Wadi Dawan

Wadi Dawan is a canyon cut three hundred metres into the Hadhramaut plateau, with a green strip of date palms on its floor and villages of mud-brick tower houses stuck to the cliffs above, painted white and ochre and built so tight against the rock they look like part of it. The wadi produces the sidr honey that Hadhrami beekeepers make from the flowering jujube tree, among the most expensive honey in the world. Sunlight reaches the floor for only part of the day, and the villages catch it in turn. The road in and out is the same one.