References
Yemen Ancient Architectural Exploration
The trip to Yemen is the first overseas exploration we have organized,which imprinted beautiful memory into participant’s mind. We’d like to express our gratitude to those friendly staff menber of adensafari travel agency who had provided us with first class services.
We spent 11 days, as if we were wandering in the river of long history. We walked into ancient Yemen of hundreds of thousands of years. From north to south, we visited areas with totally different landscapes including uproarious metropolitan, small towns situated in the mountain areas, plains, magnificent mountains, oasis, desert, highland, sea coasts, etc. We’re amazed at the stone architecture in the capital, Sanna, the clay architecture in Marib and Shibam, the architecture of maharajah style in Hadramaut, the architecture with African flavour in Tihama, and the archeoology on our way perfectly matching the local environment.
The architecture in Yemen is a harmonious combination of human wisdom and nature. The trip to Yemen was brilliant, from which everyone has gained an unprecedented visual impressions and a great spiritual satisfaction. The ancient architecture in Yemen, with its environment-friendly, airy, and energy-saving ideas showed in design, are so outstanding that we can still learn and refer to them nowadays. Therefore, our ancient architecture exploration Yemen with adensafari was a great success!
Brian Changcheng He, Shanghai Jiaotong University
I went to yemen last november for 2 weeks for a tour to Wadi Massilah organized by adensafari. We arrived in the night in sanaa, our hotel was in the old town. Though beeing tired, i couldnt sleep, i was too excited about the old buildings i had seen on the way from the airport to town. They looked like the illustrations of fairy tales books...so I asked my roommate to walk with me around for a while.
The town was silent, the houses were wonderful. We heard some music coming from upstairs, we saw a twinkling light...we decided to enter the door und went upstairs. In a room sat maybe 40 men playing and singing. They welcomed us and invited us to sit on the floor...they gave us some leaves to chew. we didn't know the language, we didn't know neither the leaves, nor the music. But the men were kind. the great adventure began in that moment! The next day we started our travel through the Wadi Massilah - the most interesting and intactlandscape i have ever seen in my life. The jeep was confortable, the guide perfect, the food simple but genuine. I think adensafari is able to accompany individual tourists like me as anybody else because the group is small and the treatment very personal.For me this is the only way to live such a travel full of emotions.
All the other groups i happened to see on the way through yemen were too big and therefore not so personal. It was a journey more into time than into space. Adensafari brought me 1000 years back in the history. I will never forget when in wadi massilah our guide stopped the jeep in a village and asked the village chief to sell us a sheep. The chief and his son slaughtered the young animal under our astonished western eyes...and it tasted wonderful in the evening!
Joyce Rohrmoser, photographer and viedo-artist, Salzburg
My impression from Yemen
When my first time to touch the land of Yemen , I found that the country was beyond my former imagination. So backwarded, poor land and dirty street made me very upset. As time goes on, we were amazingly surprised and atrracted by the countrys’ culture and architecture when we got further understanding. Its pure people, various of land surface, cultural uniqueness push our first bad impression out of our brain, then we gradually fall in love with the magic land and expecting to see its future. At the same time, we can also feel the friendly and warmly help and services from the local travel agency adensafari staff members. Nice place, you would never forgot your memory!
Chen Bin, architect, Shanghai
It's the beautiful and amazing pictures on the Internet that formed my first impression on Yemen. I imagined sand, ancient fortress, golden desert, pleasant sound of camel's bells, and attractive Islamic girls... As soon as I arrived in Yemen, I was shocked by its pure and clear sky, bright and lovely sunshine, imposing castles, solemn and quiet palaces,vigorous streets, magnificent construction, vast and bare desert, dazzling gorge, fresh Arabian Sea. Friendly and enthusiastic Arabian Men: heroic Khaled, sincere Abdrubba. wise Alkhadher Alsharafi from adensafari accompanied us during the whole happy journey. We have come back from Yemen since several months, but I can still hear "Alhambra's memory", a popular song in Yemen and wander around the palace in the surburb of Sanaa in my heart.
Wan Fu Chen, Designer, Shanghai
First impression on Yemen with adensafari
Setting feet on the land of Yemen and feeling the dryness and the passion in the sunshine, I tasted the fantasy and mystery of the unknown journey. Yemen, one of the cradles of ancient Arabian culture, was a stranger to me. Our first destination was the ancient “King’s city”, where kind and pure natives had lived there for thousands of years. On our way to the city, we saw the discarded jeep, people in traditional Arabian clothing, hills spreading to the distance, and some little green plants dotting around the slides of the hills.Your eyes were immersed in freshness and happiness.
