someday somewhere

mist

2007-11-14T15:36:00.000-05:00

Satiny curtains of clouds passed in front of our windows this morning, shifting shades from blue to milky white and back to blue in minutes. I love waking up to New York skies. Almost as much as waking up at Abdullah's house on Jbel Boura...

pictures by Candi.

hudson NY

2007-10-22T01:01:00.000-04:00

familie

2007-10-02T13:41:00.000-04:00

Finally mams & paps made it to the Upper West Side and stayed with us for a week. Despite fierce competition, arguably the lowest-maintenance guests we've ever had.

As requested by us, for the first time in their long travel history they came totally unprepared and with a blank agenda. On the blackboard: a pleasantly victorian meet-the-parents dinner at the Boathouse, two days chilling in Lonelyville (one of the first occasions I actually witnessed mams chill) and the classic three-boro biketour, Brompton meets Friday.

Een beste vriend zou beter wezen,
dat is niet waar geef mij toch maar familie.

euro tour 2007

2007-09-01T17:19:00.000-04:00

the week ends

2007-07-30T20:20:00.000-04:00

Nature doesn't have weekends, but believe me they do come in handy when you only have ten vacation days a year... Below a random snapshot mix featuring birthday champagne, Jan and Carole visiting, bling and ambitious improvers on the windsurfer - some shots from New York City but most from Lonelyville, heavenly weekend hideout.

utah cliffs loop

2007-06-03T20:49:00.000-04:00

In the window between SOM and SHoP, we sneaked out to southern Utah for a short but intense bike trekking adventure, in search of the original meaning of words like 'gorgeous' and 'massive'. Jetblue to Vegas, bus to Saint George (southwestern corner of Utah, early Mormon settlers’ resort town), bikes out of the suitcases at the Dixie Palm Motel, tent/mat/sleeping bags/kitchen/food/water on the bikes... and off for a five days’ loop around the cliffs and canyons and forests of the Colorado Plateau’s western fringe.

We used cycling maps by the Adventure Cycling Association – highly recommended as they never fail take you across America’s backcountry on the most scenic and quiet roads (check out their nationwide network). Yet we knew in advance we would need to cut some corners off the full 287-miles Utah Cliffs Loop, given our limited time, Utah’s vertiginous staircase topography and the terrain (half of the loop is set out on dirt roads).

Little time for our desk bodies to adapt to muscle-powered transportation – Saint George is the lowest point of the loop, so we end up climbing more than 8000 feet (2700 m) over the first three days. The reward is stunning scenery all around though, continually changing according to altitude, geological make-up and availability of water. Day one takes us from dry redrock Saint George through Snow Canyon, along the Spanish Trail and the Santa Clara river, into Pine Valley, a sleepy town plus campground in an almost alpine setting.

Deeper into Dixie National Forest on day two – beautiful pine-covered hills, sagebrush flats, plenty of streams, lakes and shades of green. Lunch in Pinto, a town served only by dirt roads. The dirt slows us down though, at times hard to negotiate on our lightweight Fridays, but friendly horseshoer Bronson doesn’t hesitate to pick us up for an evening ride into Cedar City.

An epic climb on day three, up another step of the giant sandstone staircase. 3500 vertical feet over 20 (paved) miles, from Cedar City up to the amphitheaters of Cedar Breaks. Thin air and breathtaking views leave little air for a sigh of relief near the summit, just below 10,000 feet.

All downhill from here, great altiplano biking for a while – crisp colors, highland vegetation, cool air (the water in our bottles stays cool throughout the day despite beating sun) – down to Navajo Lake for a home-made raviolini in brodo.

After siesta, we stumble further down the southern flank of Cedar Breaks – an absolutely memorable ride. Still high up, our sandy path crosses a tiny stream – water seeping out of an ‘underground ice deposit’ – that will soon turn into the Virgin River’s north fork, responsible for carving out Zion Canyon, and eventually ending up in Lake Mead as drinking water for Las Vegas’ growing millions.

Apart from a couple of hippie treehouses and herds of deer roaming on BLM lands, we have the forested canyon to ourselves. We manage to find the ‘beatuiful dispersed campsite’ on our map just before sunset – fire pit and icy creek included...

Days four and five bring us back to the inhabited world, more specifically to the geological playground called Zion National (theme) Park. Despite slow erosion under the continuous force of water and millions of overweight tourists, it is still there for your pleasure. ¡Espectacular!

Further downstream the Virgin River we pass through highway towns La Verkin (alledgedly meaning “the beautiful” but no evidence to be found) and Hurricane. Numerous new settlements abound (“Hurricane’s Finest 55+ Adult Community”), neatly fitting into the grid of the PLSS. A string of malls leads us back into (equally booming) home base Saint George, where we head straight for Nielsen’s Famous Frozen Custard.

Great but a bit much, was our five word review at the pool of the Dixie Palm. Utah's cliffs on New York speed. By the time we got into trekking mode, we had to pack the bikes and fly back east. With some more time to adjust, biking up the Colorado Plateau on dirt roads would be just fine. Starting from San Francisco (and taking two more weeks off) could have helped, for example. Next time...

Great to get out of New York though, even just for a week. Life is quite different in the land of the golfing Mormons. Car culture is absolute – whatever is not drive-in is drive-through. So many times we got “alright you’re biking, but where’s your car?” No other bike travelers in sight, lots of Harleys, Arctic Cats and RVs. On the other hand, our loop would have been even smaller without generous emergency pick-ups from Max, Manny and Bronson – thanks guys!

And just when you thought they couldn’t get any bigger...

fatal attraction to cuteness part II

2007-05-07T01:05:00.000-04:00

... starring Nairobi as Candi's eyes and shadow.

maho bay

2007-04-03T22:37:00.000-04:00

Out of the city for a week of early summer with Margery and Claudia in Saint-John, the US Virgin Island's most simpatico. We stayed at Maho Bay Resort, favorite of regulars Margery and Candi. The network of boardwalks, the wooden huts, the more swanky resorts around, straightforward staff and low-maintenance barefoot crowd inevitably bring Fire Island to mind - Maho Bay is a vertical Lonelyville!

Next time we'll appraoch the bays of the Virgin Islands from the other side... sailing classes here we come.

spring visitors

2007-03-29T23:42:00.000-04:00

Pieter en Eveline (zonder Lisa), op bezoek eind april.

Rodrigo and Gladys, stopping over on the way from Madrid ("a really happening city man, like San Francisco with jamon") to Panama. March 20th through 25th.

Monica's silhouette, passing through just before we left for Saint John.

fatal attraction to cuteness

2007-01-08T22:42:00.000-05:00

our man in panama

2006-11-26T22:47:00.000-05:00

Just back from our tropical Thanksgiving trip to Rodrigo and Gladys in Panama. The Swimming Pool of Love and his Cookie treated us to a perfect mix of hanging out, chatting, swimming, wining dining – those three years since our time in New York felt like a week. Great to finally meet the two of them in their natural biotope of eternal summer and pacific humidity.

It takes some time to find your bearings in Panama – it has the Pacific Ocean to the south (sometimes even southeast), and the Atlantic to the north.

After having agreed on “mainly beach”, we drove out of the city along the Miraflores locks of the Canal, passing Arraijan - indeed “at right hand” from the highway – down to Santa Clara, where Rod’s uncle/globetrotter Enrique has found his most recent destination in a wonderful beach house.

The compound – a Panamanian maggiarda – is a project-in-progress, under supervision of arquitecto Guardia.

Noriega had his beach house right next to Rick’s place. While former “strongman” is spending his days in a Miami jail, his villa has been left to rot for about 18 years now (above)… Still better for Rick and Karen than a tower hotel development next door.

We got to meet a fair share of the Guardia clan - Rod's parents in the city, Rick and Karen our generous hosts at the beach, Don Quiqui and the others on DVD. On Saturday we drove inland, for a visit to Penonomé, hometown to the Guardias.

Penonomé (“where Nomé was in pain”) is also Panama’s geographical center. Recently, the marker stone been closed off to prevent wildpeeing on the center of the country (see pic).

Joining an Ultimate Frisbee game with Rod (the Bod) and his team, under Ciudad del Saber's darkening skies.

So easy and rewarding, a trip to our Caribbean friends – barely a five hours flight, same timezone, different season. From strong morning light over Panama City to a colorful sunset in Manhattan.

Back home, caught in a cosmic cycle, Candi found out that Jeff Buckley – him again - is half-Panamanian.

bearsville NY

2006-11-14T11:53:00.000-05:00

Although a couple of weeks late for foliage, we were treated to a gorgeous forest still life from Pauline's rental in the Catskills.

On Saturday we took a hike up to the Overlook Mountain, passing a Tibetan Monastery and an abandoned hotel.

For relaxing times... Spa2Go!

