals were less hospitable than we were used to. I went to the toilet around the back of the restaurant and since I didn't see anyone around I told my girlfriend it was safe for her to go there too. Real bad advice on my part though as a teenage boy saw my girlfriend and then showed her his zibd. Then another young boy felt another of the girls in our group's leg while she was sitting in the car with the door opened. Following those few dramas my girlfriend and I spotted a puppy (jarw) near a car. We noticed it had a string tied tightly around it's neck so we both felt compelled to cut off the string and then rescue the puppy. So we did, and we took our new puppy who we named Chloe up to Shaharrah with us.
The car to the top of the mountain was a big Land Cruiser ute and the four of us plus our dog rode in the back in the open topped tray. The road was really rough for about 2 hours going up, not something I think my parents would enjoy but I think they could tolerate it ok from inside the cabin as some of the other 60ish tourists we saw were doing. The views were really spectactular and all the mountains were extensively terraced which made them look like they were part of enormous amphitheatre. We stopped a couple of times on the way up and kids crowded around the car to look at us: the intruders. Everytime the kids spotted we had a Yemeni dog they'd yell out 'Jarwi' which means my puppy and many of them repeatedly said 'No', 'Jarw, no' which would be because dogs, especially native dogs, are considered unclean to them. But that didn't stop them wanting to look at Chloe and for some of them to taunt her. Their feelings seemed a mix of fear and curiousity. I asked one why he didn't like dogs and he said dogs barked at them and weren't nice. I'd say that's a result of most people throwing rocks and being cruel to dogs in other ways.
When we got to Sharaharrah our hotel allowed us to keep Chloe there with us and we fed her tuna and milk. I left the dog on the roof of the hotel so it wouldn't make a mess of our hotel room and on the next morning I found a 3 year old boy on the roof throwing rocks at the puppy. I think kids are probably naturally born to prod and tease animals but here in Yemen they're never taught to change that habit. Anyhow, I rescued our dog again and took her in the back of my back pack down to the famous Sharrah bridge. The hotel named Hotel Khalid was very basic. It cost 2500YR ($16.6) for two of us for the night and we caught the owner of the hotel twice in our room looking through our things. Nothing was taking though so I wasn't too upset about that but if you ever visit keep your valuables with you. On Friday morning breakfast was a kind of deep fried bread with honey and golden syrup and it was really tasty. We took it with us to the bridge and when we couldn't finish it all we gave the rest to our self-appointed boy guides who totally loved it.
The poorness of the whole area really struck me. Like the lucky people living in Shaharrah only had electricity by a central diesel generator from 6pm until midnight and no obvious industries other than tourism and *sigh* qat. I don't know a good way to quantify the poorness in Shaharrah compared to Sana'a other than to say the average person was considerably poorer and had even fewer education or career opportunities. And then the people living in the very dry area below the mountain of Shaharrah were even poorer - seeming to make their living by goat and sheep farming and *sigh..* qat too. So many resources here are wasted on qat which is clearly a major factor in holding back the economic improvement of this country. Yemen's resources of water, land and money would be so much better served on growing real food and on education. Because of their situation I wasn't too offended by the generally hostile looks we received from the people living below the mountain and the few kids who threw rocks at our car. Some of the goat herders picked up large rocks and threatened to throw them but thankfully didn't. The other guy in our group tried waving to every female he saw and very few waved back and one just shrugged. Many of the men we saw we walking around Kalashnikovs and were not showing happiness to see us either. If you've ever seen the Hills Have Eyes you won't want to be thinking of it while you heading through the rough 'hood below Shaharrah.
Being one of the major sights in Yemen, Shaharrah gets quite a lot of tourists. Somewhere in the vicinity of 20-50 tourists per day. And that's surprising because you'd expect with that much traffic a sealed road or (now I'm really dreaming) a cable car might go in. But the absence of such a road adds to the appeal because the ride up the mountain is as fun as a ride at Disneyland (albeit prolonged too much by about an hour or so) and the rough road has served to preserve the towns to much the same condition as they've been for the last few hundred years.
