I Ignored Western Media and Went to Yemen 🇾🇪

Harry flies from Cairo into Seiyun — the only route he can find into Yemen — and starts a road trip west to the port of al-Mukalla with a guide, Jamal, and a driver, Abdul.

What he expects to find is the war. What he says shocked him instead is how beautiful the country is, and that with tourists kept away by the security situation he had the whole of it to himself.

The three stops in this half are the open-air gun market at Seiyun, the mud tower blocks of Shibam, and the valley of Wadi Doan — which the police will not let him enter without an armed guard.

Key moments

• [00:02] The setup: the poorest country in the Middle East, a civil war between Iran-backed Houthi rebels and a Saudi- and Western-backed government, over 250,000 dead, and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
• [00:32] Why anyone outside cares — the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and a chunk of world trade that passes through it.
• [00:32] What actually shocked him: not the conflict, the landscape.
• [00:32] The visa required an HIV test and a hepatitis test.
• [01:05] The plan — Seiyun to al-Mukalla — and the question behind the channel: why the countries with the nicest people he’s met get labelled bad places.
• [01:36] Flights only from Cairo. North Yemen is off limits, Houthi-controlled; the south he calls fifty-fifty.
• [02:06] Around $1,000 return, on the only airline that flies the route.
• [02:06] Over the Red Sea and Suez — 12% of global trade, and the reason the geopolitics work the way they do.
• [02:40] Met by Jamal and Abdul. A lot of people are carrying guns.
• [02:40] The gun market — wide open, on a central road.
• [03:16] A Kalashnikov, about $1,000. His guide’s estimate: 30–40% of people carry one.
• [03:46] Army surplus, uniforms, an RPG launcher.
• [03:46] A necklace handed over as a gift — and the comparison to Egypt, where the same gesture arrives with a $30 price attached.
• [04:20] A “bomb” quoted at $200, described as cheap.
• [05:28] Shibam — the Manhattan of the Middle East, and what he calls the first skyscrapers in the world, 500 years old.
• [06:00] The Yemeni way of sitting, which he declares one of the great inventions.
• [06:00] The biggest problem, as locals name it: the cost of living, not the war.
• [06:30] The currency isn’t stable — big purchases are made in Saudi riyals.
• [06:30] No women anywhere on the streets, and the statistic behind it: Yemen is the worst country in the world to be a woman.
• [07:02] Talking to a group of married women through Jamal. They offer to find him a wife.
• [08:07] The history of the Houthi movement — the Believing Youth in the 1990s, radicalisation after 9/11, the slogan, the rebellion, the Saudi airstrikes and the Iranian backing that turned it into a proxy war.
• [08:40] Millions displaced and dependent on aid, which he notes doesn’t make the news.
• [08:40] Invited to a Yemeni wedding on day one.
• [09:11] A tent in the middle of Seiyun, running two or three nights depending on the family’s wealth.
• [09:11] No women inside at all — men and women separated throughout.
• [09:41] Arranged marriage, and the detail that in some cases the man doesn’t know who he is marrying until afterwards.
• [10:15] Day two: the government requires all tourists to have armed security.
• [10:45] The escort is a police requirement for the road to Wadi Doan. The guard has fired at the enemy recently.
• [11:17] Khat — the only real recreation in a dry country. A bag at 15,000 (from video – unverified).
• [11:54] An hour of chewing and the drive gets faster.
• [11:54] Wasp honey, around 600,000 (from video – unverified), left unguarded by the road — and nobody takes it.
• [13:09] Prayer time, with the whole town in the mosque. He watches rather than prays, and washes first.
• [13:40] Inside a family’s mud house, cool in the heat. The hardest thing about life here is affording to get married.
• [14:11] The drainage: the town is built on a slant so it never floods.
• [14:45] Electricity, three hours on and three hours off, and it used to be better.
• [15:18] Bukshan Palace — colourful among the mud, built by a businessman who paid for the village’s roads, telecoms and student scholarships, and who now lives in Saudi Arabia. Both his palaces stand empty.
• [16:25] A local’s own diagnosis: the divisions within the community are the problem, and unity is how Yemen gets itself back.
• [16:31] The verdict on the first half — the worst situation of any country he has visited, with people earning $40 a month in government jobs.
• [16:59] The thing he says he could most easily have overlooked as a man: where the women are, and that they can’t drive and are circumcised at birth.
• [17:35] Credit to Jamal and Abdul, and the tour company, published in the description.

Extracted pages

• Places: Seiyun, Shibam, Wadi Doan
• Country: Yemen
• Person: Jamal
• Tips: Judge a place for yourself, Travel with a local guide, The gift that isn’t free