Diksam Plateau

The nursery

The Diksam nursery, established in 2006, raises dragon's blood seedlings under protection. It exists because the wild population is not regenerating: grazing pressure removes seedlings almost everywhere they are not fenced. Set against the scale of loss the numbers are sobering — Yemen's own 2022 report to UNESCO recorded restoration totalling 400 dragon blood plants, 300 frankincense and 20 mangroves.

The canyon

Wadi Dirhur cuts down off the plateau. One operator describes it as the largest canyon on Socotra and 400 metres deep. There are freshwater pools on the floor, and the descent from the rim is a real walk rather than a viewpoint stroll — no source publishes a time for it, so ask your guide rather than trusting an itinerary that quotes one. From the rim, the standard Socotra photograph is the plateau's dragon trees with the canyon dropping away behind them.

What the 2025 mission found here

Major asphalt road construction without impact assessments, and habitat fragmentation in core areas. And on the Diksam–Shibehon plateau, a large walled tract of dragon's blood woodland enclosing 50 to 100 mature trees behind a private road — an enclosure that triggered tribal disputes.

IUCN puts island-wide road construction at more than 900 km since 2001, against a network measured at 426.5 km in 2012. Back in 2012 the mission had already called roading "the most critical factor influencing the World Heritage status of Socotra."

Getting there and onward

The road from Hadibo up to Diksam is described by travellers as modern and paved. The track onward from Diksam to Firmihin is not: it is unpaved and rough, and operators describe it as needing a capable 4x4 and a driver who knows it. We do not publish driving times for either leg — the figures that circulate could not be attributed to any source.

Camping and the night sky

There is an established campsite on the plateau at around 700 metres, and this is one of the two or three places on Socotra people specifically come to sleep. The altitude, the distance from Hadibo's lights and the dry air make it one of the darkest accessible skies you are likely to stand under. It is also cold and windy after dark in a way the coastal camps are not — a fleece and a windproof layer, even in a season most people picture as hot.

Why the roads argument keeps coming back here

Diksam is where the road question is most visible, because the plateau is where new construction cuts through core habitat rather than skirting it. The 2012 IUCN mission called the road network "the most critical factor influencing the World Heritage status of Socotra" and found it built "merely on engineering and security related perspectives with almost total absence of proper environmental and socio-economic criteria." A local leader told that mission: "Roads have their positives, but you need not be an expert to see what destruction they have done to our island."

That was thirteen years before the 2025 mission recorded fresh asphalt work here without impact assessments.