A journey through the “Galápagos of the Indian Ocean” – an untouched expanse where nature rules the roost

Photo Credit: Alexander Barlow. Retrieved from cntraveller.com

It’s this creed that takes us to the far west of the island, to a small village set on a bay with the bright colours of huri fishing boats, which glow in the warm afternoon light. None of the children look alike; a clue to the island’s oblique genealogy (a mix of Greek, Arab and East African – but no one really knows).

After a night of unbroken sleep on Shoab Beach, we set off in two boats to the unvisited coastline of Socotra’s southwest, around the island’s most westerly cape, a small, rocky peninsula that points back at the mighty Horn of Africa, like a cap gun aimed at a tank.

Boobies fly overhead, and suddenly the boat’s engine is cut, leaving us gliding quietly. As we look quizzically at the captain, he points to a large, dark shadow in the water. A whale shark around 25 feet in length sends a reverent calm across the boat. Nothing is said as we absorb the moment, allowing the creature its passage before refocusing on the horizon.

As we turn the cape, a stunning stretch of milk-white sand comes into view, backed by a huge swell of rock, a kind of calcareous curtain secreting away the beauty in front of us. After the boat anchors in a natural coral harbour, we jump into clear, aquamarine water and walk up a shallow bank of puffy white sand. Up ahead, a lone fisherman fixes a net in front of a row of skeletal huts, made from pale, anaemic wood and the sun-bleached flotsam of wrecked boats.

Behind them are the curly branches of dead mangroves, totems of death that feel strangely life-affirming. Not much is said as we sip sweet tea and snack on dates, but there is an arch, electric excitement about feeling so unmoored from the world. “Nobody comes here,” says Suliman, with a wry, calm smile. Despite extensive trawling, I can’t find a single image of this shoreline anywhere on the internet; none of the maps I have found offer any evidence of the huts’ existence; my note, which says “Nait”, turns out to be the name of the province.