louiseinlimbo

The reason I was in Egypt was actually to take a flight from Cairo to Seiyun, in Yemen, with a tour group. It’s not a country you can visit as an individual, but visas are granted to tour groups meeting specified criteria, so I’d signed up for a tour – a week in mainland south Yemen, followed by a week on the island of Socotra.  Then earlier this year, trouble broke out in Yemen, between the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (based in the more northerly part of the country…) and the Saudi-backed and internationally-recognised Presidential Leadership Council (the government), with the former rapidly taking over significant parts of the country but then being pushed back, with the main results being their expulsion from the Leadership Council and the withdrawal of their UAE support.  Thankfully this was all over before my trip was due to take place, so I could still go to ‘southern’ Yemen, but the withdrawal of the UAE included the cancellation of their weekly ...

Siwa was not actually a place I had heard of until a room-mate in Thailand heard that I was travelling next to Egypt, and told me, “You have to go to Siwa Oasis!”, and having looked the place up online I decided that I would do so.  Only 50km from the Libya border, it is a town of the Berbers, where the local language (Siwi) is still dominant.  It reminded me in some ways of northern Mali, with the ancient mosque (dating from 1203) constructed in a very similar style to those in Timbuktu.  In an oasis some 25 metres below sea level, it apparently has more than 300,000 palm trees and 70,000 olive trees – but these are nourished by spring-water (via streams), not by rainfall, which is rare.  However in 1926 there were three days of rain, and most of the town existing at that point was badly damaged, as the buildings were made from large chunks of salt mixed with rock and plastered with local clay. The ruins are still there in the centre of town (with newer buildings ar...