The great trek of the Haggier, author's journey by Sylvain Philip

Flight IY525: departure Jeddah 11:00 am, arrival Hadiboh 2:00 pm.

Flight IY525: departure Jeddah 11:00 am, arrival Hadiboh 2:00 pm. From the window, Socotra emerges from the Indian Ocean like a forgotten continent; jagged coastlines, limestone plateaus bleached by the sun, first umbrella-shaped silhouettes of dragon trees visible from the air.

Socotra has never quite belonged to the world. Separated from the African continent 20 million years ago, it evolved in isolation, developing flora and fauna found nowhere else on Earth. The Greeks called it Dioskouridès. Arab, Persian, and Indian sailors knew it as an essential stop on the spice and incense route — it appears in the Thousand and One Nights, in the tales of Sinbad the Sailor. Marco Polo mentioned it in the 13th century. The Portuguese established a fort there in the 16th century. The British made it a protectorate in 1886. It subsequently became part of South Yemen, then reunified Yemen in 1990.

Socotra long lived apart from the world, and that is what preserved it. The archipelago, inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list, has remained spared from the troubles that marked the region, and it now welcomes travelers in calm and safety. Access is now by flight from Jeddah, in Saudi Arabia, a simple and secure gateway to the island.

Welcome by our team. Logistical briefing. Transfer by 4x4 to Delisha Beach, fifteen kilometers to the east. Climb the one hundred twenty meter dune for the first sunset over the Arabian Sea. Socotra dinner around the fire.

First big day of discovery. The program is packed, the landscapes radically different from one hour to the next.

Morning at Homhil Protected Area. The reserve is home to a high concentration of dragon trees, some over 500 years old. Their umbrella-shaped silhouette is an adaptation to monsoon winds. The blood-red resin extracted from their bark — the "dragon's blood" — has been used since Antiquity as a dye and healing agent. The Romans used it to tint marble, Italian Renaissance luthiers to varnish violins. You'll also encounter the Adenium obesum socotranum — the desert rose — and the tree cucumber (Dendrosicyos socotranus), the only tree in the cucumber family in the world. The Infinity Pool, a natural pool perched overlooking the sea, offers one of the most striking views on the island.

Afternoon: ascent to Hoq Cave (45 min, 500m elevation gain). Socotra's largest cave hosts hundreds of inscriptions carved on its walls in several languages: Greek, South Arabian, Ethiopian, Indian, Palmyrene. They date from the 1st to 6th century CE and testify to the passage of merchants on the incense and spice routes. Socotra was a known stopover between Arabia, India, and the Mediterranean.

Late afternoon, Arher Beach. A coastal dune, a freshwater spring, the sea — three elements that coexist over a few dozen meters. Last coastal bivouac before 7 days in the mountains.

Bivouac Arher Beach.

Last 4x4 to the village of Adouna. This is where the journey changes in nature. The cars stop, the engines turn off, and the silence of the Haggier takes over completely.

Meeting the camel herder is a special moment. These men know every path, every spring, every mountain passage since childhood, knowledge passed down from father to son for generations, in a Bedouin culture that has barely changed in centuries. The pack camels, as many as group members, carry tents, food and cooking equipment for seven days. A true caravan. They advance at their own pace, undeterred, over terrain that seems impassable.

The Bedouins of the Haggier live in almost total isolation. A few families scattered on the heights, stone houses barely visible in granite, herds of goats grazing on endemic euphorbia. Their economy rests on three pillars: livestock farming, dragon's blood resin sold at Hadiboh market, and honey.

Socotra honey is one of the rarest and most precious in the world. The island's bees forage exclusively on endemic plants: dragon tree, frankincense tree (Boswellia socotrana), gum acacia, jujube tree, which grow nowhere else on Earth. The result is an intense black honey with red reflections, creamy texture, deep taste with resinous and woody notes. Bedouin families pass down their beekeeping knowledge from generation to generation. You will find some at Hadiboh market at the end of the trip, it is one of the most precious souvenirs you can bring back from the island.

