Yemen Discovery Guide

Read the security section first. Yemen has been at war since 2014, is the site of one of the world's worst humanitarian crises, and essentially every government advises against all travel. This page describes a country that is largely unreachable, and says so plainly. What is there is remarkable. Shibam in the Hadhramaut is a walled city of sixteenth-century mud-brick towers five to eleven storeys high, still lived in, and Old Sanaa has been inhabited for more than two and a half thousand years. Then there is Socotra, an island 350 kilometres off the Horn of Africa where a third of the plant life exists nowhere else.

The main travel issue

It is absolute on the mainland, where airports are damaged or closed and front lines restrict movement for everyone. Socotra is the only part still reachable, though the advisory covers it too, and it has a friction of its own: the south-west monsoon from June to September closes the sea and stops the flights.

The solution

For the only part still reachable, take an organised trip between October and May, with November to February the most comfortable.

Socotra

The realistic answer. A week of camping between the Dixam plateau, where the dragon’s blood trees stand, the white dunes and lagoon at Detwah, the Homhil protected area, and the long beach at Arher where a dune climbs straight off the sand. Snorkelling at Dihamri, and a boat to Shuab. Arranged as a package; independent travel is not practical.

Old Sanaa, when circumstances allow

A UNESCO-listed walled city of tower houses with gypsum tracery and stained-glass qamariya windows, the Great Mosque founded in the Prophet’s lifetime, and the Souq al-Milh. It has been damaged by airstrikes and by flooding.

The Hadhramaut

Shibam, the mud-brick tower city, with Seiyun and the whitewashed palace at Tarim nearby. Wadi Dawan’s villages sit on cliff ledges above the palms.

The mountains

Terraced escarpments around Manakha and Haraz, farmed in stone terraces for centuries, with fortified villages on the ridge tops.

What is closed

Most of the mainland is inaccessible to foreign visitors, and this has been the case for years.

Yemen is the oldest settled corner of Arabia, tribal in structure, intensely proud of its history, and now defined for outsiders by a war it did not choose.

Tribe and custom

Tribal law and mediation remain the real governing structure across much of the country, and lineage matters. The jambiya, a curved dagger worn at the waist, is a marker of status and identity rather than a weapon, and the quality of its rhino or bull horn handle signals a family’s standing.

Qat

Chewing the leaf of Catha edulis through the afternoon is close to universal among men and common among women, and the daily qat session is where business, politics and socialising happen. It also consumes an enormous share of the country’s scarce water and agricultural land, which is one of Yemen’s deepest structural problems.

Architecture as identity

Yemenis build upward in mud brick and stone, decorated with gypsum, and have done for centuries. The tower house is the national form.

An old crossroads

The incense trade made the south rich in antiquity, and the Queen of Sheba is placed here by tradition. Jewish, Indian and East African connections all left traces, and the Hadhrami diaspora reaches across Indonesia and East Africa.

The war

Everything is filtered through it, and most people have lost someone or something.

The honest position is that Yemen is not a place to travel for pleasure at present, and the most responsible act is usually to support humanitarian organisations working there rather than to visit.

If you reach Socotra, which is the realistic case, the island is the fragile part. Its endemic plants — dragon’s blood trees, desert roses, frankincense — are slow-growing, poorly regenerating and damaged by goats and by visitors. Stay on tracks, camp only where your guide directs, and take every scrap of waste off the island; there is effectively no waste management.

Use Socotri guides and operators. Local employment is the main argument for tourism there at all, and it is a real one.

Water is scarce and largely trucked or drawn from wells the community depends on.

Buy no antiquities and no coral, shell or plant material. Trafficking of Yemeni antiquities has been extensive during the war.

Be careful photographing people, and never photograph women.

Socotra, the only part most travellers could reach, is governed by the monsoon. From June to September the south-west monsoon brings winds strong enough to close the sea and stop flights, and the island effectively shuts. October to May is the season, with November to February the most comfortable — warm days, calm sea and good diving and snorkelling.

The mainland highlands around Sanaa sit above 2,200 metres and are temperate year round, warmest from May to September and cold at night in winter. The main rains fall in two spells, roughly March to May and July to September.

The coastal plain and the Hadhramaut are hot year round and severe from May to September, well above 40°C.

Ramadan reorders the day entirely, and its timing moves each year.

In practice, access rather than weather decides everything, and that changes without notice.

What a day costs, by how you travel

Relative cost

The currency has collapsed and split, and prices in rials are meaningless to plan with; visitors deal in US dollars.