Only back home, I found out that Jeff Buckley recorded Grace in the Bearsville Recording Studio in nearby Woodstock NY, twelve years ago.

fall in fire island

2006-11-06T15:09:00.000-05:00

finger lakes

2006-08-03T19:53:00.000-04:00

Starting from Candi's college town Ithaca NY we made a three day loop around Cayuga Lake and Seneca Lake. We roughly followed the Finger Lakes Heartland route from the Backroad Bicycling in the Finger Lakes Region guide. Recommended!

a month in yemen

2006-06-17T21:05:00.000-04:00

Finally out there for you, some pictures and stories from our Yemen trip of last January. Welcome.

Started off as an innocent blog post featuring one image per day

our travelogue has expanded into a landslide of impressions and information. Please feel free to surf on your prefered wavelength with the special Yemen navigator to the right. All images big and small are clickable for enlarged viewing.

Hopefully some of you are looking for information while planning a (bicycle) trip to Yemen – when we were in your position last fall, there was nothing much out there. Please pass us your feedback or questions as a comment below. For more and better informed stories on Yemen, try Freya Stark’s A Winter in Arabia from 1936 and Tim Mackintosh-Smith’s more recent Yemen, the Unknown Arabia. You’ll see we included some quotes from those books in our posts.

Apart from being Candida’s first bike trip ever, this was our first trip on Bike Fridays. A Bike Friday is a travel bike small enough to dismantle smartly into a suitcase, but sturdy enough to hold gracefully – fully loaded – on rocky Yemeni terrain. Inspired by our “not a single puncture on 800 miles of rough biking” thank you note, Bike Friday did a story on our trip on their website!

Yemen is roughly as big as France, so we only saw a couple of regions of it on our trip of a month. Click on the map above for more info on our itinerary.

The first week we left the bikes in the suitcases though, for a tour with Omar and Kamal from local travel agency Yemeni Dreams. They took us around the mountains west of Sana’a and down to the Tihama on the Red Sea coast. On two hikes we staggered down Yemen’s fabulous mountain scenery, on and off in international company.

Then we flew to Socotra for a six-day bike trip around the island. A real expedition, as decent maps and even roads are missing for most of the island.

After another stop in home base Sana’a, we traveled east across the desert and unpacked our bikes again in Tarim, in Wadi Hadramawt, a wide valley plus ancient trading route. The remaining two weeks we spent on our faithful goats, following the string of settlements in the canyon, diverging into a smaller side canyon, climbing up to the rim of the canyon, crossing the stone desert beyond the rim and finally descending down to the Arabian Sea, where we chilled out for a couple of days.

Why Yemen? a lot of you ask.

Well…
There’s this spread from Kubaki, my favorite childhood book (left), and there's the view on the Upper West Side from our terrace (right), which from day one reminded me of Kubaki's Sana’a.

But there’s definitely something else. Yemen appealed to us as a highlight on the world map of fairly unaffected places. Yemen doesn’t look like anywhere else in the world. Especially not like the plastic theme park emirates you find all over the Arabian Peninsula.

We like to think that proud and stubborn Yemen hasn’t sold out, not to all sorts of colonizers, not to the Saudis, not to the dictates of globalized market economy. On the other hand, there’s little oil in Yemen, so there’s not that much to sell anyway. Yemen scores abonimably bad on worldwide economic figures. With a GDP per capita of $751, Yemen ranks 175th out of 180 IMF members, between the Congo and Burundi, below a whole bunch of African countries. But somehow, with an economy that’s mainly internalized – tribes trading stuff with other tribes and to the city – and largely dependent on agriculture, those figures reveal little about life in Yemen. Income might be very low, but so are poverty (and crime) rates, both in cities and on a thriving countryside. Less visible misery in Yemen than in New York or Brussels, as family ties and tribal networks are still very strong.

But I’m digressing. Why Yemen? Just flip through some of our pictures…
Enjoy!

Jan & Candida

a new day in old sana'a

2006-01-30T12:34:00.000-05:00

Sana'a is a wonderful city. The sheer size of the old medina and the fabulous brick tower houses leave an unforgettable impression. Sana'a served as a comfortable home base to our Yemen trip, after arrival and before departure, and between our trips west, to Socotra, and to the Hadramawt.

Today, Old Sana'a is completely surrounded by a modern city, but is still large, chaotic and lively enough to retain its raw beauty. Before the Italians paved the Old City, Sana'a was refered to as the Arabian Venice, the water replaced with dust. Pavement meant easier car access (less dust less Venice), but at the same time probably saved Sana'a from abandonment, or from mummification. One of the most wonderful paving jobs is found on the western edge of the Old City, where a paved riverbed doubles as a highway in the dry season.

Everything is worth pointing your camera at, and everything has been fotographed over and over again, so we didn't take a lot of pictures in Sana'a. Just strolled around in all directions, discovering the different soukhs, at different times of day, getting our nuts and raisins for the next biking chapter. Even souvenir shopping is a pleasure in Sana'a.

Although some have been abandoned or built upon, Old Sana'a has retained some of its urban gardens. Cultivated patches of green, allowing light and air into dense clusters of brick, those gardens are almost nicer than regular city parks. Urban farming, the dream of any urban designer.
At its heyday, the city of Sana'a was completely self-sufficient - residents could fully depend on the inner city gardens for food supplies.

We really felt at home in the capsule called Sana'a, mainly through its residents - the friends at Yemeni Dreams, the witty urban kids, the English or French speaking elderly Sanaanis, the vendors, the barber.

On one of our first strolls, we heard a bunch of kids calling us 'Absi wa Lena' and bursting into laughter. Finally Zemzem, a bright young polyglot from Thulla rushed us through the soukh to find us a bag of potato chips featuring Absi and Lena, two manga characters, apparently famous from Yemeni television. And actually - Absi with the messy hair and Lena with two ponytails - we had to admit the resemblance... All of a sudden we had the perfect answer to the "whatsyurname?" resonating from every street corner.

Picture our astonishment when we came back to Sana'a after two weeks in the Hadramawt, stepped out of Abdulalem's 4by4 in front of Taj Talha, and were welcomed by the same bunch of kids, interrupting their game of bottlecap soccer shouting... Absi wa Lena! Absi wa Lena!

down to the arabian sea

2006-01-28T20:08:00.000-05:00

"I am happy, and I am free!"

In truck stop Huweyrah we connect back to the 'Hadramawt Highway', the asphalt road from Tarim to Al Mukhalla - a perfect spot to catch a ride with sweet Abdullah Ali Abdullah and his qat-chewing buddies, all the way down to Al Mukhalla.

Al Mukhalla is a pleasant port town on the Arabian Sea. Although relatively crowded, it feels more relaxed than the Hadrami cities on the other side of the jol, down in the wadi. And the fish... is delicious.

The increasingly scenic coastal road from Al Mukhalla to Aden brings us west, to the border of Shabwah province...

Sunny greetings from Yemen!

'La spiaggia fantastica' at Bir Ali, the official end point of our trip, where we spend two gorgeous January days in the company of black lavarock, extinct volcanoes, turqoise waters, strong winds, blinding sunlight, waterfoil, the good old crabs, and some Shabwah tribesmen.

At dusk, after a climb up one of the nearby volcanoes, we dismantle the bikes, dust off the sand, and fold them back into their suitcases...

The next morning, 6 o'clock, sunrise over Bir Ali. The return trip begins - tonight in Sana'a, then later Brussels and finally back to Manhattan...

the charm of the jol

2006-01-22T11:44:00.000-05:00

After a peak down the rim, there's just us, our bikes, an ocean of stones baking in the sun, a dust track fading in the distance, and the name of a town a couple of days ahead - "Huweyrah" - where the track supposedly reconnects to the asphalt road.

The horizon, however a little intimidating, is a breathtaking relief after spending a week between towering canyon walls, the call to prayer bouncing from side to side.

The straight line on our (sort of useless) map turns out be a winding track along the ups and downs of the stone desert. The Jol isn't flat at all, thousands of local depressions - baby wadis - are wedged out of the rock, leaving table mountains reaching up to the 'original' sediment level. Below the map we should have had, showing the Jol in its topographical diversity, the gravel road in white.

You go steeply down and steeply up on the other side, and the slow-footed camels take their time; and, in a blank space of the map, the existence of these ravines makes it impossible to guess even roughly how long a journey will take across the jol. I was finding it just double what I had been told. (fS)

The Jol isn't completely empty either - we come across several water wells surrounded with simple autarkic settlements, a school, some camels, and the ubiquitous Pakistani road engineer. He invites us for a great lunch at his encampment, restocks our supplies, and lets me flip through the engineering drawings for the road he's currently building from Mukallah to Wadi Doan. And he confirms we're on the right track to Huweyrah, more or less halfway.

In the winter of 1937, Freya Stark - "one of the most unconventional and courageous explorers of her time" - crossed the Jol with a British archeological expedition. Traveling by car from Mukhallah to Tarim (opposite direction from us), she remembers her earlier expedition across the Jol, by camel.

