Yemen

Yemen is the wettest and most mountainous corner of the Arabian peninsula: the western highlands rise above three thousand metres and receive monsoon rains that have allowed a terraced agriculture more than two thousand years old and groves of juniper and acacia. To the east extends the Hadhramaut, with immense wadis that carry water only after storms, and to the north the sand of the Rub al-Khali. The country keeps relict populations of Arabian leopard, Nubian ibex, gazelles and hamadryas baboons. But its natural jewel lies more than three hundred kilometres off the coast: the Socotra archipelago, separated from the continent millions of years ago, has become one of the places with the highest proportion of exclusive species on the planet and an evolutionary laboratory comparable to those of the great oceanic islands.