Suqutra

Introducing Suqutra

The secret of eternal life shouldn’t be something that’s easy to stumble across and by cleverly hiding it out on Suqutra the gods have certainly taken that thought to heart. At 3650 sq km Suqutra is easily the largest Yemeni island, as well as one of the most inaccessible. Lying 510km southeast of the mainland, close to the ravaged shores of Somalia, the island has developed in near total isolation from the rest of the world. Rumoured to have once been a refuge for dragons, it continues to provide a refuge for all manner of extraordinary fauna and flora, much of which is found nowhere else. Because of the number of its endemic plants and creatures, it’s been described as the ‘Galapagos of the Indian Ocean’. While this is a little optimistic, there is no denying that Suqutra is a unique and otherworldly island. It’s the kind of place where people speak a language unknown to anyone else, where the knowledge of how to make fire by rubbing sticks together is still common and where the elderly recall days when money didn’t exist.

Until the construction of an airport in 2002, the island remained almost as unknown as it did in the days when adventurers came here to do battle with dragons in their search for the secret of eternal life. Today the dragons might be gone, but the trees are said to still bleed for their memory, and the secret of eternal life remains hidden away in a cave somewhere on stupendous Suqutra.

Last updated: Sep 24, 2008