We climbed to the empty topmost level of the Jol. Here all looked dead. The plain lay like a stripped athlete, steaked yellow and glistening in the sun. On the horizon, scarce emerging, lay the ridge of Kor Saiban and my former journey. Regretfully I remembered it, thinking how much is taken from the tenuous charm of the jol by rapid travel; its delicate and barren gradations, dependent on the slow transience of light, vanish into drabness under the strident wheels of cars. Even as I lamented, Providence sent a puncture, and gave us ten minutes in the heat of the morning, which the archaeologist improved to an hour by wandering after flints. (fS)

The classic trip across the Jol - a straight shot from the Arabian Sea to Wadi Hadramawt - took 5 to 8 days by camel. We zigzagged from Tarim to Al Mukhalla in a similar amount of time: three days through Wadi Hadramawt, two in Wadi Doan, and three days on the Jol.

Skies on fire at the end of day two, time to set up camp. More stark Jol beauty below...

the rim

2006-01-20T18:48:00.000-05:00

After a week of biking in increasingly narrow canyons, we finally climb out of the wadi, onto the Jol, the flat and desolate stone desert that separates us from the Arabian Sea. We leave our bikes on the small gravel track, and approach the rim of the canyon as a awesome scene unfolds...

Standing on the rim, the familiar string of mud towns and palm groves appears at the bottom of the canyon, in bird's eye view this time - fabulous settlement patterns in crisp colors, chrystal-clear sounds ampyfied by the canyon walls...

Stepping back from the edge of the canyon, Wadi Doan disappears into the ocean of stones. Only a couple of steps back, nothing is left of the wadi world... Click on the sequence of images above for described effect.

Slightly more contrast than what you get on an average office day - spending the morning in the palm groves of the wadi (left), and the afternoon all alone up on the stone desert (right).

wadi doan

2006-01-19T23:00:00.000-05:00

Narrower and less accessible than Wadi Hadramawt, side canyon Wadi Doan offers a similar but more dramatic panorama - palm groves and fields lined with irrigation canals filling the wadi floor, densely clustered mud towns creeping up the canyon walls, proud palaces along a single gravel road. As we bike 'upstream', the scenery intensifies gradually, and culminates in the bird's eye views from the rim of the canyon wall...

Above, evening and morning scenes in Seef.
Seef has a cute hostel, the walls of its dining room packed with stickers of travel companies that have passed through over the years and carry you out of the canyon, as far as Sana'a, Italy, even Lichtervelde. In Seef we buy a jar of the renowned Doan honey, supposedly the finest in the world.

Doan's gravel road reduces biking speed to Socotra level, yet we don't mind, busy taking in the increasingly dramatic scenery of steep mud towns and palm groves all around...

Inside, Hadrami houses are complex and enigmatic. The sparsely furnished rooms are almost an afterthought to the high, blank-walled corridors and staircases which seem to fill much of the building’s volume. Everything seems designed to bewilder, like a maze for laboratory rats, until you realize that the intention is to prevent the meeting of incompatibles – different sexes, different classes. ... From the outside, these buildings are essentially sober – an architecture where form, function and mass have won over ornament. There are exceptions though, like the playing-card symbols stencilled in pastel colors over the palaces of Doan. (tMS)

Finally we arrive in Al Khorayba, a bustling town along the gravel path. Only the added mud colors - with splashes of gorgeous light blue - make today's Khorayba different from Freya Stark's pictures from the 1930s. Wonderful... yet not to the delight of a couple of youngsters we end up talking to, who desperately want to move to Mukhalla to set up an animation studio.

From a rock outcrop, we watch the canyon change as clouds pass by (below).

Last stop in Wadi Doan, past Khorayba, is the house of Osama bin Laden's ancestors. A robust building (above) - not surprising as Osama's father made his fortune in Saudi Arabia's construction business - in an idyllic setting (below)...

Time to leave the sunken world of the Wadis, to finally climb our faithful companions the canyon walls, and take a look what's beyond the rim...

shibam

2006-01-18T13:04:00.000-05:00

While I was in Kuwait, Dida mailed me an image of Shibam she'd scanned from the Impressions of Yemen book. An astonishing bird's eye view of the Manhattan of the Desert, a cluster of mud towers in a large empty canyon. On the picture, the road is clearly visible, passing Shibam and fading in the distance.

Approaching Shibam on that same road a couple of months later, the fairy tale image settles into a more realistic scene. The canyon isn't empty at all, the Manhattan of the Desert is - logically - surrounded by the New Jersey and the Long Island of the Desert. Wadi Hadramawt is filled with lots of sprawling towns, bustling businesses along the main road, light industries and farms - all of it under constant deconstruction reconstruction, almost up to the edge of Shibam.

Shibam dates back to the second century AD, while most of its current 500 tower houses were built in the 16th and 17th centuries, of course continually restored and maintained.

We arrive to Shibam in the afternoon, and check in to the only hotel of the city, a colonial style building just outside of the city walls, for the most expensive night of our trip. Sadly there's not one mud tower hotel inside the old city, the hotel manager confirms. He also tells us he's been expecting us, a Belgian and an American on bikes, after a phonecall from the police... interesting.

After a peak past the main gate of the city and a short walk around the cool and dusty canyon-like streets, we head up to a rock outside of the city, famous for its evening views over the city and the wadi. We are joined by an 85-year-old Japanese visitor, part of a talkative tour group, among others. The sun is low, and casts a fabulous light on the mud of the city and on the rock of the canyon walls.

From here, most tourists board a tour bus and drive off to spend the night in Seyyun or Tarim. We decide to take a walk around the city.

Tim Mackintosh-Smith also visited Shibam, some years ago. He compares it with his adopted hometown Sana'a.

Shibam and Sana’a have much in common. They became prominent at about the same time, both developed the idea of the towerhouse, both are situated at central points on trade routes. Today the similarity ends there. Sana’a is lively, colourful, chaotic; Shibam is hushed. There is little movement in the principal public space just past the main gate. Beyond this on the town’s narrow streets, the outsider feels like an intruder. Eyes watch your every movement – the eyes of goats peering down from first floor windows, of chickens in hutches hung across the street to keep them safe from predators, other eyes behind lattices. A few children wander around, but otherwise there is little human activity... I feared, entering the city for the first time, that the hush of Shibam was that of a museum. (tMS)

We end up discovering the tension Tim talks about in a slightly more brutal way. On our walk around the city wall – it is almost dark now – suddenly a rock thumps into the dust, right next to our feet. A couple of silhouettes run off high on the city walls. We are perplexed, then shout out, and return immediately, but even on our way back rocks keep bouncing in the dark, some big ones, and really close.

When we get back to the road, slightly in shock but unharmed, we explain what happened to a couple of elderly Shibami, but all we get as response is a grin and slightly mocking eyes.

Tim attributes the hush of Shibam to 'Marxist conditioning' (the Hadramawt was part of communist South Yemen in the 70s and 80s), 'innate Hadrami reserve', and to the depopulation by emigration. And matters didn’t get any more relaxed since he passed through apparently. Even though there is something to say for a local community that refuses to sell its city to tourism, still conservative stronghold Shibam leaves an unwelcoming memory, in general and in almost every single contact.

On our escape, we meet Yahya, who takes us around for the rest of the night, and puts the coward attack a little more into perspective - basically by shrugging his shoulders, and by telling us it took hím two years to get accepted... Yahya is one of the many Germans working on UNESCO projects to restore and preserve the town's astonishing but crumbling mud houses. But unlike most of his foreign collegues, Yahya lives inside the city, among the Shibamis, inside the architecture he’s helping to preserve. He adopted a Yemeni name and recently even islam (“it’s just easier than having to decline going to prayer five times a day”). He has an entire mud tower house to himself, where he takes us later on, and introduces us to the wonders Shibam and its architecture.

Nonetheless the next morning we are happy to leave Shibam, the mysterious city from the picture book, and bike further west.

wadi hadramawt

2006-01-16T23:45:00.000-05:00

Wadi Hadramawt is the largest wadi (dry riverbed, canyon) in the Arabian Peninsula, and has been an inhabited trading route from Biblical times. Contrary to more familiar riverbeds, Wadi Hadramawt doesn't carry the water it collects to the ocean, but widens out into Ramlat as Sabatayn, a giant ocean of sand connected to Rub' al Khali.

For the second chapter of our bike trip, we decide to follow the course of Wadi Hadramawt as it widens towards the west, but then slip into a side wadi, spectacular Wadi Doan, and follow it upstream, until we climb out of the sunken wadi worlds in search of the ocean.

Above, melting mud palaces and one happy goat in Tarim, starting point of our Hadramawt bike tour.