The shepherd's path runs along a permanent mountain spring. Granite terrain, narrow passages, natural pools along the way. First bivouac at 1000m altitude. The mountain really begins here.

To understand what we see today, we must look back 800 million years. The Haggier are one of the oldest rock formations on the planet. Their Precambrian granite formed long before complex life appeared on Earth. These are metamorphic and plutonic rocks shaped by immense tectonic forces, then sculpted over millions of years by erosion, monsoon winds and seasonal rains.

The island rests on two radically different types of terrain. The limestone plateaus formed 65 million years ago at the bottom of tropical seas. The Haggier constitute the original crystalline base, made of granite, gneiss and schist. This duality explains the spectacular diversity of Socotra's landscapes.

The Fera viewpoint offers this morning the most complete vision of this open-air geology. This Precambrian granite belongs to the same crystalline base as that which forms the Highlands of Madagascar: Andringitra, Tsaranoro, Marojejy, and the Vavavato that some of you know well. Madagascar, Socotra, the Horn of Africa and the Indian subcontinent were once united in Gondwana. Walking in the Haggier is walking on a fragment of the world before — the same world that you have crossed in Madagascar's mountain ranges.

On the limestone cliffs, Begonia socotrana clings to moist crevices. Egyptian vultures soar in the updrafts. Socotra's endemic subspecies, Neophron percnopterus majorensis, smaller and paler than its continental cousins, has been at home here far longer than man.

Bivouac at Fareyay. Cold night, sky without light pollution, absolute starry vault.

Wake up at 5:00 AM. Departure at 5:30 AM, in the darkness. The guide knows every passage by heart. The group follows in single file, headlamps on, silence broken only by the sound of the wind and the crunch of soles on granite.

Skånd peaks at 1,525 meters. It is the roof of Socotra. From the summit, your gaze embraces the entire island: the Arabian Sea to the north, the Indian Ocean to the south, the limestone plateaus of Dixsam to the east, the deep wadis descending toward the western coast. You understand at a glance why Arab, Persian and Indian sailors have known this island since antiquity — it is visible from afar, an unmistakable landmark in the midst of maritime immensity.

The wind is omnipresent. Socotra is one of the windiest islands in the world. The southwest monsoon has literally shaped all living things: dragon trees have developed their umbrella-like silhouette to resist gusts, frankincense trees grow bent, plants creep along the ground. At the summit of Skånd, this wind becomes a physical presence.

The bivouac at the summit is a deliberate choice. Water has been carried by the guide from the Wadi Masaba spring. Camels wait at Firmihin. Tonight, there is nothing between the group and the sky.

Zero light pollution. The Milky Way visible to the naked eye, dense and close as one hardly sees it anywhere else in Europe. The ancient Arab sailors who navigated these waters knew every star by its name. It is this same sky that you will observe tonight from the roof of their island.

The sunrise from 1525 meters is a visual experience without equal. The light arrives from the east, from the Indian Ocean, and gradually floods the entire island. The limestone plateaus of Dixsam turn orange, the wadis remain in shadow for a few more minutes, the Arabian Sea to the north takes on a polished metal hue. You remain still, without speaking.

Then the descent begins.

The vegetation changes with every hundred meters of altitude lost. On the heights, bare granite, lichens, a few tufts of hardy grass. Then the first endemic euphorbias — Euphorbia arbuscula with candelabra forms — which grow in dense colonies on exposed slopes. Their white and toxic latex protects them from goats and camels. They can live for several centuries.

Lower down, the first Boswellia socotrana appear — the frankincense tree of Socotra. Its resin, harvested by scoring the bark, is one of the world's oldest commodities. The trade routes that crossed these waters 2000 years ago transported precisely this resin to Egypt, Rome, Persia and India. The Bedouin families of the Haggier still harvest it today using the same ancestral gestures.

