We visited Yemen 1996 on a trip from Iran via Dubai. The civil war between the North and the South had just stopped. Temporary Kidnappings of foreigners did occur from time to time but without fail ended mildly. Mostly they happened because some regional tribe wanted to put pressure on the central government in Sana’a and to add authority to its call for better infrastructure. Names like Al-Qaeda, Daesh and ISIS were still unheard of. In the mid nineties Arabia Felix, the ancient name for the southern part of the Arab peninsula could still be considered an appropriate description and beautiful Yemen was about to become a serious destination for the  educational traveller. Travelling with our Yemeni driver Mohammed felt like riding on a magic carpet. At the end of the trip even he even invited us to his home for a sensational dinner of the most tender lamb biryani.

We stepped through Bab-al-Yaman, the enormous gate allowing access into the old walled city of Sana’a. It was like stepping through a portal into another world. I felt like on an architectural tour: The tall, skinny buildings with colorful stained-glass windows and facades ornamented by white gypsum crammed into the narrow lanes that connected lush fruit and vegetable gardens with the ancient souq. Our small hotel was right in the middle of it and offered from its exposed 8th-floor rooftop glimpses into another time. Just before sunrise a polyphonic concert of a at least a dozen muezzins started like I had never heard it before or after. From Sana’a our Architectural Digest tour continued to the Haraz Mountains. Here the villages clinged like eagles’ nests to the tops of the mountains. We hiked from Manakkha to Al Hadschara. Every local we met en route featured a jambiya, some also a Kalashnikow gun. In Yemen the men’s ubiquitous dagger  embodies centuries of tribalism, honour and manhood. Women were, apart from my former girlfriend-later-turned-wife, rarely seen.

From the mountains to the desert: We drove 700 kilometers east via Marib, the ancient capital of the fabled Kingdom of Saba, to the equally fabled Wadi Hadhramaut. Bordering dramatic plateaus up to 2000 meters high and the Rub-el-Khali, the “Empty Quarter”, arriving in the Hadhramaut had been like my dearest travel dream come true. Just below us lay the “Manhattan in the Desert”, Shibam, with its Skyscraper-like mud houses, sometimes 7 floors high, separated by the slimmest urban canyons men and mud could build. The settlements in Hadhramaut were surrounded by evergreen palm groves. Women dressed in black abbayas and wearing two feet tall straw hats were harvesting the fertile fields, I found their hats looked more like witch hats and their outlook certainly added a lot to the mystique of the Hadhramaut. Finally, after a full week in the desert we reached the Indian Ocean at ancient Al-Qana.

Exactly here, incense had once been loaded onto camels to be transported on the so-called “Incense Route” through the Arabian Peninsula to the Mediterranean. Later we set our night camp on one of the most beautiful beaches of the world, Bir-Ali. Our tent graced the whitest powder sand we had ever stepped upon, in front of us waited the turquoise blue of the gentle bathtub called Indian Ocean. But first we climbed a reddish outcrop to survey the beach from above: 50 meters below us an innumerable number of dolphins were jumping like slaphappy kids into and out of the warm waters. We descended from the cliff, dipped into the sea while the sun was slowly tending to the horizon. 

Those days, the horrors of nowadays Yemen were not even on the horizon.