We heard Tarim is an important religious centre - more visible however are the heavily decorated mud palaces built on colonial wealth. Over the past two centuries, the Hadramawt has sent out a reputable diaspora of successful business families all over Southeast Asia. Most expatriate Hadramis kept in close contact with their native land, sending their sons home to study and marry. The Al-Qaf family for example made its fortune in Singapore but has dotted hometown Tarim with palaces. The Sultan of Brunei is part-Hadrami, and a lot of the (more successful) Yemeni immigrants in Saudi Arabia too - among them the father of Osama bin Laden, a Doani contractor.

Lots of info and visuals about Tarim and its colonial past on Columbia University's Tarim Documentation Project.

Hadramis are relentless builders.
At times it feels like building fever is the only feature the Hadramis share with their nephews in Yemen's mountains, worlds away to the west. The material of choice here is mud though, with Shibam as the craft's masterpiece.

The glimpse of Hadramawt before nightfall showed that, even if in some ways it is sleepy and insular, one activity continues with irrepressible vitality: building. Everywhere, there are unfinished top floors and herringbone stacks of mud bricks. Many of the older houses and turret-cornered little forts are crumbling. But new buildings rise all around. It is a cycle of dissolution and rebirth. ... There are no shortcuts in Hadrami mud building: the more time that is put into its construction, the longer a house will last. (tMS)

Next stop is Seyyun, bustling center of the wadi. In Seyyun's most famous mud palace, cladded with a blinding white coat, we see an exhibit of pictures taken by Freya Stark in the 1930s. Next to a black and white picture of the dusty square of Seyyun filled with camels, there's a window, framing a 2006 update of the same square, paved this time, and the camels replaced with cars.

In the library of the museum, we find two books on display (below) - local favorites Bill Clinton and Ali Abdullah Saleh rubbing shoulders...

Further east on the road to Shibam, we stop for a luxurious lunch and siesta at Al Hawta Palace Hotel, the only hotel in the world made entirely out of mud. Usually tour groups from Japan and Europe stay here, but at lunch time the ample staff has spare time to show us around. From the roof of the hotel, we can see the hazy outline of the Manhattan of the Desert shimmer in the distance (above right).

Our passage through Shibam is a story of its own.

Biking in Wadi Hadramawt in four images. Above, indulging in blissful evening rides, heading west, well after midday heat and traffic. Gently sliding on smooth surface through backlit canyon scenery... Below, Candi in a heated discussion with a bunch of Hadrami shepherdesses on the way out of Shibam. Sporting their funky chapeaus, the shepherdesses are the outlaws of the rigid wadi world, cowgirls roaming around with flocks of sheep and goats, shamelessly shouting "I love you" (in English!) to unassuming travelers.

A girl on a bike in Yemen is sure to turn heads (above). There's only one paved road in the canyon, serving as the backbone to the continunous string of settlements, businesses and farmlands, so you'll hardly ever bike alone in Wadi Hadramawt. Below, an exception to the rule - still life with Candida, papaya groves, and canyon walls.

For me, the Hadrami interior remains, like the insides of its houses – aloof and enigmatic. I feel as though I had been wandering around a painting by de Chirico: a place drenched with light but empty of people. ... The Wadi walls are confining, more so than Yemen’s western mountainsides. I wondered if all Hadramis were closet claustrophobes, and if this was what made them travel. (tMS)

troubled provinces

2006-01-15T11:15:00.000-05:00

Needless to say a lot of preconceptions surround the Unknown Arabia. Yemen, only slightly off the axis of evil, is a country that “harbors terrorists”, full of religious fanatics carrying daggers and kalashnikovs and kidnapping foreigners. Check this forum we started on Adventure Cycling if you need more ideas (“Why don’t you go to Australia if you want to do desert biking?”).

We won’t try to reverse those here. You’ll find out for yourself, as soon as you set foot on Yemeni soil.You’ll find out for example that family ties and tribe colors (and good quality qat) are far more important to the average Yemeni than the Koran. You’ll find Yemenis to be refreshingly independent-spirited, approaching you as individuals rather than ambassadors of a certain government. Only once we felt distinctly unwelcome. Also, remember that Yemen is the closest you'll get to a democracy on the Arabian Peninsula.

Pre-modern aspects of Yemeni society (individuals carrying guns and daggers (and cellphones and watches), rigid separation of sexes, mountain tribes sustaining quasi-feudal societies) might scare some of you away, yet at the same time they keep crime and poverty rates very low. And chrystallize into the raw authentic beauty of Yemen’s landscapes, architecture, and wardrobe.

In any case, we were happy not to have our destination determined by the Department of State.

But what about those kidnappings?
Even though in theory a democracy, Yemen is a complicated patchwork of tribal interests. Compared to the powerful mountain tribe coalitions, the ‘Bedouin’ tribes of desert provinces Marib and Shabwah feel they’re not getting what they deserve from the current government. Hence they resort to kidnapping foreigners. The BBC reports that “more than 100 westerners have been kidnapped by Yemeni tribesmen in the last five years - while the country has been trying to develop itself as a tourist destination. Western hostages are valuable negotiating tools for tribes demanding improved infrastructure and social services, such as new roads, schools and electricity. The kidnap gangs are renowned for treating their captives like honoured guests, explaining that their argument is with their own government and not the hostage. Nearly all previous hostages had been well treated and released unharmed.”

The government's response to the unruly Bedouins makes it hard to plan an itinerary through Yemen in advance, in particular crossing over to the Hadramawt. We were unlucky to have arrived during an increase in hostage crises in the ‘troubled’ provinces of Marib and Shabwah, inspiring the tourist police not to grant us the permits to travel by bus (independently) through those provinces. The replacement Yemeni Dreams 4x4 service to and back from the Hadramawt ended up costing us 20 times more than the planned busride…

Above, images from the trip across the desert to the Hadramawt with Abdulalem's 4x4 - one long day of sandy horizons, passing twenty-odd army checkpoints, with a visit to the rather modest sun temple in Marib on the way. We enter the slowly converging canyon of Wadi Hadramawt backed with a dramatic evening light (far right). Later that night, in Tarim, Adbulalem drops us off at hotel Kenya, recovers our suitcases, and... returns to Sana'a! Qat is definitely a stimulant...

Above, the checkpoint just out of Burum, close to the Shabwah border, the not so glamorous endpoint of our bike trip, from where we are escorted first to Bir Ali (left below), and later to Sana'a (right below).

Political games between the national authorities and the tribes make independent travel in eastern Yemen complicated, but so does… the famous Arabian hospitality.

In Shibam we were welcomed by a hotel manager who said he had been expecting us, even though we hadn't made a reservation. This made us realize for the first time that unaccompanied travelers in the Hadramawt are under a constant watchful eye of the police, assisted by well-meaning hotel managers and other upright citizens. Not that there's a lot of secrecy surrounding the Yemeni big brother - this form of control, to us Westerners often felt as obnoxious, is seen as a service to the lone traveler, as a part of the hospitality package.

Yemenis just don’t seem to be able to bend their minds around the idea of two complete strangers wanting to discover a country all by themselves. "Why are you traveling alone? I'll send my cousin with you!". However frustrating at times and an adventure in itself to escape, it's fairly innocent...

shelter

2006-01-14T12:43:00.000-05:00

Fairly well equiped for stretches of autonomous travel - tent, mats, sleeping bags, stove, cooking set all loaded on our tiny bikes - we indulged quite often in the primitive pleasures of camping, especially in thinly populated areas like Socotra and the Jol. Selecting a spot at dusk, collecting firewood, pitching the tent, cooking a pasta and watching the stars through the gauze of the tent.

On some of the beaches we found small huts made of palm trees - with the occasional Egyptian vulture as a morning visitor.

In Sana'a, we managed to stay in the mafraj of the Taj Talha hotel, a typical (large) tower house turned into a hotel. The mafraj is the breezy top room, slightly recessed from the tower shaft, where the men of the family spend their afternoons chewing qat and discussing politics. Our mafraj proved delirious enough without the qat - only 20 bucks for a stunning 360° view over Sana'a and the surrounding mountains. Unforgettable, especially at sunrise and sunset, with a cascade of hundreds of muezzin calling for prayer...

Samples of some of the other hotel rooms we stayed in across the country - mud, stone, concrete, wood.

mm mm

Special awards for doctor Ali's superb guestroom in the highland village of Karal (left), for the generously offered camping spot on the roof of the National Bank of Yemen in Hureidha (middle), and for... the rock (right).

expedition soqotra

2006-01-13T20:06:00.000-05:00

Millions of years ago, Socotra broke off from the African continent and drifted away into the Indian Ocean. Over the years, the plant and animal species trapped on Socotra have evolved somewhat differently from their nephews on the mainland, providing Socotra today with an extraordinary wealth of ‘endemic’ fauna and flora, stuff you don’t find anywhere else. Socotra is the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean, with the umbrella-shaped Dragon Blood Tree as its emblem endemic species.

