Socotra: rediscovering the ‘island abode of bliss’

Ancient mariners called it the Island of the Djinns. Greek and Arab sailors took it for Paradise and imagined its frankincense lured ships towards its perfumed shoreline. Over centuries, the island cropped up in stories from Virgil and the Epic of Gilgamesh to the Arabian Nights. Tales spread of its dragon blood trees, whose sap ran red.

The thing about Socotra, whose name derives from a Sanskrit phrase meaning “island abode of bliss”, is that the reality almost matches the tall stories.

The island’s extraordinary umbrella-spoked trees really do produce a blood-red resin. Its landscape, at turns brooding, dramatic and otherworldly, conjures up both a rocky garden where Cain might have slaughtered Abel and a wonderland dreamt up by Dr Seuss or Haruki Murakami. To this day, Socotra’s inhabitants, including the Bedouin of the mountain interior, use frankincense to drive out the wicked spirits they call djinns.

Socotra was once on the map. Merchants from India, Ethiopia, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, travelled there to trade. In the pitch-black depths of Hoq cave, inscriptions in Brahmi, Ethiopian Ge’ez, Ancient Greek and Bactrian are scratched into the rock. But, in the 21st century, Socotra has receded back to legend.

Henry Cookson, a polar adventurer who pops off to the Antarctic as others might to Ibiza, has been trying to get there for 14 years, an ambition thwarted by security concerns, bureaucracy and finally Covid.

Now, at last, Socotra is a feasible destination again. The war in Yemen, to which Socotra belongs, has cooled and threats of piracy have been reduced by the presence of international navies. Socotra’s 60,000 inhabitants find themselves, for better or worse, under the protection of the United Arab Emirates. Even before the current ceasefire, which began in April 2022, and peace talks in Yemen, the war on the mainland, 350km away, was but a distant rumble.

I accompanied Cookson on a reconnaissance trip for his eponymous travel company. He organises bespoke expeditions combining luxury, a carefully choreographed sense of adventure and a dash of theatre.

I came to think of Cookson as a billionaire’s dream-catcher. Want to propose to your future wife under the northern lights? He will organise the meteorologists, private jets and dog sleds to make sure it happens. (He can’t promise that she’ll say yes.) Keen to sponsor a wildlife census in Antarctica with a bottle of Pétrus never far away? Sorted.

So how about visiting an island few have heard of that lies off the coast of Somalia with blinding-white beaches, a teeming ocean and black mountains where The Lord of the Rings might have been filmed? Cookson has come to Socotra to find out if he can offer his clients the sort of experience they crave in the manner to which they are accustomed.

Logistics are not straightforward. Flights don’t appear on normal internet sites. The weekly service from Abu Dhabi, the most practical way in, is booked on WhatsApp by those in the know. A search for the island’s 10 best hotels throws up two less-than-enticing results, both in Hadiboh, the scrappy capital. That makes camping — in Cookson’s case, in style of course — the only real option for exploring the island’s heroically dramatic landscape.

Today, a trickle of tourists are starting to visit, and though Cookson is catering to a niche of extremely wealthy adventure-seekers, it is also possible to visit on more normal budget. Our flight in also carried a group of Polish backpackers setting off to explore the island on the cheap. In all, there were a few dozen of us — a tiny number for such a substantial slab of rock, at about 130km long and 40km wide roughly the size of Long Island or Cornwall. Those who make it pretty much have the place to themselves.

We land at the tiny airport on the island’s north coast and, after pushing through a gaggle of drummers, we drive south towards the island’s interior. Our guide is Sean Nelson, an Oman travel specialist and an ex-British Royal Marine, who has been scoping out the island for months. He’s built up from scratch an itinerary and the logistics to achieve it. The idea is to spend three days exploring the mountainous interior, dominated by the menacing Hajhir range, and the rest of the time on the coast.

Socotra may be politically part of the Middle East, but geographically it is a chip off Africa. As the vehicle climbs the steep dirt road, the drama of the scenery becomes apparent. Dragon blood trees dot the slopes like cocktail decorations. The distant mountains are as jagged as a sea monster’s back.

About a third of the plant species on Socotra, often called the “Galápagos of the Indian Ocean”, are endemic, as are most of its reptiles, and many of its crabs, spiders and insects. The archipelago was designated a Unesco world heritage site in 2008 on account of its biodiversity.

We stop on the lip of a heart-juddering gorge for a picnic. Yellow Egyptian vultures, majestic as eagles, swoop around, performing acrobatics at close range before hurtling off. They are quite unruffled by humans. Some position themselves just feet away, hopping from foot to foot as we scoff our hummus, skewers and flatbread.

Ahmed Mohammed Said, an expert on the fauna and flora, says they clean up after the islanders like avian refuse collectors. A stocky man dressed in a turban and sarong, Said will accompany us throughout the journey, which will mean a lot of huffing and puffing up mountain trails. I will forever associate him with the word “endemic”.

After lunch we drive on, getting stuck at one point before the driver guns the four-by-four up the loose gravel surface. A camp of royal-looking tents, brought from Oman by dhow, has been set up in a clearing on the Firmhin plateau. That night I shower under a dragon blood tree as a million lights twinkle in the blackness.

The next morning we take a look at the dragon blood resin, dug from the bark by knife. Roman gladiators painted their faces with it. Stradivarius varnished his violins with it. Today, Socotrans use it as lipstick, a blood coagulant and breath freshener, the sort of multi-use that could put Boots out of business.

