Mainland Yemen

The expedition begins in the air: Yemenia's morning flight out of Cairo tracks south-east over the Red Sea and the empty heart of the peninsula before dropping into Wadi Hadhramaut, the great canyon that shelters the valley's cities. Clear immigration at Seiyun with our team already waiting (clearance and escort in place), then transfer down the valley to the shrine town of Hawta. Before dusk, a first climb to a viewpoint over the palm groves, the towers of Shibam just visible in the haze downstream. Two nights at the Hawta Palace Hotel, itself a whitewashed mudbrick palace.

A full day among the valley's holy and princely cities. In Seiyun, the vast Sultan Al Kathiri Palace (one of the largest mudbrick buildings ever raised) and the morning souq beneath its walls. In Tarim, the centre of Hadhrami scholarship for eight centuries, the whitewashed minaret of the Al Muhdhar Mosque needles nearly fifty metres above the rooftops. East again to Aynat, where the Seven Domes stand over the graves of saints, and on to the end of the pilgrim road: the hillside Tomb of Prophet Hud, its empty shrine city waiting for the annual pilgrimage. Return to Hawta at dusk.

Shibam in the morning light. We enter the walled city on foot and take its lanes slowly, the mudbrick towers pressing in eight and ten storeys overhead, then climb through a tower house from the ground-floor grain stores to the whitewashed rooftop, where the whole ancient skyline stands in ranks around you. After lunch the road leaves the main valley for Wadi Doan, pausing at cliffside Al-Hajarayn, one of the oldest villages in the canyon, stacked against its rock face beneath the fortress of the Al Amoudi. By evening we reach the canyon rim and check in to the Hayd Al Jazeel Resort, perched directly above the valley floor.

A full day inside the canyon. A morning trek drops from the rim to the valley floor at Hawfah, through fields and palm groves, to stand beneath Haid al-Jazil; the village on its freestanding rock that has become the image of the Hadhramaut. The painted Buqshan Palace blazes against the cliff behind it; the viewpoints at Qarn Majed give the long view down the wadi; and the afternoon ends among the beekeepers and mudbrick lanes of Al-Rubat. Sunset and a second night on the canyon rim, the valley darkening below.

Out of the canyon and down to the sea. The road climbs onto the high plateau, then falls through switchbacks to the coast at Mukalla, the old port of the Qu'aiti sultans, its whitewashed old town strung along the water. In the afternoon: the Qu'aiti Sultan Palace with its sea-facing balconies, the fish market at the harbour, and the Al Ghwayzi Fortress on its crag above the coast road. At dusk a boat eases out along the corniche for the sunset cruise, the city lights coming on over the Arabian Sea. Night at the Ramada Al Mukalla.

A last breakfast by the Arabian Sea, then the morning transfer along the coast to Mukalla's airport for the return flight to Cairo, escort alongside to the very end. Most travellers connect onward from Cairo the same day; those tempted to continue to Socotra (Yemen's island, and this expedition's natural sibling) should ask us about pairing the two into a single journey.