We start our Yemen bike trip with a loop around Socotra – a little more relaxed than the mainland we thought, religiously, politically and geographically. Our only reference Heinz Stücke describes biking on Socotra as “pure bliss”… After all this is Candida’s first bike trip ever, with luggage and everything.

The bikes fresh out of the suitcase for a first ride (without luggage) along the giant sand dunes east of Hadibo. Perfect to check out Friday mobility on different terrain...

Off we go. Biking along Socotra's north shore, indeed turns out to be pure bliss - just a little harder to negiotiate when the asphalt stops and turns into road work. First encounters with Pakistani road engineers, with Socotra's endemic plants, and and with the local fishermen - we camp on the beach, our plastic igloo not too far from their stone domes (below left).

A rewarding sunset, at the westernmost point of the island, on the stretch of paradise called Ditwah. Apart from a couple of crabs (evening) and some vultures (morning), we have the whole bay all to ourselves... unforgettable unphotographable.

Soon we find out that a biking a perfect loop on Socotra will not be possible, due to a simple lack of roads, paved or unpaved. From western cape Ditwah we need to backtrack a bit to cross Socotra down the middle, from the Arabian Sea coast in the north, over the Dixam plateau down to the southern plains and the Indian Ocean.

Candida does absolutely great on the first long switchback ascent of her biking career. Feels cooler up on evercloudy Dixam - layers of unclassifiable fairy tale landscapes slide past one another, dotted with gnarly trees, desert rose, black lava rocks. Some highlandscapes remind me of Scotland, and Candida of Dr Seuss.

In search of a tourist poster crater pool we don't manage to find, we end up at the southern rim of the central highlands at dusk, and decide to continue for a last stretch (on gravel) down to the Indian Ocean. Finally we reach the shore, quite exhausted, only with the help of a couple of local buddies, well into the night. The moon is strong though, and casts eerie shadows - we don't need a flashlight to pitch the tent. Coast to coast in one long day...

Above, Candida cruising on Socotra's southern plains. In fishing town Steroh we're offered a chunk of fresh lamb meat (in a plastic bag) for the holiday of Eid and a ride from a generous family man (below).

An epic return trip back to the north is what seperates us from starting point Hadibo - one of those expeditions you would never start if you had any idea what lays ahead... Formerly the 'easiest' way to cross the island, now this eastern track has fallen into disrepair as the Dixam asphalt road is underway. Slowly we climb back up to the higher plateaus, following a dry riverbed upstream, walking pushing our bikes. We pass a few small settlements on our hike - one of the towns smells entirely like incense (once big business on Socotra), another one takes us in for the night. Village doctor Ali speaks a little English and offers a nutricious meal of goat and dates, plus his giant guest room (bigger than the entire family home) to the two strangers. On the picture below, the guest room is the building behind our bikes.

And then finally back in Hadibo, surprizingly well in time. By now we have risen to the status of local celebrities, as we've been spotted on all sides of the island, mainly pushing our bikes... Very glad we composed some sort of loop though, as it took us to unexpected and rarely visited corners of the island. Hard to imagine that one week ago here in Hadibo, Candi made her first attempts pedalling with luggage...

Walking around the puddles in small and rusty Hadibo doesn't necessarily reveal that Socotra is on a lot of official agendas these days. Just as it's not immediately clear what the Portuguese and the Dutch were looking for on Socotra, centuries ago, nor what they left.

Today Hadibo is bustling with ecologists – the only strip of asphalt in town has more eco organizations than restaurants. A lot of them Belgians as a matter of fact (Kurt from Wevelgem had just left as we arrived). They devote their energy and holidays trying to preserve Socotra’s exceptional natural resources - an ecological momentum that has resulted in the establisment of several national parks, a minimum of awareness among locals and tourists, and an upcoming declaration of Socotra as UN World Natural Heritage.

As soon as we took our Bike Fridays out of their suitcases, we were bombarded 'ecotourists' by the ecoboys, in fact getting around on a smaller footprint than their 4by4s.

At the same time – on direct orders from the Yemeni president – Socotra is trying to catch up with the rest of the world. Ten years ago, there was no asphalt to be found on Socotra. Now, paved roads fan out from the capital, approximately 50 kilometers in each direction. And a lot more is under construction – the Pakistani road engineers we met on the way to Qalansiya assure that in a couple of years, an asphalt loop around Socotra will be in place.

The impact of fast paced modern progress on Socotra is already visible. The majority of the northern coastline has been blocked off from inland ecosystems by asphalt. And roads are more than strips of asphalt – they bring in plastics, tourists, islam schools, World Bank projects and construction, and take out the rural youth to Hadibo, and beyond. The human footprint on the island has enlarged dramatically over the last decade, putting the Dragon Blood Tree forest, one of the oldest surviving ecosystems in the world, at the verge of extinction in an estimated 80 years.

On the other hand, no one will contest the improvements for the Socotris, as famine (the last one in 1994!) belongs to the past.

Engineers build, and smile.
Ecologist frown. The best of them, according to Kay from Gent, have already left, tired of frowning.
And Socotra... is at a turning point, changing rapidly. Go see it - pure endemic bliss - as long as it lasts, or wait for easier biking as soon as the asphalt loop is ready. Keep us posted.

yemenis

2006-01-07T19:54:00.000-05:00

The Yemenis have the kindest and gentlest hearts of all.
Faith is Yemeni, wisdom is Yemeni.

the Prophet Muhammad

haraz mountains

2006-01-05T11:41:00.000-05:00

Around Mahwit, we get our first glimpses on western Yemen's stunning landscapes.
In the morning Omar drives us up to a famous outlook, for a panorama (below) including parts of the city on rock outcrops, inhabited mountain ridges staggering down, steamy clouds rising, reckless young shepherds flirting with the ridge. We're absolutely speechless.

The pictures above are taken from the same vantage point.

"Jan, we're in Yemen..."

Just as anywhere else in the world, farmers prove to be the best landscape architects. Above, terraces around Manakah, the base camp for trekkings in the Haraz mountains. More Haraz shots below - check out early morning Omar with Abeer's Aqaba tourist hat, and the pregnant blue donkey (isn't that a Counting Crows song?).

Eagle's nest Jbel Shoughrouf is another unselfconcious jaw-dropper. Click on the images below and look at this fabulously unphotographable place you won't find in any travel guide.

Hard to imagine that Shoughrouf is still there once you leave it behind, that right now, life goes on as usual there - the little girls herding the sheep, the boys playing soccer on the top terrace, Kamal bringing another group of astounded foreigners to one of his favorite places.

Across a narrow goat path, we enter the fort/town at sunset. From the upper windows of one of the tower houses, a woman drops a flower down to Candida. From the windowless ground floor, we hear the sound of animals. The sun disappears halfway in the sky, behind another mountain ridge.

A eucalyptus necklace vendor in the Haraz mountains around Manakah.

On our second trekking, around Manakah, we pass through a couple of quasi abandoned towns. With an asphalt road reducing travel time from Manakah to Sana'a to a couple of hours, it's not hard to imagine how that happened...

soura soura

2006-01-04T10:12:00.000-05:00

On our trip with Yemeni Dreams we ended up crossing paths with Mamo, Natasha, Matjaz and Ana, a bunch of longtime travel friends. Matjaz and Ana are Slovenian ("Cellphonian" according to Jamal) and Mamo and Natasha live in Torino. Brothers in arms Mamo and Matjaz have traveled the world behind their lenses. Bolivia, India, "PNG" (Papua New Guinea), Morocco, Scotland, Mali, Kashmir - you name it, they've shot it - and mainly Tibet. Beautiful stuff on Matjaz' website.

Yet Yemen did not let them down.

Yemenis have seen generations of (European) photographers passing through their country in search of the authentic Arabia, pointing shutter machines at their faces, clothes, daggers, houses, mountain towns, terraces.

We encountered opposite attitudes to the camera. In the remoter parts of Socotra and the Hadramawt, people tend to have a supersticious fear of the lense. Opening my handle bar bag would be enough to scatter a bunch of kids behind available rocks or trees. But around Sana'a and in the Haraz mountains, where we traveled with Mamo and Matjaz, everyone wants to be on the soura it seems. "Soura soura!" resonating across the valleys wherever the Soura Santas passed...

Dida and Omar with personal variations of the soura sign.

Matjaz hunting for award winning shots with his widelense bazooka. Fortunately not too many other kids around this time - usually Matjaz' left arm is pushing the less photogenic ones out of the frame. A lousy job, being a photographer in the corners of the world, but someone's got to do it...

More soura moments - Mamo at work at the qat market, and Matjaz adjusting a Kalashnikov at Jbel Shougrouf.

