Yemen Mukalla 6

The road to Wadi Doan

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To Wadi Doan at last. Mohamed had said it would take two hours to get there. I was not looking at the time and did not actually time the trip which was just as well. When the road allowed it , Mohamed was speeding at 160 km per hour! For the most part the road was good . There were many sections of the road that was entirely missing and an alternative rocky path provided us with a very bumpy ride. At one point there was 8 kilometers of the gravel road.Syifa commented that she now knew how it is like to ride a camel. It was not like this before the floods and rain 2 months ago. The rains that came were very unusual and caused massive floods and destruction of buildings and roads. Mohamed had pointed to some hills which were slightly green and had said these hills are usually brown , the rains made them green.

We stopped on the way to appreciate the view. The road we were on was at times by a cliff side and parts of the wall separating the road from the cliff was missing . It was a dangerous road to be on. The view was breath taking. We seemed to be driving in a canyon with sheer cliffs rising up from the road. Villages are not built in the valleys which flood during the rains. They are built higher up the mountains and the air was getting chilly as we traveled higher up the mountains.
Mohamad asked us to hurry because there was something he wanted to show us before nightfall. Night comes early in Yemen, by 6 pm it is dark!

When we arrived at the entrance to a new Resort , Hayd al Jazeel , I was incredulous. It was unbelievable that a Medieval looking castle existed there among the mountains just outside the village of Wadi Doan. The view that Mohamed wanted us to see was yet to come .

The resort looked like something out of a history book . It was about half past five in the late afternoon and the sun was going down. You can see the pink in the sky . The serenity of the place needs to be felt personally

Inside one of the rooms in the resort. The doors were solid wood with metal studs

Hayd al Jazeel Resort was named after a group of 20 houses built on top of the flat surface of a small hill. From the higher hill on which the resort was built , the houses on the hill presented a stunning view that I had only seen before in movies like Lord of the Rings. Mohamad asked me to stand on the wall at the end of the garden overlooking Hayd al Jazeel and I almost did not do it for fear of falling off the steep hillside but I am glad I did. This photo was taken while standing on the retaining wall. You can see the houses are on top of the hill and the valley below is green with trees. The rainwater is retained in the valley.

The is Hayd Al Jazeel and the view can now only be seen by walking to the end of the garden at the resort of the same name.The resort belongs to the Bugshan group and Sheikh Abdullah Bugshan is a philanthropist and had done a lot for the village of Wadi Doan and its people .

To be continued