Evenings in the highlands

Socotra's highlands — the Haggeher mountains at the island's centre — are a different world from the coasts. Cooler, quieter, the air tasting faintly of frankincense from the resin trees that grow in the gorges below the plateau.

Village life here runs on a different clock. The morning begins before dawn with the sound of goats. By mid-morning the sun is already strong enough to send most activity indoors. Life resumes in the late afternoon, in the hour of shadow and cooling.

We were invited into a household one evening — tea, flatbread, dried fish — and sat outside as the light failed. The conversation ranged, through our guide's translation, from the price of flour in Hadibo to the question of whether the road to the plateau would ever be properly paved.

Socotri hospitality is not a performance for tourists. It is a genuine culture of welcome whose roots run deeper than any of the powers that have governed this island. Accepting it — sitting with it, making no rush — is one of the things an expedition here offers that no other destination can replicate.

We walked back to camp under the stars, which on the Haggeher plateau are very close and very many.