Hanging out with the four of them was a lot of fun, especially when the shutters were silent, and the batteries recharging. Their obsessive dynamics had a relaxing quality - watching them interact over the New Year's Eve beach dinner felt like a piece of theater unfolding in front of us. With an honorable mention for Matjaz' hilarious inventory of worldwide toilets - "Mamo Mamo remember that one on the border of Pakistan and Iran?"...

jbel boura

2006-01-02T22:31:00.000-05:00

Slowed down by car troubles, and by photo stops of our companions, we don't make it to the top of Jbel Boura before sunset. Soon, as the road gets rough and the sky pitch dark, the scenic ride up the switchbacks of the mountain turns into a nerve-wracking endeavour. Relief when we finally leave the cars behind for a nocturnal trek up to Abdullah's house. Abdullah lives with his family in a town at the top of Jbel Boura, and is hired by Yemeni Dreams to guide us down the mountain the next day.

Arriving to a place in the dark holds the advantage of the surprize in the morning. This is true for Abdullah's place more than for any other I've woken up at - the view from his front door is breathtaking. A couple of stone houses structured verically around his entry path, then steep drops on all sides, terraces and clusters of houses scattered over the mountain sides as far as you can see, clouds packed in the valleys deep down below.

The hike down Jbel Boura - an absolute highlight of our trip - brings us through an incredibly authentic mountain society. The pictures below will give an attempt at impression of what we saw. Add a staggering third dimension, the cool mountain air, and the silence, only broken by the voices of kids playing across the ravines. Or go see for yourself, on a ten day trekking around Boura and the neighboring mountains for example (we'll join).

The question comes to mind inevitably - why do people live on the top of mountains? Quotes in italic from Tim MacKintosh-Smith's story will give an attempt at answer. Years ago, he hiked down Raymah, the mountain range just south of Boura.

Raymah, like much of Yemen, is an upside-down place. In other mountainous countries, people tend to live in the valleys; here in Yemen they seem to choose the most inaccessible ridges and summits for their dwellings, places only fit for eagles. Why? Is it for defence, or because of the climate? Or for the view? Or is it just contrariness of nature that makes them build on seemingly impossible peaks? (tMS)

Rain for the Arabs is barakah, a blessing, and it is particularly so for Yemen where the majority of cultivable land is rain-fed. In poetry, rain is a metaphor for human as well as divine generosity; historically, water is the reward of just government, and drought the punishment of profligacy. Barakah is for God to grant or withhold, but intercession can pay off. When there is no rain, the entire male population climbs to the high places and starts a litany. And if the rain comes, they do everything possible to hold it back. This is the function of the terraces which are so much a feature of the Yemeni landscape. (tMS)

The rain is trapped by them and contained in subdivisions separated by little bunds, before being released to the next level down in a slow and measured cascade. It is a system that calls for continual maintenance. The collapse of one terrace will affect the flow of water, and this in turn will lead to the destruction of terraces further down. The delicate balance can also be upset by the building of a surfaced road, which will speed up the flow of water and force streams into new channels. (tMS)

The proud men of the mountain tribes in the typical perspective (above), smiling down on the visitors (below). From right to left Natasha, Candi, Mamo (suffering), Matjaz, Ana and Abdullah.

I soon realized I could not keep up with the boy, who was about ten, and told him to go ahead. Later, I met him coming back from the market below Kusmah. It was still half an hour away but he had been there, done some shopping, and was on his way home. (tMS)

People have to live at the top. If they didn’t, the mountains would in time be stripped bare from top to bottom. Since the protective covering of forests was felled, the history of mountain Yemen has been that of a war waged against the loss of land. (tMS)

Down at the foot of Jbel Boura we land in the only forest of Yemen. Finally some real nature, after walking an entire day through vertical man-made scenery.

After a series of 'misunderstandings' and a self-arranged ride down to the Tihama, we finally find Kamal. But that's another story...

tihama

2005-12-31T17:13:00.000-05:00

"And the Tihama... is like Africa", Kamal said pointing at a map of Yemen in his office, while we were putting together the road trip.

The contrast is stunning indeed, coming down from Yemen's inhabited mountains to the dusty plains of the Tihama. Suddenly the windshield frames a flat horizon, half sand half haze, darker skins in colorful dresses, huts made of palm leaves and palm trunks, motorcycles replacing donkeys, and the first camel of our trip.

Fish for lunch in Al Hudayda, Yemen's biggest port city on the Red Sea. Plus a visit to the fishing port and fish market, apart from crows and flies fairly deserted in the midday heat.

Soon we head south, for a bumpy drive along the Red Sea coast, literally - one wheel in, one wheel out. Pumped up with qat and his favorite tape of Arabic music, our driver Omar tries to keep up with playboy Kamal. Fortunately the local pelicans don't seem to mind that much.

Kamal has selected a "special place" for our New Year's party, on a tidal plain hours of bouncing south of Hudayda. Under a bunch of palm trees we pitch the tents with the last sunset of the year. For the first time in centuries, the new years of both Arabic (lunar) and western (solar) calendars coincide.

Even though Kamal tried really hard, we're not alone. On an evening stroll away from Yemeni Dreams base camp, we come across a salt mine and a couple of small and primitive settlements, made entirely out of palms, nested in the dunes. Considering how long it takes for the kids to approach us foreigners, we start doubting if they have seen any before. And if they celebrate any New Year at all, lunar or solar.

Back at the camp, other Yemeni Dreams drivers have - surprizingly - found their way to this middle of nowhere, just in time for the party. We end the year - and just our second day in Yemen - with a low-tech but very enjoyable party on the Red Sea coast. Thanks to Kamal's extensive array of games and dances, and to the international company.

wadi dahr

2005-12-29T22:23:00.000-05:00

Lots of Yemeni families visit Dar al Hajar, a classic just out of Sana'a, even though the house they live in is probably older than this rock palace imam Yahyah had built for himself in the 1930s. Spectacular nonetheless.

Picturesque Thulla, still within daytrip range of Sana'a, is famous for its polyglot kids. They lure you to their textiles in spotless Italian, French, English - indeed more than just the few usual oneliners. We end up in a family's cool living room and try on some classics from the Yemeni wardrobe, while mom is busy preparing saltah for lunch. Click on the picture below to remove the veil...

Unfortunately it wasn't always that easy...
Only after a couple of weeks into our trip, it dawned on us that we hadn't seen any female face. Not one, except for the girls everywhere and a very old lady resting on a terrace wall of Jbel Boura. Outside the women's quarters of their homes, Yemeni women consistently veil up, leaving only the eyes uncovered. In the city just as much as on the countryside, on Socotra as well as in Sana'a.

Even more bewildering is the idea that a Yemeni man gets to see only one more female face than we did. No kidding - still today, the vast majority of Yemeni men never see the face of their bride before the day of the wedding, and don't know the face of their best friend's wife.

Still, as all Yemenis - men and women - insisted that Candida has to be Yemeni (alright, with a Brasilian dad, but eventually Yemeni), or at least Arabiya, we have an idea of what those faces must look like...

As we're driving up to eagle's nest Kawkaban, Omar gets a phonecall from a friend reporting a landslide in a village closeby, making 150 casualties. Soon but involuntary we're part of the caravan of cars lining up to watch half of Al-Dhafir burried under giant boulders, a scar of fresh rock towering above. "God sliced it with a jambiya in the middle of the night!" (overheard from Kamal)

The flocking crowd reminds Omar of another unusual - less dramatic - event, when a mountainside was topped with snow a couple of winters ago. Even the president went to see the Yemeni snow with his own eyes.

The number of casualties will eventually settle around 50 (the Arabic sense of exaggeration). Al-Dhafir makes it into newsflash from Yemen. As if the the two hostage crises (the German diplomat's family and the Italian tourists), both unfolding during our trip, weren't enough to cause the occasional worry in Belgium and New York...

We're in good hands though. After just one day, we feel very comfortable with Omar and with the pace he drives us through increasingly stunning mountainscapes... Mist in our first overnight stop Mahwit, no snow.

yemeni dreams

2005-12-27T15:21:00.000-05:00

"Our Customers Don't Have To Do A Single Thing, Except, Of Course, To Have A Good Time..."

Stumbling across Yemeni Dreams happened largely by accident. In the face of limited printed material, a Lonely Planet from 1994 (not even plans for a Rough Guide), we focussed mainly on internet sources for information and suggestions on developing our own program.

Though neither of us are usually 'tour' style travellers, we quickly gathered that independent travel in Yemen could prove challenging and that there was indeed some value in contacting a few local tour companies to help illuminate the volatile topic of travel restrictions and necessary permits. Tina and Kamal from Yemeni Dreams answered first to our email with an encouraging balance of optimism, realism, and clarity - "The country is safe to travel”…

After an intense email roundtable (creatively trying to work around the travel restrictions, at one point Kamal proposed to send a Yemeni guide on a bike with us), we signed off on a deal with Yemeni Dreams. The package included the necessary permits and visas, a flight to Socotra, plus a tour program for the first week since it was clear from the start that certain vertical parts of quintessential Yemen are simply not accessible by bike.

