Socotra

When I returned back to Sanaa yesterday evening, I had the feeling that something was missing on my 2 weeks trip on Socotra, but now I think that after 5 months on the road, path, rail, ship, plane or whatever my feelings became quite blunted and even for unique places like Socotra it's hard to enthuse me.

In fact I had an adventurous trekking tour as usual, starting through the Haggier mountains in the center of the island, that reminded me a bit of the alps, with it's grey limestone and darkgreen bushes, along mountain rivers lined with palm trees and backed up to many natural swimming pools which are hard to pass by without a refreshing bath. After 6 days of flush of water I crossed a dry karst plateau with some dragonblood and francinsence trees and was surprised not to find water in the canyon where I descended next. The canyon surprisingly ended in a stalactite cave, which raised my hope again, but the drops all disappeared in the ground. The next day, after my water was finished and I started to drink my urine I was forced to exploit the water reserves of a temporary left alone home in one of the many caves. Then I soon reached the southern coastal strip, which has not much to offer and I stopped a car to Mahfirin, a fisher village where I had a rest for 1 day and stocked up with food. Then a further 3 days along the cliff line of the eastern part of the island, where I had my first aquintences with tourists outside of Hadibo. The tourist attractions there were a cool spring coming out of a huge, steep, white sand dune and another but more interesting stalactite cave. The majority of these tourists (and in Yemen in general) came from Italy and some Socotris who occasionally work with tourists speak better italian than english. After I returned to Hadibo, the capitol I still had 1 day to go to Galansyia in the far west to relax on the sand beach there.

The people on Socotra mainly depend on their goats, on the coast of course from the fish, but the strong monsoon wind in summer forces them to stay on the land for 3 month every year. Agriculture is very rare, probably worth to mention dats, but francinsence and the red extract of the dragonblood tree (the "dragonblood", which is used as cure and as facial lotion for women) which are sold for 2 euro per about 50 gramm. The Socotris live in very simple stone houses which lack of any decoration, quite similar to those of the Bedu on Sinai, also the wealthier ones. Most have more than one home (up to 5), some also live in caves. Though entirely veiled and always refusing to pose for a picture, the women have a much more confident behaviour than on the yemeni mainland and it's no problem to have a chat with them. I was too lazy to learn some phrases of the local language socotri, as 100% speak arabic fluently. But it was interesting to notice that they call foreigners "farenji" , like in Ethiopia. They also have some common customs with the Somali and Afar like dunking the hand in a porringer before and after consuming food (usually rice, on the coast supplemented with fresh fish) or go great each other by kissing someones hand (if they don't great by touching nose and nose), though most of them have their origin in Mahra in eastern Yemen, which used to be a kingdom including Socotra. There are also some fishermen with obviously pure african faces, but somehow they don't know where their ancestors came from and assimilated to the socotries.

On Socotra I enjoyed 100% freedom of movement, in contrary to the mainland, where I'm supposed to apply for travel permits again. But in contrast to Sudan, the policemen do not notice that I'm a foreigner, when I travel by public transport, and it's no big risk to move off the itinery of my permit, in the case that I want to change my program. In the worst case I'll be sent back to Sanaa. I just have to avoid the areas where kidnappings took place, and I'm sure that I'm well informed about it now.