Carnival City

So, they check passports carefully. A German backpacker I met later said he had a hard time explaining why he had been to Pakistan. But I was soon in old San‘a, a world heritage site, staring up stupefied at the mud-brick tower of my hotel. All around bathed in the moonlight were similar towers with crenellated roofs and arched windows punched in like holes, but framed in elaborate white plaster friezes zig-zagging the facades. The effect has been likened to gingerbread houses lined with icing. It was a steep climb to my room. The Yemeni association with skyscrapers predates bin Laden by thousands of years.

The architecture continues to dazzle in San‘a’s mountainous surroundings. Everywhere, in a vast rocky landscape of deep valleys and escarpments, tower-houses march up the ridges to nestle as tightly clustered villages on the peaks, teetering over thousand-foot drops. On the way up to Al-khutayb, an important pilgrimage for the Bohras, we crossed the cavalcade of the Syedna from Bombay, who had just celebrated his 91st birthday in this magnificent setting. At Wadi Dar, an expanse of rock overlooking a green valley, wedding parties pulled up in the dozens to the gunfest on Friday, the celebrants firing out of their land cruisers even before they could park. Outside, groups of dancers went around in circles to quickening drum-beats, weaving and dipping, their daggers flashing in the sun. Falconeers wandered around offering photo-ops. The women in their black chadors formed their own circles, taking in the purple-brown views and clean cool air. San‘a at 2,400 metres has the perfect climate.