First real contact with Yemeni Dreams comes months later in the form of Waleed. Jovial, confident, and just a little tougher than a oversized puppy, Waleed meets us at the airport, and leads us with a swagger and few words out to his car. Fresh off the boat and excitedly groggy from over 24 hours of traveling and stopovers (Brussels London Abu Dhabi Sana'a) we pile our bikes, our luggage and ourselves into his fancy car, Jan in front, Dida in back. Yemen kicks in quickly with one of our first gestures as Jan reaches to buckle his seatbelt, mistaking the butt of Waleed's Kalashnikov for the other end of the belt buckle. Waleed casually nudges the semiautomatic a few inches closer to him and flashes Jan a toothy green smile. With that we speed off to the office at Khartoum Street.

The Yemeni Dreams office is a place where time stops. Never a rush under any circumstances. We meet Kamal's businesslike side that night briefly, but are redirected immediately to the qat room to wait for him to finish with the other group. The qat room is surely an initiation for new arrivals, though completely unaggressive it has the vague sense of challenge.

Anyone planning a trip to Yemen will necessarily read some qat mythology – and here we are confronted by a roomful of it. A small back room with traditional low cushions around the perimeter, and in the center an explosion of green. Three or four young men lounge around the shredded bush - philosophizing, picking the tenderest shoots, pondering, plucking and brushing, chewing, stuffing it all into one cheek until full to capacity (“storing”). A ritual we would witness each of the thirty days ahead, in all parts of the country.

Yemen shuts down daily between the hours of noon and six. It begins with the quest and intense haggling for the finest leaves at the qat market. Virtually everybody joins the race – skipping lunch (and prayer). You have to see in order to believe.

After the market and the streets have emptied out, cheeks start expanding, very gradually, eyes get watery, indoors conversations increasingly associative. Long and dreamy hours later, when the sun is casting long shadows, a wave of typical post meridiem melancholy rolls over the minds of Yemen, reminding Yemenis of the unfulfilled aspirations and unfinished projects. Time to purge the green substance...

Above, the mafraj - the recessed top floor of the Yemeni tower house - is the location par excellence for breezy qat conversations.

Yemenis habitually insist however that qat is a non-addictive substance – just a little stimulating, like coffee... Back in the qat room we chat in mellow tones with whomever drifts through, politely postponing our first grazing experience for at least a few more days.

Spending our first week touring with Yemeni Dreams held the advantage of meeting a bunch of bright locals right from the start. Omar and Kamal made our landing in Yemen very soft, and answered a lot of our questions just by hanging out with us.

Kamal is a playboy, a prankster, a lover of superlatives, the guy who makes things happen. It was in Kamal's company that we had without exception the most delicious and particularly Yemeni meals of our trip. A truly entrepreneurial spirit, we met him at 26 years old, and by then he had already founded Yemeni Dreams, his own thriving tour company a few years back. Yet despite his distinguished and always elegant silhouette – spotless cropped-collar dishdasha, traditional embroidered scarf, and superior rhino-handle jambiya – he's still just a big kid at heart. Under his supervision we knew that even if something went wrong we would in the end only remember the fun and the adventure. From getting stranded in the desert, to driving up vertiginous mountain sides over enormous rocks in the dark, to silly gags like stealing fruits off the plates of neighbors out of the gaze of the unsuspecting waiters, Kamal made sure that these two independent-minded travelers had a great time even with their bikes still folded in the suitcases.

Our personal driver Omar stole our hearts quickly. Sincere, caring, and well-spoken, constantly jotting down english vocabulary for future use, his face at turns extremely serious or animated with a hearty laugh. His car said it all. While Kamal's brand new shiny white 4x4 rental typically sped off in the distance (and was ready to retire after just one week), Omar's rickety but faithful old car with its faded seat covers and hole in the bottom letting in Haraz dust, Tihama sand and Red Sea water... was made to last. He knows his car well. And even despite extreme multitasking of full-body driving, chewing, smoking, cellphone chatting, and flipping cassette tapes, Omar always had an ear to the back seat and a thoughtful response to our steady flow of questions. Omar was great. Definitely the guy you want to drive and hang with when you're in Yemen. “Yes. Very.”

You can contact Yemeni Dreams through their website.

table

2005-11-13T03:11:00.000-05:00

today we put our home made table together. so satisfying to finally turn it onto its leg and two wheels.

SOHO

2005-11-11T16:05:00.000-05:00

being back home, one of the best parts of the kuwait experience. at my Small Office at HOme, finishing ushiku and kuwait projects, sunlight flowing in from all sides.

lost my good old powershot buddy somewhere in kuwait, so moving up to another digital camera gets accelerated.... these are some experiments with dida's nikon.

kuwait commute

2005-10-29T03:57:00.000-04:00

(front)

(right)

(back)

(left)

dusk at villa moda

2005-10-26T19:32:00.000-04:00

four o'clock at fashion temple villa moda. nobody around, except for us architects in our office above the gucci store and a lonely security guard. everyone home for iftar, the sun is setting. time for a walk around the temple...

and for one of jenny holzer's inflammatory essays. I found a book on her art down on the shelves of the restaurant.

destroy superabundance. starve the flesh, shave the hair, expose the bone, clarify the mind, define the will, restrain the senses. leave the family, flee the church, kill the vermin, vomit the heart, forget the dead. limit time, forgo amusement, deny nature, reject aquaintances, discard objects, forget truths, dissect myth, stop motion, block impulse, choke sobs, swallow chatter. scorn joy, scorn touch, scorn tragedy, scorn liberty, scorn constancy, scorn hope, scorn exaltation, scorn reproduction, scorn variety, scorn embellishment, scorn release, scorn rest, scorn sweetness, scorn the light. it is a question of form and function. it is a matter of revulsion.

(jenny holzer, inflammatory essays, 1979-82)

ramadan kareem

2005-10-19T19:21:00.000-04:00

I arrived in Kuwait on the first day of ramadan. then, I didn’t really have an idea how that would shape the experience, that the sentence “that’s because it’s ramadan” would end up being one of the most common answers throughout my entire stay.

the fasting is attended very widely in kuwait – spanning generations, classes, religious differences, even the typical middle eastern nationalism/tribalism. the young jordanian professional at the desk next to me, the syrian driver, the indonesian cleaning lady, achille’s aristocrat kuweiti friends, the pakistani security guard – they are united in their fasting.

achille with seikaly sisters razan and abeer

fares always peaks into the snack corner to see what the christians are eating (see pic). as if through exposure to temptation, he’ll obtain extra points from god. but it’s not about extra points or temptation, he says, but about the welcome change of routine. one month a year he eats differently, and more importantly lives differently. ramadan makes him a more conscious human being.

a change of routine it definitely is. also abeer, being jordanian but christian, usually looks forward to ramadan. in her case ramadan is almost synonymous with iftar, the breaking of the fast, every day at sunset. then families and friends get together for endless banquets, excessive gossiping, card games and other homy activities (usually she gains weight during ramadan).

with taufiq, fares and mahmoud

so around two thirty, everybody rushes home for iftar, which starts at sunset, around five. this collective routine makes rush hour traffic jams much more brutal. everyone is on the way to and from work at the same time. feels like I spent half of the time I was in kuwait inside a car surrounded by other cars...
also, drivers are more hungry and tired than usual, which results in spectacular accidents all over the city ("that's because it's ramadan"). the kuwaiti police puts wrecked cars in the middle of roundabouts as gentle reminders, yet to little effect...

something more structurally than traffic jams that bothered me about ramadan is the institutionalized intolerance. in public, fasting is enforced to muslims but also to non muslims, by law. munching some pringles on the parking lot of the grocery store could get me into serious trouble, I was told. a non believer is not granted the freedom to behave respectfully in front of fasting believers. he simply ‘joins’. in kuwait, unlike in saudi, chewing gum during ramadan is a crime.

I read up a little on the enforcement part. kuwaiti courts are not de facto using the the sharia, the muslim law. unlike big brother saudi arabia, kuwait officially maintains a separation between mosque and court, while a growing number of members of the assembly is trying to introduce sharia, with the pathetic political means they are granted from the emir. without success so far.
also the Kuwait Pocket Guide 2005 is ambiguous on the topic. a short paragraph on kuwait’s legal system outlines a very western ‘style’ court system (courts of appeal and cassation and everything), yet pages and pages are dedicated to the rules of sharia, albeit under the topic ‘traditions and culture’.

“Islam lays down rules governing all aspects of human behavior. These are known as the Sharia, which is considered by Muslims to be a Revealed Code of Law that is eternal in place and time and to which all human beings are subject, and which provides for all the conduct needed for an orderly society.”

in the traffic jams, I read (fought myself through) salman rushdie’s satanic verses. not initially intended as my middle east reading – it was rushdie freak pieter who’d passed it on for my trip back from japan. kind of revealing though, the intolerance of the mainstream muslim community towards the (temporal) temptation of the prophet.