The permanent spring of Wadi Masaba is heard before it is seen. In an island so arid, the springs of the Haggier are a precious anomaly: the mountains intercept monsoon fogs, the humid air condenses and feeds underground aquifers that will resurface as springs on the northern slopes. It is this phenomenon that enables Bedouin life in the Haggier. It is also this phenomenon that enables our trek.

The natural pools of Wadi Masaba are the reward of the day. Clear water, cold, perfect.

There are places that change something in you. Firmihin is one of them.

The forest is home to the highest density of dragon trees in the world. Hundreds of Dracaena cinnabari, some of which are 600 to 900 years old, stand on the limestone plateau in a silence that belongs only to them. Their umbrella-shaped silhouettes, their smooth gray trunks, their intertwined branches form a vegetative vault found nowhere else on Earth.

The dragon tree is a botanical anomaly. Its growth is slow, almost imperceptible, and it is impossible to determine its precise age. Its bright red resin — dragon's blood — runs through all civilizations: the Romans imported it to treat wounds, the Arabs made it a major trade product, Italian Renaissance luthiers incorporated it into their varnishes. Some believe that the Stradivarius owes part of its sonority to this resin. Today, Bedouins still harvest it according to the same ancestral gestures.

A visit to Fatima's nursery, supported by the Dragon Blood Tree Association, shows the other side of the picture: without human intervention, Firmihin forest is doomed. Overgrazing and climate change threaten these ancient trees. Each young dragon tree replanted here is an act of resistance.

Bivouac in a clearing beneath the dragon trees. The light filtered through the vegetative umbrellas creates shadows unlike anything known.

After the granitic Haggier mountains, the Dixsam plateau is another Socotra. Limestone has replaced granite, the landscape has opened up, vegetation has transformed. You walk on the floor of a tropical sea that disappeared 65 million years ago — each limestone slab underfoot is an ancient marine sediment, compressed, lifted up, exposed to Arabian sunlight.

The dragon trees of Dixsam are different from those of Firmihin. More spaced out, more exposed to the wind, their umbrellas even wider still to capture maximum light on this plateau battered by the elements. As far as the eye can see, their silhouettes punctuate a mineral landscape of absolute austerity.

On the limestone cliffs, Dorstenia gigas clings where nothing else could survive. This bottle tree endemic to Socotra stores water in its swollen trunk like a waterskin — a remarkable adaptation to the extreme aridity of the plateau. Its translucent trunk, almost phosphorescent in the raking morning light, is one of the strangest botanical curiosities on the island.

Then the canyon opens.

Wadi Dirhur is a fissure in the limestone several hundred meters deep. The same geological logic as the American Grand Canyon: water found a weakness in the rock and carved it over millions of years. The descent into the canyon is a plunge into another world. The temperature drops, humidity rises, vegetation suddenly explodes. Palm trees, endemic fig trees, tall grasses border freshwater pools at the bottom of the wadi. The contrast with the arid plateau is striking — a few hundred meters of elevation separate two radically different ecosystems.

Bivouac at the bottom of the canyon. Silence is total, the night protected from the wind by the cliffs.

The final stage. The longest one.

We leave Wadi Dirhur canyon to the south. The Noged plains open up before the group like another continent: arid savanna, sparse vegetation, ochre earth, heat returning. After six days in the mountains and canyon, the starkness of Noged is almost violent. We walk.

Then the dunes appear.

The Zahek dunes are a rare geological phenomenon. The dominant wind has pushed coral sand for millennia from the beach towards the foothills of the Haggier, creating perched dunes of white sand that meet the mountain. Luminous, almost unreal after days of granite and dark limestone.

And behind the dunes, the sea.

The Indian Ocean appears all at once, between two sand ridges. This precise moment — shifting from the mountain slope towards the coast, seeing the sea after seven days without it — is one of the most powerful of the journey. The 4x4s are waiting on the coastal track. The camels arrived before us.

Seven days. Sixty-five kilometers. From north to south of the Haggier, on foot, without a vehicle. It is finished. It is accomplished. And like at the end of all great treks, you are happy it is over, and you wish it could start again.

Camp on the dunes, facing the Indian Ocean.

