Haid Al-Jazil
As the afternoon began to wane, we continued onto our accommodation for the night at the Haid Al-Jazil Resort Hotel, named after what it overlooks and its location perching dramatically on a cliff overlooking the Wadi Do’an.
You’ll find remarkably good tourist infrastructure here, Hadhramaut-style.
We settled into basic but clean rooms, each sporting the single greatest amenity any hotel could offer: views of where this place is named after, a diamond in the rough, and an Atlantis rising from the desert.
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.
Then 3 older 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 as well, they settled on the rocks with us past the infinity pool to share in the views. As we got to know them, 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 like Atlantis of 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