I wrote that all about Shaharrah to explain how I came to visiting my puppy in someone else's yard yesterday. When we returned from Shaharrah, tired and feeling extremely dirty, we needed to find a place for our dog. I asked the guard if he thought Sabri would let us keep the puppy at the school - good for security, nicer than cats and we already have way too many cats, but mish momkin was his response. No one else who had a house wanted to keep her there so I had to go back to the fall back plan I had in mind when I originally adopted Chloe. So my girlfriend and I took her to a yard nearby where 20 or so other dogs live. I placed her over the fence and she walked around for a bit and as soon as some dogs saw her they ran towards her in attack mode. So I picked Chloe back up as hastily as possible and began brain storming about where I could put her. I looked in the front yard of the same house and over there was only an kind looking old dog. Lacking any other better options we left her there and returned the next day to feed her and see how she was. We found her in the back yard where all the other dogs were but they obviously were tolerating her now. There was a water bowl next to her so we presumed the house owner found her and put her in the back yard. We kept on visiting her everyday and feeding her until we left for Dubai and since I've returned, Chloe seems to have survived fine without me feeding her. Yesterday when I visited her there was a boy sitting on the fence and unlike the other boys I've seen there, he was throwing food to the dogs instead of rocks. I spotted Chloe trotting back to a safe spot with a chicken's foot in her mouth. It was nice to see not all Yemenis are cruel to animals. I asked the boy how often he fed the animals and he said every day. Then the boy had some chicken left over and he spotted a falcon flying overheard. He very quietly whistled and the falcon seemed to hear him as it flew over to a tv aerial of a house behind us and perched on it. The boy whistled some more and made sure the falcon was watching as he threw the food over into the dogs' yard. The falcon quickly and gracefully swooped into the yard and took the food without any of the dogs seeming to notice or care. Another couple of falcons were soon flying nearby and the boy tried to get one of the falcons to catch some food mid air above the busy street. The falcon came pretty close but was slightly too high for the tucker.
I quite enjoyed my little Yemeni wild life experience, it was cool. I've held a falcon once (as thousands of tourists have) at a popular area above Wadi Dar but seeing the falcons in flight like this was much more impressive.
The poorness of the whole area really struck me. Like the lucky people living in Shaharrah only had electricity by a central diesel generator from 6pm until midnight and no obvious industries other than tourism and *sigh* qat. I don't know a good way to quantify the poorness in Shaharrah compared to Sana'a other than to say the average person was considerably poorer and had even fewer education or career opportunities. And then the people living in the very dry area below the mountain of Shaharrah were even poorer - seeming to make their living by goat and sheep farming and *sigh..* qat too. So many resources here are wasted on qat which is clearly a major factor in holding back the economic improvement of this country. Yemen's resources of water, land and money would be so much better served on growing real food and on education. Because of their situation I wasn't too offended by the generally hostile looks we received from the people living below the mountain and the few kids who threw rocks at our car. Some of the goat herders picked up large rocks and threatened to throw them but thankfully didn't. The other guy in our group tried waving to every female he saw and very few waved back and one just shrugged. Many of the men we saw we walking around Kalashnikovs and were not showing happiness to see us either. If you've ever seen the Hills Have Eyes you won't want to be thinking of it while you heading through the rough 'hood below Shaharrah.
Being one of the major sights in Yemen, Shaharrah gets quite a lot of tourists. Somewhere in the vicinity of 20-50 tourists per day. And that's surprising because you'd expect with that much traffic a sealed road or (now I'm really dreaming) a cable car might go in. But the absence of such a road adds to the appeal because the ride up the mountain is as fun as a ride at Disneyland (albeit prolonged too much by about an hour or so) and the rough road has served to preserve the towns to much the same condition as they've been for the last few hundred years.
I wrote that all about Shaharrah to explain how I came to visiting my puppy in someone else's yard yesterday. When we returned from Shaharrah, tired and feeling extremely dirty, we needed to find a place for our dog. I asked the guard if he thought Sabri would let us keep the puppy at the school - good for security, nicer than cats and we already have way too many cats, but mish momkin was his response. No one else who had a house wanted to keep her there so I had to go back to the fall back plan I had in mind when I originally adopted Chloe. So my girlfriend and I took her to a yard nearby where 20 or so other dogs live. I placed her over the fence and she walked around for a bit and as soon as some dogs saw her they ran towards her in attack mode. So I picked Chloe back up as hastily as possible and began brain storming about where I could put her. I looked in the front yard of the same house and over there was only an kind looking old dog. Lacking any other better options we left her there and returned the next day to feed her and see how she was. We found her in the back yard where all the other dogs were but they obviously were tolerating her now. There was a water bowl next to her so we presumed the house owner found her and put her in the back yard. We kept on visiting her everyday and feeding her until we left for Dubai and since I've returned, Chloe seems to have survived fine without me feeding her. Yesterday when I visited her there was a boy sitting on the fence and unlike the other boys I've seen there, he was throwing food to the dogs instead of rocks. I spotted Chloe trotting back to a safe spot with a chicken's foot in her mouth. It was nice to see not all Yemenis are cruel to animals. I asked the boy how often he fed the animals and he said every day. Then the boy had some chicken left over and he spotted a falcon flying overheard. He very quietly whistled and the falcon seemed to hear him as it flew over to a tv aerial of a house behind us and perched on it. The boy whistled some more and made sure the falcon was watching as he threw the food over into the dogs' yard. The falcon quickly and gracefully swooped into the yard and took the food without any of the dogs seeming to notice or care. Another couple of falcons were soon flying nearby and the boy tried to get one of the falcons to catch some food mid air above the busy street. The falcon came pretty close but was slightly too high for the tucker.
I quite enjoyed my little Yemeni wild life experience, it was cool. I've held a falcon once (as thousands of tourists have) at a popular area above Wadi Dar but seeing the falcons in flight like this was much more impressive.
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