Yemen in a desert country located on the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, bordered by the Red Sea and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in the west, Saudi Arabia in the north and Oman in the east. With the exception of the costal plains in the west, Yemen is continuously elevated with high and dry mountains having jagged peaks and plateaus covering most of the country. Yemen has no permanent rivers, but the highland regions are interspersed with several seasonal river valleys, called “Wadi”, that remain dry in the winter months. The most notable among these are Wadi Hadhramaut and Wadi Dawan, in eastern and central Yemen.

Wadi Hadramaut consists of a narrow, arid coastal plain bounded by the steep escarpment of a broad plateau (al-Jawl, averaging 4,490 feet), with a very sparse network of deeply sunk wadis. The undefined northern edge of Hadhramaut slopes down to the vast dry desert of Rub al Khali. The upper portions of Wadi Hadramaut contain alluvial soil and floodwaters while lower portion is barren and largely uninhabited.

Haid Al-Jazil, a village perched entirely on a boulder. Wadi Dawan, Yemen. Photo credit