The Socotra Island cucumber tree is not strange because it grows cucumbers. It is strange because a plant family better known for vines, pumpkins, melons and gourds somehow produced a swollen dryland tree on one of the world’s most unusual…
The dragon’s blood tree is the image most people carry in their head when they first hear about Socotra. A thick umbrella-shaped crown. A dry stone plateau. A strange red resin that gave the tree its dramatic name. It looks…
The bottle tree is one of those Socotra plants that looks almost too sculptural to be real. A swollen trunk rises from dry rock like a water jar. Short branches reach upward. Pink flowers appear against a landscape that often…
The best time to visit Socotra is usually from December to March, when the island has the strongest balance of warm weather, manageable heat, better hiking conditions and more comfortable camping. The wider travel season normally runs from October to…
Along the eastern coast of Socotra the landscape starts doing strange things. One moment you are looking at open shoreline and wind moving across the sea. A few minutes later massive dunes appear rising straight out of the sand like…
From the northern coast of Socotra, the terrain starts folding inward in quieter layers. Roads leave the shoreline, the air shifts a little, and the land gradually drops into narrow valleys where seasonal water has worked on the rock for…
Not every coastal stop on Socotra arrives with cliffs, giant dunes or some dramatic sense of scale. Some places work in a quieter way. Qaria Lagoon is one of them. The landscape here feels softer than many of the island’s…
Drive inland from Socotra’s north coast and the landscape shifts faster than you expect. The dry coastal ground begins to rise, the terrain folds into shallow ridges, and the road slips into a valley system that feels cooler, quieter and…
The southern side of Socotra shows a very different face from the island’s better-known northern coast. Down here the land opens into broad coastal plains, and everything feels more spread out, more exposed, less dramatic in the obvious way but…
Along Socotra’s northern coast, the shoreline begins to shift almost without warning. The broad emptiness of the south gives way to something more broken and varied. Rocky points reach into the sea, small bays interrupt the coastline, and the water…
The southern coastline of Socotra feels different almost immediately. Less dramatic in the obvious postcard sense, maybe, but wider, emptier, more stretched out. Instead of steep cliffs or tight little coves, the land opens into long coastal plains where the…