Haid Al-Jazil
As the afternoon began to wane, we continued to our overnight accommodation: the Haid Al-Jazil Resort Hotel, perched dramatically on a cliff overlooking Wadi Doan. Decent tourist infrastructure here, Hadhramaut-style.
We settled into basic but clean rooms, each sporting the single greatest amenity any hotel could offer: those views. Can I finally submit again to National Geographic?
From the hotel’s infinity pool terrace, the wadi spread below in both directions.
To the center and right:
And to our left:
As sunset began, the rock walls transformed through shades of amber, bronze, and deep rust. The villages below lit up one by one as donkeys and shepherds made their way home. Three Chinese tourists, two of them more outgoing than their third, approached us thinking we were Japanese. Overhearing their Mandarin, I quickly corrected them. Once they realized we could speak Mandarin, we settled on the rocks past the infinity pool to share the views. One of them proudly stated she was the only Chinese person living in Socotra.
Confirms Bruce’s saying he reminded me of: “Where there is a place, there is Chinese.”
You don’t get a lot of moments like these in life (unless you travel with us).
Dinner was served in the hotel’s restaurant by reception. We ate as the valley succumbed to complete darkness.
The supermoon, unobscured by light pollution, emerged as if it would become our new sun. Tonight, perched on this cliff in one of the world’s most isolated valleys, I simply appreciated the improbability of being here at all.
When they say travel is dead, and that everywhere is the same now, or when they claim there’s nothing new to discover, I’d show them these photographs of ancient skyscrapers rising from the desert. This isn’t Instagram’s Southern Arabia. This is the real thing, still standing, inhabited, and extraordinary.
We woke up 8 hours later at 5:30am. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the moon look this big in my life:
- At time of posting in Haid Al-Jazil, it was 24 °C - Humidity: 24% | Wind Speed: 13km/hr | Cloud Cover: so perfect
