After a while you get quite blasé with the plethora of hill towns perched precariously, but rather beautifully on the edge of cliffs.  Even so, Al Hajjrah (as printed on the sign at the entry to the town), Hagrah, Al Hajirah....is amazing, emerging periodically from the swirling mountain mists with the occasional shaft of sunlight glancing momentarily off the face of a building.  I have seen other photographs of it bathed in sunlight when it is equally beautiful, but the clouds do add a touch of romance and mystery!

It used to be mostly coffee growing on the terraces below, but now increasingly Qat, the narcotic of choice and curse of modern Yemeni society, absorbing an appalling proportion of cultivable land, squandering the very finite national resources in its cultivation and reducing the male population to a soporific state of uselessness for the bulk of the working day.  Imagine the impact of planting beer trees in Scandinavia!

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