I left kuwait on the last day of ramadan.
the exact end of ramadan, and the beginning of eid, the post ramadan festivities, is not known until the very end though. most muslims follow a certain mufti in saudi arabia, who announces eid as soon as he spots the new moon. so I left when the fun started. quoting achille - "you've been in the worst place on earth, during exactly the worst time of year..." - the day after I left, he went sailing (bastardo).

lifestyle

2005-10-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

site visit

2005-10-06T20:17:00.000-04:00

the halls of the shooting club under construction

this is the outline of the site we worked on, a piece of desert of 100.000 sqm situated along the sixth ringroad. a sjeikh, currently building a giant shooting club on the spot, wishes to develop his remaining property through a BOT deal (build operate transfer). the selected developer will build a project, operate it for 30 years and then transfer the site with the buildings to the landlord sjeikh.
we put together a proposal for a hotel, a shopping mall and a convention center as the villa moda submission.

a little north of our site there's a 'bedouin suburban neighborhood' under construction. hundreds of massive houses going up simultaneously for middle class kuwaitis. pretty impressive...

the sixth ringroad continues as the highway to basra in iraq, and was bombed into the infamous 'highway to hell' during the iraqi pullout in '91.

cemetery of cars wrecked by the iraqis

the burning oil wells

arabian villa

2005-10-03T05:35:00.000-04:00

Frost Real Estace Inc is pleased to welcome you to your “HOME AWAY FROM HOME”. You came to the right place fro you and your family’s accomodation while you are in Kuwait. You may be pleased to know that we are housing employees of many western companies in Kuwait, in which some may be your neighbor or staying in the same complex as you are. You will have the opportunity to make new friends, talk and socialize with them.

state of kuwait

2005-10-02T11:25:00.000-04:00

First of all, we would like to welcome you to the State of Kuwait, the Land of Friendship. Next is a brief introduction about Kuwait, the Land and the People.

The topography of Kuwait is typified by gently undulating desert gradually rising away from the sea to a maximum height of 200 meters. The mainland of Kuwait has no mountains or rivers. However, the flat sandy desert is broken by shallow depressions and low hills. All significant features in Kuwait are man-made.

The temperature averages 45°C (113°F) in summer and 10°C (50°F) in winter. The highest officially recorded temperature (in the shade) was 60°C (140°F) in July 1978, making Kuwait the fourth hottest place on earth, and the lowest was 6°C (43°F) in January 1964. Humidity is seldom uncomfortable. Annual rainfall is unpredictable.

isn't it strange, that the border between kuwait and its neighboring countries is visible from the air as the separation line between different shades of desert? it's actually a little bit off... notice also the pathetic stretch of alluvial plain that makes up iraq's entire coastline, squeezed between tigris and eufrates, between kuwait and iran... obviously part of the reasoning behind saddam's expansionist policies.

selwa, our 'neighborhood', seen from the roof of arabian villa

some of kuwait's man-made significant features look really intriguing from the sky. any ideas on what the red puddle could be?

an oil field with a settlement next to it, skirting the saudi border (yellow line). it is said that the kuwaitis were drilling obliquely (inclined) along the iraqi border. another reason for saddam to be upset.

agricultural fields irrigated by a pivoting sprinkler, close to our site. this 'farm' is visible on the scale of the country.

tokyo office

2005-09-18T16:28:00.000-04:00

after milano craziness, I woke up in tokyo, at casa ochelen arioka, tucked away in one of meguro's pockets of downtown countryside.

breakfast, waving off pieter and kana to long working days at their offices, a couple of hours of drawing work, a lunch, then later a walk for a coffee, some more drawing, a late night dinner with kana or pieter or both, and some beers. a simple routine. somehow similar to the one of the japanese women that passed in front of the living room window every day.

street level view

helicopter view - the upper pink roof in the center is casa ochelen arioka

like a lot of tokyoites pieter and kana live in a neighborhood chockful of lowrise, detached homes along small irregular alleyways. people here live very closely together - living spaces are compact, strips of gardens between the houses extremely narrow, sounds seem to come from everywhere and always surprisingly nearby - yet perimeter walls and shutter systems offer an enjoyable level of privacy and comfort. life can be quiet and simple and small and green, just around the corner from tokyo's biggest expressways and busiest subway hubs.

zooming out - yamate dori, meguro river and yamanote line as the main arteries come to view

arioka family on a sunday visit

tokyo bay revisited

someday somewhere architecture

2005-09-14T08:55:00.000-04:00

it all started beginning of july with lorenzo, in his car on the way from milano centrale to niguardia. "there's this housing competition organized by the city of milan - you should join... but hurry up, deadline is september 12th."

then some weeks later, the information package arrived... someday somewhere architecture officially born.

what started out as an innocent design exercise of a lone urban designer, finally turned into a collective adventure with international dimensions. as it is kind of hard to have a post delivery drink together, the least I can do is introduce you guys to each other...

according to the rule, a samurai takes any kind of decision in seven breaths - "to be able to break through to the other side"... for faramarz, it hardly took one breath to decide to embark on a last minute flight to milan and deliver the boards in person (and what a person)... he left with a cd and some documents on saturday afternoon, and delivered two boards, the report in triplicate and a stack of papers to the italian bureaucracy, well in time on monday. right now he's chilling in zurich (well deserved).

urs, the invisible force behind fara's european adventure. he offered fara shelter and red wine in stormy lugano, helped plotting and mounting the boards, drove all the way to milano, and inevitably took his share of delivery stress. thanks urs!

when corey decided to drop out ten days before the deadline (and I hesitated a while whether to go ahead or not), suddenly everything pointed in the direction of nathalie. through a faramarz/margery human resources campaign, she was aboard just a day later, working full force on the 2d drawings, bound to finish them, with a steady hand and restless mind. instantly and very fluently, nathalie became a big part of the project. in the week that followed, one of those great collaborations unfolded.

gounaud rendered both sections, on two late night sessions, whether nathalie begged for it or not.

dida offered her midtown office as a cozy and efficient new york home base for someday somewhere. connections to the world, a superb music collection, a professional printer, a fuzzy couch for scattered power naps, and daily delivery of zabar's delicacies, supplying essential doses of vitamins and carbs. during the last week, dida dealt with fishy DHL policies and organized fara's trip.
all this, only the visible tip of dida's iceberg of support and comforting omnipresence...

esteban assisted rod at the panama city branch office. sleep deprived by his thesis project, still very helpful on the 3d modeling of the quirky west facades of the tower.

matteo equally took some time from the last stretch of his doctorate's thesis for translating a bunch of paragraphs into italian, most of which on a page that didn't make the final cut - scusa matte...

monica knows how stuff is actually built (in europe), so it was great to have her around in the initial design phase for feedback and ideas on the architectural/technical side of the project.

fortunately with rodrigo little explanation needs to be exchanged for efficient results ('ghosting cutaway isometrics' included), because this time he was joining in from a couple of thousand miles away. thanks to skype, we could exchange files and feedback swiftly, along with a healthy dose of smalltalk, from panama to new york and back. huge buddy crafting cute line drawings. rod also delivered the cost estimate, and a freestyle bio of someday somewhere architecture, calling us 'an international consortium', only after ethymological research though - "we're not lying"...

cristina, just days after returning from her honeymoon in the caribbean, joined in as a dedicated translator, enthousiastic as ever. and is unselfconsciously responsible for the name of our consortium.

umba - paper capagruppo - was there from the very beginning, with a crucial site visit, until the very end, when I fished her last piece of translated text out of my mailbox, just a couple of hours before fara's plane took off.

voilà.
the last week of the work - the rush to get the ideas presented decently - ended up being as brutal as any other charette. maybe worse, I was wondering with nathalie on a late night session. but it was great to share the project in all its angles with you guys - it definitely keeps the lone urban designer going... and this world wide consortium poses an interesting precedent, if you ask me. skype is a winner.

in the initial phase, still on my own and regarding chances to win as microscopical anyhow, I decided to go ahead with a more unorthodox neighborhood layout. as much as I believe that our scheme with private gardens offers a valid alternative to the tower-in-the-park competition outline, I realize at the same time how much it further reduces our chances.
enough disclaimed - announcement of the winners is scheduled for coming saturday, september 24th, at 12:00 in the urban center in milan. curious to see what others came up with...

lonelyville, fire island NY

2005-08-23T18:03:00.000-04:00

cris & davide

2005-07-09T19:18:00.000-04:00

cinqueterre

2005-07-05T19:19:00.000-04:00

umba & marco

2005-07-02T19:17:00.000-04:00

stopover in brussels

2005-07-01T19:18:00.000-04:00