To my eyes the forest is flourishing. But the slow-growing trees are endangered. Lacking roots, many were toppled in the great cyclone of 2015. An army of goats, whose numbers have swelled, gnaw at the saplings.

Still, the steep grassy inclines, house-sized boulders, caves and looming mountains present a magical vista. Adenium obesum, bulbous-shaped trees sprouting little pink flowers, cling precariously to the hillsides. Said points out a particularly Dalíesque example before mouthing the inevitable word, “endemic”.

Salem Ghanem, a former English teacher who is also accompanying us, says the island’s nature has influenced Soqotri, an ancient Semitic language. “When I compare it to the poetry of Shakespeare, Soqotri is more beautiful, especially its descriptions of animals, plants and landscape,” he says. “We have maybe a hundred words to describe a goat,” he adds, pressing home his point.

Soqotri is unwritten and endangered, Ghanem says. Arabic is spreading. He hopes to write Soqotri down, but the Arabic script is unsuited to its sounds. Outside influences have had an impact in other ways, he says. Women must cover, something that didn’t happen before. Outsiders flash their money and take off the most beautiful brides. The youth have started chewing qat, a mild intoxicant, and throwing plastic bottles around. “I feel Socotri, not Yemeni,” Ghanem says. “We have a different culture.”

I ask about the djinns. Nelson introduces me to Sheikh Issa, an important man in these mountains with an impressive bright orange beard. Socotrans rub noses when they are introduced, though I settle for a handshake.

Djinns are all around, apparently. “My grandfather saw a djinn leave a woman’s body once and go into a tree which cracked. It’s a true story,” he says, noting my scepticism. “Recently I saw a djinn myself,” he adds, doubling down. “It was walking, but only on one leg, and after about five minutes it cried like this [he makes a noise like a drowning dog] and flew away.”

Later, I ask Suleiman Dmero, another of Nelson’s mountain acquaintances who is showing us the small cave where he lived as a child, about djinns. He confirms their existence. “When I was a kid, my mother had to feed me and my sister, but the cow wasn’t giving any milk. We were hungry, so my mother went to the malkoli [a sort of medicine man] and he said, ‘Maybe you have a djinn’. He gave us some leaves, and when we came back my father was right here milking the cow.”

The next day we start a two-day trek, which will take us over a pass and back down to the northern coast. Camels will carry our gear. Smaller than other breeds, they are well adapted to picking their way over the treacherous paths. Every evolutionary advance has its drawbacks. Socotran camels do poorly in the rain. I had read an account of when some slipped on a narrow coastal path, plunging into the sea.

As we walk, Cookson is thinking about how to enhance the experience for his exacting clients. He has already tried to make the campsite more glampsite. Among his innovations: cushions and a bookshelf in the tent; and a movie screen, which he brought on the plane after haggling at check-in, strung up between two dragon blood trees for an open-air showing of Aladdin.

The walk is strenuous and now he’s wondering about how to lessen the strain for less fit clients. A helicopter is the obvious solution. But where to land? Besides, there’s none on the island. It will require negotiations with the local bigwigs. Like sausages, it’s probably best not to know how billionaires’ dreams are made.

That night we camp in smaller tents and fall asleep to the sound of the camel trekkers singing by the fire.

The next day is tough too. We scrabble over loose black limestone rock, which echoes like broken crockery underfoot. One stretch takes us uncomfortably over huge broken boulders, thrown hither and thither as if by a giant. Almost unfathomably, they turn out to be what remains of a road destroyed by the cyclone.

There are abandoned caves and stone houses, though few people live up here all year round. Goats graze unattended. The only other clue humans have been here are the beautiful stone walls, constructed from giant boulders, which snake across the hills. There’s no memory of how they got here, says Said. “Maybe they were built thousands of years ago. You couldn’t build them today because the stones are too big. It would take thousands of strong people.”

We reach sea level around midday. Vehicles are waiting to speed us along the dramatic coastal road, with vertiginous white sand dunes to our right and a lapis lazuli blue ocean to our left. Yemeni music trumpets from the speakers.

Still, with no phone or internet signal, no television and no alcohol (unless you have visited Abu Dhabi duty free), I’m beginning to think of Socotra as Detox Island. At the beach dozens of fist-sized puffer fish have been washed up mysteriously on to the sand. There’s the smell of kelp and the thunder of waves on the breeze. That night I sleep like a dead man, untroubled by djinns.

The coast is as though on a different planet from the mountains we have left behind, but just as dramatic in its way, both wild and sublime. One day, we bounce by boat along the southern shoreline and travel for perhaps 50km without seeing a single person or structure on the beach. A whale shark, perfectly visible in the crystal water, glides gently under our boat.

Another day we go fishing. The sea is a spectacular turquoise. But Hemingway would have been unimpressed. Throw in a handheld line, feel a tug, pull up a large thrashing kingfish, red snapper or hamour fish in psychedelic colours. Repeat. Where’s the struggle in that?

However spectacular the island, Cookson never stops wondering how to elevate the experience. He hires a gyrocopter, a sort of miniature helicopter, which affords us a heart-stopping aerial view of the topography, as we sweep along the northern coast. Once, when we spot a tanker that has run aground, waves crashing spectacularly around the hull, he mulls the possibilities: how about stringing up fairy lights and offering clients dinner on the shipwrecked deck?

The day we see the whale shark, a pod of perhaps 50 dolphins streaks close by the boat, backs arched in sheer exuberance as they leap in formation through the spray. It is a joyful sight. Even Cookson can’t improve on that.

David Pilling is the FT’s Africa editor

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