Wadi Doan

A valley in the Hadhramaut, in southern Yemen, and the day-two destination on Harry’s road trip. It has, he is told, the most stunning scenery in the country.

The armed escort

Getting here is where the security requirement becomes real. Harry doesn’t know it is coming.

• The Yemeni government requires all tourists to have armed security, and for this road the police issue an escort.
• The guard rides with them, armed, for the day.
• Asked whether he has used the weapon, he says he has fired at the enemy recently.

Harry’s own comment is the useful one: everything looks peaceful, and behind the cracks he genuinely doesn’t know whether it is.

Khat

The valley drive is where he chews it properly. Yemen is dry — no alcohol anywhere — so khat is what people do instead: a stimulant leaf, chewed for hours for a mild lift.

• A bag costs 15,000 (from video – unverified) — the currency isn’t named.
• He shares one for about an hour, keeps being handed more, and says the energy is real and the drive goes much faster for it.

Honey

Wasp honey, which he is told is the best there is, sold in the valley at around 600,000 (from video – unverified) — again, no unit given, and it is a lot of money in a country where a government job pays $40 a month.

The detail he stops on: the hives and stock are left out by the road and nobody steals any of it. In the UK, he says, it would be gone.

Bukshan Palace

A palace in the valley, and the reason it stands out is colour — bright paint in a landscape of mud buildings.

• Built and owned by Mr Bukshan, a wealthy businessman who has since moved to Saudi Arabia. Nobody lives in it now.
• He paid for a good deal of the village: roads, telecommunications, and scholarships for local students who wanted to study abroad.
• He owns a second, smaller palace nearby, also abandoned.

Harry walks the empty rooms and listens to the echo. The pattern — money made, money spent on the place, then the money leaves — is the thing the page is really recording.

Village life

They are invited into a local man’s house; it is built entirely of mud and is noticeably cool inside. Asked what the hardest part of life here is, his answer is affording to get married, and that it will take him a long time.

Electricity is three hours on, three hours off across the region — it used to be a longer cycle. Harry’s line is that this is a thing the West never thinks about.

At prayer time, the whole town gathers in the mosque. He watches rather than prays, washes before going in, and stays quiet.

Staying here

The hotel sits above the valley and Harry calls the view one of the most insane he has seen. There are, as everywhere in Yemen, no other tourists. The power went off for part of the night.

The checkpoints

His one complaint about the country, and he is careful to frame it as the only one. Checkpoints are constant and not always efficiently run — at one, the convoy waits somewhere between half an hour and an hour purely for a security handover, while the shift going off duty is replaced by the shift coming on. His verdict is a shrug: these things happen.

Talking to women

Yemen is ranked the worst place in the world to be a woman, and Harry wants that from women rather than about them. He notes that in Muslim countries women usually don’t want to be filmed, and that the group who agree here are open about it — his own reading, stated on camera, is that being able to pay for their time is part of why. They are widows from the north.

Their answers as recorded: the problems are material, and government help does not reach them. Asked about people in the UK and USA, one says she would like to go there.

On the burka, which he asks about directly for viewers who don’t know: the full covering is explained to him as protecting a woman’s body from being an object of attraction. He asks what the equivalent rule is for men and gets a concrete one — men may not show anything above the knee, so shorts are forbidden in Yemen.

The figures he gives alongside it: 6% of women are in the workforce, and over 50% of Yemeni girls are married before 18. His explanation is fourfold — deeply rooted patriarchal traditions in which men are the decision-makers, a legal system heavily shaped by Sharia, and a war that has destroyed the schools and healthcare that would otherwise be the way out.

The khat market

Where the leaf actually gets bought, and it is a proper market with competing sellers who all want him to inspect their stock.

• Around 30,000 for good quality (from video – unverified).
• There is good khat and bad khat, and the sellers make a decent living.
• It is expensive in the south because it is grown in the north, which is Houthi-held and not where they are. Knowing that is what the haggling runs on, and Harry describes the negotiation as tough.
• His description of the effect: like about ten coffees, and enough energy to walk around in the heat.

Practising English

Walking the streets he is stopped by two men who want to use their English on him. One introduces himself as Khalid, is studying the language, and calls this a town of history.

The exchange turns into the clearest statement of Yemeni feeling in either video: they invite him home for coffee or tea on the spot; they say there is no tourism here because they are Muslim; they say they love all people, rich or American; and they say they are against war anywhere, with Gaza named as what they want stopped.

Harry’s tips

• Expect the escort and don’t argue with it. It is a police requirement, not a service you’re being sold.
• Budget an hour for a checkpoint. They aren’t dangerous, they’re slow.
• Don’t wear shorts. Men covering above the knee is a rule here, and Harry asks about it rather than finding out the hard way.
• Try the khat, and know it comes from the north before you start haggling.
• Respect the rules at the mosque even if you’re only watching — clean yourself, stay quiet.

Source

• I Ignored Western Media and Went to Yemen 🇾🇪 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxN5BcLetqA
• Inside Yemen: A Country in Freefall 🇾🇪 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy2AGeH8u3c (the hotel, the women, the khat market)