haraz mountains

Around Mahwit, we get our first glimpses on western Yemen's stunning landscapes.
In the morning Omar drives us up to a famous outlook, for a panorama (below) including parts of the city on rock outcrops, inhabited mountain ridges staggering down, steamy clouds rising, reckless young shepherds flirting with the ridge. We're absolutely speechless.

The pictures above are taken from the same vantage point.





"Jan, we're in Yemen..."




Just as anywhere else in the world, farmers prove to be the best landscape architects. Above, terraces around Manakah, the base camp for trekkings in the Haraz mountains. More Haraz shots below - check out early morning Omar with Abeer's Aqaba tourist hat, and the pregnant blue donkey (isn't that a Counting Crows song?).






Eagle's nest Jbel Shoughrouf is another unselfconcious jaw-dropper. Click on the images below and look at this fabulously unphotographable place you won't find in any travel guide.

Hard to imagine that Shoughrouf is still there once you leave it behind, that right now, life goes on as usual there - the little girls herding the sheep, the boys playing soccer on the top terrace, Kamal bringing another group of astounded foreigners to one of his favorite places.

Across a narrow goat path, we enter the fort/town at sunset. From the upper windows of one of the tower houses, a woman drops a flower down to Candida. From the windowless ground floor, we hear the sound of animals. The sun disappears halfway in the sky, behind another mountain ridge.





A eucalyptus necklace vendor in the Haraz mountains around Manakah.



On our second trekking, around Manakah, we pass through a couple of quasi abandoned towns. With an asphalt road reducing travel time from Manakah to Sana'a to a couple of hours, it's not hard to imagine how that happened...