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Our Pocket Tourists carry all we need for long stretches of barren stone desert.
 *** DISCLAIMER *** Candida and Jan tackled Yemen on the most affordable Friday of all: The Pocket Tourist. Can you afford a Friday? Yes, you can! However, we STRONGLY recommend using a New World Tourist or Pocket Llama for expedition travel like this, as the Pocket Tourist is primarily built for economy, recreational riding and lighter loads. Read more touring on a Friday stories |
YEMEN ON A FRIDAY PHOTO GALLERY Absolutely stunning shots from Jan and Candida's trip on Pocket Tourists.
FIRST THINGS FIRST: we are both *totally* hooked - go ahead and add us to the list of Friday Freaks. The bike-in-the-suitcase trick worked perfectly, and our faithful goats proved reliable on the most rocky terrain.
Day after day we were stunned with the packaged performance. We simply had a great time on our Fridays and ... not one puncture.
Yemen is an extremely fascinating country (of which we've only seen a fraction in a month's time) and right away we felt comfortable with the Yemeni friends and hosts along the way. Still, Yemen is not an easy bike destination - for a couple of reasons.
What do you do on a Friday? Cruising on Socotra's southern plains, where tourist 4x4s never come...
First, paved roads are scarce, especially in the more remote (intriguing) areas. We found very few 'secondary' paved roads, usually the ones best suited for biking.
Second, the security situation is unstable - which doesn't mean Yemen is unsafe! We were unlucky to arrive after a couple of foreigners hostage crises which inspired the authorities not to give us permits to travel independently in a couple of 'troubled' provinces. A heightened state of alert (police escorts, army checkpoints, permits, restrictions) and the typical Arabian hospitality make independent travel in Yemen an adventure in itself.
And third, some of the most stunning areas (quasi-feudal societies in towns perched on mountain ridges overlooking terraced coffee plantations - quintessential Yemen) are simply impossible to discover by bike.
The unmistakable silhouettes of our Friday goats against the glow of Seyyun's most famous mud-brick palace.
That said, we had the greatest trip, crossing canyons, stone desert plateaus, coastal plains, finding our way through ancient cultures along trading routes, fascinating cities ... enjoy some of our pictures attached.
And remember this was Candida's first bike travel ever!
Kickin' it with Hadrami shepherdesses in their funky chapeaus on the road out of Shibam.
As roads are being built at a fast rate (for the better or the worse) and if the security situation keeps relaxing in the future, Yemen can only improve as a biking destination. We were not really surprised we didn't see any other bike travelers - at times seriously doubting if any bike passed certain places in between Heinz Stücke's Friday and ours.
Thanks again Peter for your assistance during our Friday purchases!
Best, Jan + Candida, New York, email dida at candidadoamaral dot com, janleenknegt at hotmail dot com
For more information, follow this link
http://somdaysomwhere.blogspot.com