This morning, the body knows it has walked for seven days. The rhythm changes. Cars return, the engine turns, we settle into the seats with quiet satisfaction. The trek is behind us. The island continues.

Dagub Cave opens in the limestone cliff of the south coast, accessible from a promontory overlooking the villages of Hayf and Zahak. It is very different from Hoq Cave visited at the beginning of the journey. Hoq was a dark cathedral, tall and deep, filled with human history. Dagub is more intimate — a karstic cave with human proportions, with stalactites and stalagmites formed by millions of years of limestone seepage, and natural water basins at the bottom, of absolute transparency. Light filtering from the entrance creates plays of shadow and reflection on the wet walls. It is a place of silence and coolness after the heat of the south coast.

From the promontory, the villages of Hayf and Zahak are visible below. Architecture of stone and coral, low houses, fishing boats pulled up on the sand. The south coast of Socotra is the least visited part of the island — no paved road, few tourists, a preserved daily life. The inhabitants live from fishing, small livestock farming and remittances sent by family members who have gone to work in the United Arab Emirates or Saudi Arabia — a socio-economic reality common to all of Yemen for decades.

The transfer to the west coast runs along deserted beaches, limestone cliffs dropping sheer into turquoise sea, coves inaccessible except on foot or by boat. The track is sometimes just a few meters from the edge. It is one of the most spectacular transfers of the journey.

Bivouac west coast.

Qalansiyah is the second city of Socotra — a few hundred families, a modest market, fishing boats pulled up on the sand. This is where you truly meet the Socotris.

The Socotri people are an anthropological enigma. A blend of African, Arab and Indian populations mixed by maritime trade routes, they have developed an identity distinct from everything surrounding them. Their language — Socotri — is an ancient South Arabian language of pre-Islamic origin, with no written form, transmitted orally through poetry and song. Linguists are alarmed: with progressive Arabization through schools and media, Socotri could disappear within a generation or two. Meeting Socotris in Qalansiyah is meeting a living language in danger.

Detwah Lagoon is classified as a Ramsar site. The waters of the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean meet there in a landscape of absolute beauty: turquoise waters, white dunes, limestone cliffs, mangroves. Rays glide through the shallow waters, endemic cormorants dry their wings on the rocks.

The Caveman — Abdullah, legendary guardian of the lagoon — has lived here for decades. Meeting him is one of the simplest and most genuine encounters of the journey.

Bivouac Detwah Lagoon.

This morning, we set sail.

The boat leaves Qalansiyah under motor, heading west. The Arabian Sea is calm in October, the great southwest monsoon that isolates the island for several months each year has passed, the sea has become navigable again. It is precisely this monsoon cycle that made Socotra a strategic stopover for millennia: ships would wait here for the wind to turn, for the sea to calm down, before resuming their journey to India, Persia or Africa.

Henry de Monfreid sailed these same waters. Pearl fisherman, arms trafficker, hashish smuggler, unclassifiable adventurer, his dhow plied the Gulf of Aden, the Yemeni and Somali coasts in the 1910-1930s, following his "Secrets of the Red Sea". He had adopted the Muslim religion, taken the name Abd el Hai, lived among his indigenous crews, learned to navigate like an Arab sailor. These waters we are crossing this morning, he knew them by heart, their reefs, their currents, their traps.

Spinner dolphins appear before Shuaab. Dozens, sometimes hundreds, leaping and spinning through the air — the spinner gets its name from this rotation it performs while jumping. Socotra fishermen have known them since time immemorial: they indicate the presence of fish schools, natural guides in a sea without GPS.

Shuaab beach is only accessible by sea. White sand, limestone cliffs, mangroves in the background. Socotra's mangroves are a fundamental marine nursery: their submerged roots shelter fry, their leaves nourish the food chain, their roots protect the coastline from erosion. Lunch with the day's catch, prepared on the beach. Snorkeling. Silence.

Detwah Lagoon camp.

Socotra is not only extraordinary above water. It is just as much so below.

