Hypermobility

I’ve had a long-standing interest in Eritrea (heh – where don’t I have a long-standing interest in?), owing largely to the pictures I’ve seen of Asmara (an architectural mix of traditional, Italian colonial, and art deco), and the existence of the Danakil Depression, the hottest place on earth, which I find fascinating and terrifying by turns. So, given my interest in random island groups, it makes sense that the Dahlak Archipelago would appeal.

In the Red Sea, off the Eritrean coast, reachable by boat charter from Massawa, if you’re looking for proper desert islands, the Dahlak Archipelago would certainly fit the bill. Only four of the islands are inhabited; the remaining 122 small islands are the preserve of sea birds, turtles and the occasional tourist (generally divers). According to this article, the islands were known in antiquity as sources of pearls and tortoiseshell, and were among the first parts of East Africa to convert to Islam – which would make sense, as the islands are a mere hop, skip and a jump from the Arabian Peninsula (and in fact used to belong to Yemen). 

The only place to stay appears to be the Luul Hotel on Dahlak Kabir, which also has a restaurant and seems to offer excursions to dive sites around the archipelago. There’s also information on diving itineraries around the archipelago here. I know it’s odd that I keep banging on about diving given that I don’t, in fact, dive, despite having been idly planning to take a PADI course since at least 1998, but having known friends to do a liveaboard diving holiday off the Sudanese coast, I’ve developed a mild obsession with diving the more untouched bits of the Red Sea, and the Dahlaks certainly fit the bill there.

A decent amount of information on the Dahlak Archipelago is available at Hans Mebrat’s page, here. Personal accounts seem to be the best way of getting information about the islands, as they – and Eritrea as a whole – don’t have much of a tourist industry or tourist infrastructure: Saagar writes about his experiences on Virtual Tourist, here; there’s another account on Travel Adventures, here; and there’s a diver’s perspective here (incidentally, a number of the other diving pages linked from that one are worth a look – I’m particularly impressed by anyone who’s dived Baikal, given how bloody freezing it was when I was there in early October).

Sadly, UK – Asmara flights seem to be quite pricy, around the £800-900 mark(though cheapflights.co.uk offers one fare from Glasgow to Asmara for £539, which is all right); it may be possible to get there cheaper via elsewhere in East Africa; it’s certainly possible to fly from the UK to Nairobi for under £400 (though not particularly advisable at present), and a few carriers, including Egyptair and the never-before-heard-of(-by-me) Nasair fly between Nairobi and Asmara. And ertra.com is the closest thing that I can find to an Eritrean tourism site.