Getting High in the Yemen Question: how can you see London, Paris and New York simultaneously while sitting in a Remote Corner of the Arabian Peninsula? July 9, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Africa, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, Cars, Europe, Hostels, Hotels, Lodges, London, Museum, Oceanarium, Round The World, Tour, USA , 3commentsAnswer: adopt the national pastime of North Yemen and devote the entire afternoon to chewing the narcotic qat leaf. Our host, his eyes dreamy and his cheeks bulging with the drug, rocks with laughter at his own joke.
We had landed that morning to find ourselves catapulted into a medieval Manhatten, a confusing world of centuries-old mud skyscrapers and lavish exteriors that make a mockery of the Middle Eastern practice of living behind blank facades. Resting in a secluded courtyard we watch a veiled face peer out from behind a half-opened shutter high up on a crumbling wall. A basket lowers itself to the ground from a distant rooftop. A train of three camels, loaded down with bundles of qat, squeezes through a tiny alleyway and lurches past the massive studded door of a mosque. (more…)
A Fair Show, happy Travelers Diaries July 6, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Accommodation, Aquarium, Cars, Cash, China, Destination, Dolphinarium, Ireland, Library, Museum, Restaurant, Round The World, Tour , 3commentsThrough Leinster and Munster, along Connaught lanes and highways there’s a movement. Brazenly on verges, tucked behind hedges, parked in laybys there are caravans. Not tourists but the homes of the Irish Travellers, the Tinkers. Herds of their horses hold up the traffic. Greys, chestnuts, roans, bays and the especial pride, the batty mares: great coloured, patched horses, piebald and skewbald, hooves swathed in shaggy hair. They’re all heading along roads which lead to the nub, the October fair, Ballinasloe. A convergence for horses and horsemanship, dealing and drinking, exchanging news and the “crack”. “You’ll never see as many horses together as you will at Ballinasloe. Once Seamus McGinty rode down the high street at the head of sixty, his sons as outriders flanking their wealth.” (more…)