But first, Wadi Kilissan. The largest natural freshwater basin on the island stretches at the foot of white limestone cliffs in a setting of absolute serenity. The water is clear, fresh, deep in places. On the banks, vegetation is dense and green — a microclimate sustained by the permanent presence of water in an otherwise arid environment. This is where the Chamaeleo monachus lives, the chameleon endemic to Socotra. Larger than its African cousins, it hunts in ambush on low branches, changing color not to camouflage itself — contrary to popular belief — but to communicate its emotional states and regulate its temperature. Encountering it in the wadi vegetation is one of the most unusual encounters of the journey.

Dihamri Marine Reserve is a happy anomaly in a world where coral reefs are disappearing at an accelerating rate. Here, the corals are intact, dense, alive. The reason lies in geography and isolation: Socotra sits at the crossroads of three distinct water masses — the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. This permanent mixing brings nutrients and oxygen, maintaining ideal water temperature for corals even during periods of climate warming. Upwelling — the rising of cold deep waters — protects the reef from the bleaching episodes that have devastated the reefs of the Maldives, the Great Barrier Reef, or the Red Sea.

Below the surface, a complete world. Green and hawksbill turtles grazing in seagrass beds. Leopard moray eels hidden in coral crevices. Parrotfish nibbling at limestone and producing the white sand of the beaches. Schools of barracudas suspended in the blue. After thirteen days on this extraordinary island, plunging your head into this water and discovering that Socotra is as rich beneath the sea as above, is a final revelation.

Bivouac Dihamri Reserve.

Hadiboh is not a beautiful city. It is an honest city, dusty, lively, unpretentious. After fourteen days in one of the most extraordinary landscapes in the world, this return to the ordinary is almost a shock. And yet it is here that the heart of Socotra beats.

The market is a history lesson in the open air. The stalls overflow with dragon's blood resin, Boswellia socotrana incense harvested from the Haggier we have just crossed, Yemeni tea, spices. And the honey, Socotra's honey first, intense black with red reflections. Then Sidr honey, from mainland Yemen, from the Do'an valley in Hadramawt. The Sidr, Ziziphus spina-christi, the Sdar of Mauritanians, produced by bees during a flowering of only 40 days per year, harvested entirely by hand. Between 100 and 180 euros per kilo. The most precious honey in the world, mentioned in the Quran for its therapeutic virtues. On sale here, in this modest market, at the end of the world.

The women artisans' cooperative is the final gesture of the journey. Basketry woven from doum palm leaves, incense prepared according to ancestral recipes, dragon's blood resin worked into natural cosmetics. The encounter is direct, simple, without staging.

In the evening, group debriefing. Each person puts on the table what they carry in their mind. Socotra is not a destination. It is an experience that takes a long time to digest.

You must arrive at Hadiboh airport six hours before departure. A simple building, ceiling fans, plastic benches. You put down your luggage, you wait. And you look at the island one last time through the bay windows.

The Airbus takes off and Socotra appears in the window in all its dimensions. The ridge of the Haggier, the Dixsam plateaus, the white dunes of Zahek, the Detwah lagoon like a turquoise jewel at the far west. Then the island shrinks, disappears into the sea.

The Mukalla stopover lasts 45 minutes. Passengers remain on board. Through the window, the coastal city of Hadramawt — cradle of the great merchant dynasties that spread as far as Indonesia. It was from this coast that dhows laden with incense and honey set sail. It was here that Monfreid sailed, aboard his Fath-el-Rahman.

I have known Yemen for a long time. Its people, their unparalleled hospitality, Arabia Felix — the Happy Arabia of the Ancients. This flight over Mukalla from the air is a way of being close to it without being able to set foot there. One day, perhaps, Yemen will find peace again. That will be another journey.

Arrival in Jeddah at 19:00. After Socotra, the megacity seems disproportionate. But Al-Balad, its coral houses with mashrabiyas, its souks that smell of incense and cardamom coffee, remind us that Jeddah too was a stopover on the world's routes.