Dear Readers,

. . .with much thought and deliberation on this matter, I have convinced my sister Karima (a woman of many names) to share with me (thence with you, dear Reader), her love of exotic places.  For she, like certain other young damsels, was captured by brigands and taken to the Eastern lands.  In the wanderings of those who held her firmly (and from whom she only escaped by the wiliest subterfuges), she visited–nay, lived–in the very villages of Arabia Felix (Yemen) which indeed she made happy by her comeliness and wit.

And though our mutual love of travel shall take us often enough to the chateaux of the Loire, Flanders or the green island of the Tudors, be not surprised when my Sister yearns for the strange places she has lived in, and tells us of their offerings.

Dame Sylvie La Fauconniere

Therefore off the coast of Arabia Felix went Lady Karima Hurrem Sultan to abide upon an ancient island today known as Socotra– In today’s world, it merits the attention of the daring, yet ecology- minded adventurer.  Karima obliges me by quoting a man of style,  one  Alan Burdick, whose pen she finds most eloquent:

We stood on a rise overlooking a riverbed rushing with water. The ground underfoot was a rubble of granite boulders and chunks of sharp limestone karst. Small trees — short and gnarled, resembling mesquite — surrounded us. Ahmed approached one and pointed to an amber drop of sap oozing from its trunk: the essence of frankincense. Until that moment I’d had no clear idea what exactly frankincense was; nor that it derives from the sap of a tree; nor that, as Ahmed explained, Socotra is home to nine species of the tree, all unique to the island. I caught the drop of sap on my finger and inhaled a sharp, sweet fragrance; then I put it to my tongue. The torture of the drive was forgotten, and for the briefest moment, under the hot Yemeni sun, I tasted Christmas.” ( Alan Burdick of the NWT, March 25, 2007).

My Dear Ones,

I must complement Mr. Burdick on this comments, and as a long, and loving visitor of the Yemen, and former resident of Tai’z and Hodeidah, I can only say that Socotra is the jewel of the Yemen, and the people of this Island remain the same within their culture as they lived 400 years ago. They are gentle, kind, and welcoming to the visitor should you so choose to make a stop on their beautiful Island.

Karima Hurrem Sultan

Socotra is situated 250 miles off the coast of Yemen, and it is the largest member of an archipelago of the same name, a four-island ellipsis that trails off the Horn of Africa into the Gulf of Aden. A mix of ancient granite massifs, limestone cliffs and red sandstone plateaus, the island brings to mind the tablelands of Arizona, if Arizona were no bigger than New York’s Long Island and surrounded by a sparkling turquoise sea.

Why is it so Unique, and a perfect adventure for those interested in history and sustainable culture?

Some 250 million years or more ago, when all the planet’s major landmasses were joined and most major life-forms were just a gleam in some evolutionary eye, Socotra already stood as an island apart. Ever since, it has been gathering birds, seeds and insects off the winds and cultivating one of the world’s most unusual collections of organisms. In addition to frankincense, Socotra is home to myrrh trees and several rare birds. Its marine life is a unique hybrid of species from the Red Sea, the Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. In the 1990s, a team of United Nations biologists conducted a survey of the archipelago’s flora and fauna. They counted nearly 700 endemic species, found nowhere else on earth; only Hawaii and the Galapagos Islands have more impressive numbers.

Here we come to the Adventure! Which you must know by now, my dear readers, is the nut of my existence. Here we offer you the opportunity to visit this amazing island and experience the Renaissance period of the Middle East and Yemen at it’s best. I will continue to write more of this ancient country and it’s memorable and historic places, including Zabiid where the first university of the Muslim world was founded. If you are interested in travel with an experienced guide I offer myself as just that. You many contact me directly with questions about our program at karima@renaissance-adventures.com

Read on to learn more about tourism to Socotra and what it offers!

Lately Socotra has begun to attract a new and entirely foreign species — tourists. A modest airport went up in 1999. (Before then, the island could be reached only by cargo ship; from May to September, when monsoon winds whip up the sea, it could be cut off entirely.) That year, 140 travelers visited. The annual figure now exceeds 2,500: a paltry number compared with, say, the Galapagos, but on an island with only four hotels, two gas stations and a handful of flush toilets, it’s a veritable flood.

They — I should say “we” — constitute an experiment. Encouraged by a United Nations development plan, Socotra has opted to avoid mass tourism: no beachfront resorts; instead, small, locally owned hotels and beachfront campsites. The prize is that rarest of tourists, eco-tourists: those who know the little known and reach the hard to reach, who will come eager to see the Socotra warbler, the loggerhead turtle, the dragon’s blood tree — anything, please, but their own reflection.

As a traveler it should be noted, and is immediately evident that, though the island is small in size, it cannot possibly be seen without a hired driver and guide, for the simple reason that there are few proper roads, fewer road signs and no road maps.

The first paved roads were built by the Yemeni government only two years ago: wide, open scabs on the landscape that stretch across the island yet see virtually no traffic. The new roads, it turned out, were a sore spot with Ahmed and the United Nations Socotra Archipelago Conservation and Development Programme. “The experience is so different if you spend 45 minutes on a road versus three or four hours,” Paul Scholte, the program’s technical adviser in Sana, Yemen’s capital, said to me. “The whole perception of the island changes due to the road.” Then there was the matter of placement. Only at the last minute did the S.C.D.P. manage to convince the government not to send the road through a stretch of coastline designated as a nature preserve. It’s fair to say that Socotra’s future may be read in the lines of its roads: how many, how wide, where they lead and who is encouraged to travel on them.

Rare dragon’s blood trees, found only on the island, which can grow for 300 years.

Tags: Arabia Felix, dragon's blood, dragon's blood tree, Socotra, Yemeni island