At the foot of the “King’s city”, observing the square crowded with comers and goers,we had a good understanding of nature and freedom in spite of its disorder, bustle and hustle. After we got off the vehicle, a lot of natives said hello and waved hands to us from a distance, several of whom approach us. Though our language was different, we strongly felt their hospitality. The whole “King’s city” was composed of huge stacked-up stones, which impressed visitors with its imposing power. What’s more beautiful was the texture of the stones. With their random and stacked structure, the stones revealed a circumstance of ages and wildness. The intrinsic power in the construction was speechless. I was shocked and imagined the beautiful and mysterious fairy-tales in Arab. In spite of the ground I set feet on, walls and trees, everything was made by stones. The gap between construction was very small, and naturally the alleys were narrow.In contrast,the constuction seemed higher. Profoundness of the alleys undulating along the primitive terrain, people wandered around, while the objects in your eyes suddenly became so varied.
The density between the construction there was very high with different height. But their symbol factors were highly unified. I appreciated the windows most—typical arches mixed with complicated and regular diamond-shaped figures. The lines between the stairs, seriate stria walls, and semicircular pattern added elegance to construction. Considering the local climate, the walls of Yemen was 2.5 times thicker than ours, which made the windows more mysterious, just like the eyes of the natives. The construction complex in “King’s city” filled us with enchantment. It spreaded from the bottoms of the hills to the tops with imposing mountains behind it. The texture and the colour of the construction and the rocks around it were the same. Sunshine briskly flowed from the gap of the construction,passionately sprinkled on the ground. Some little children in traditional Arabian cloth wandered on the streets. Gradually a colourful and harmonious scene of an exotic ancient city was portrayed in my eyes. I freely roamed the long, deep and narrow lanes, enjoying the sound I made by treading on the slate and my breath.
Everything was tranquil. Several little girls, wearing black and green kaftan, white babushka and cotton bags, said hello to us with their big pure eyes when we approached. Suddenly, we heard the notes of prayers from the depths of the lanes. It is the profound and intangible music made you feel the purity of a nation! Their dress, diet, surface feature, music, construction, belief were single, in which a nation’s soul and culture were contained. Their life mustn’t be lonely and boring, because I read true happiness from their eyes—they were wealthy, positive and active. They were not as busy as people in metropolitan. They led a simple and relaxing way of living, which has made ancient and beautiful Arabian culture last for thousands of years. It presented itself before people across the world naturally and brilliantly.
Zhang Zan, Interior Designer, Shanghai
A Whole New World — Yemen Journey with adensafari
Yemen is a great country with pure and kind people, imposing and grand mountains.Rocks and hills there gave birth to brave and strong-minded natives. Dry and hot desert climate taught them how to adapt to the nature. Undergoing the trend of the globalization, Yemen displayed us its whole aboriginality and unique native flavour.
Our ten day’s of journey fully provided us a wonderful opportunity to appreciate Yemen’s continue desert, fertile oasis, old castles, steep mountain cities, tranquil and limpid sea, age-old lofty trees. Don’t forget to visit the night market which will offer you a strong exotic atomosphere. Come here, unless you won’t have a good understanding of its different and amazing beauty!
Steve Ssih, designer and design professor
My wife Carmen, my daughter Cora, and I decided to explore remote parts of Yemen for 2 weeks, this past April. We intended to cover some of the sights between Sana'a and Aden, and to return to the capital via the entire coastline stretching from Aden to the Bab-el-Mandab and then up the Red Sea to Al-Mocha and Al-Chocha, which has convenient lodging right on the beach.
We were very fortunate to be accompanied by the intrepid Al-Khader Al-Shafari. Neither spared any efforts to accommodate even our most eccentric requests, and shed light into even the most remote corners - like the hidden "Burrha" canyon where coffee is grown in archaic terraces, and where the castles of sheiks tower on top of 6,000 feet mountain ridges - climbers will have afield day in that region. Having extensively traveled 5 continents, I can highly recommend Adensafari as an organizer, for they've shown us off-the-beaten-path aspects of Yemen only true insiders would know about - and safety was never an issue in Al-Khader's hands.
Manuel Wally, Other productions, New York
The Yemen Journey with adensafari
Yemen— an ancient Muslim country, with a written history of more than 3000 years, is one of the cradles of ancient Arabian civilization. Most areas of the villages in Yemen are dotted with traditional mud houses,just like the dry brick buildings in Daqing oil field. But the people in Yemen built multistoried dry brick buildings! It’s a miracle!
Yemen is a world dominated by men, who are leading roles in all social activities. Here are two characteristics I learned from them: Qat: Qat is a year-long green perennial shrub or tree plants, whose growing environment is plateau and hilly areas. Most Qat trees are about one meter high so that people can pick their fresh leaves. Men of Yemen, from top leaders to ordinary people, even soldiers, have a habit of chewing Qat’s leaves.Usually,chewing the leaves while working or chatting has been a common lifestyle of men in Yemen.
Jambiyya: Yemen has a long long history. The well-preserved traditional craftsmanship is a perfect proof of its long and brilliant history. Long ago,the people in Yemen have mastered some ways of making modern cultural relics manually. For example, the technique of making jmbiyya can be dated back to thousands of years ago. In the past, men often carried jambiyya for the purpose of self-defence. Nowadays jambiyya is considered as accouterment instead of weapon, which has become an important sign of masculinity for men in Yemen.
Yu Yao, Designer, Shanghai