Travel in Yemen: Socotra, the walled towns and the rules of entry

How many visitors came before the war

Yemen once drew a modest stream of foreign visitors to its walled towns and mountains. The Economy of Yemen article records 155,000 tourist arrivals in 2003 and 274,000 in 2004. Britannica puts tourism at a small part of the economy throughout, held back by thin infrastructure and political instability, and the Economy article notes hotels and restaurants below international standards and poor air and road transport.

The decline began before the war. Bombings at the port of Aden in 2000 and 2002 and the kidnapping of foreigners outside the main cities deterred visitors; in September 2006 tribesmen in Shabwah held four French tourists for two weeks on their way to Aden. The Tourism in Yemen article dates the sharp fall to the crisis of 2011. In July 2015 UNESCO convened a meeting in Paris that adopted an emergency action plan for Yemen's cultural sites, at which Yemen's ambassador to UNESCO called the historic cities "the cities of every Yemeni, every Arab, every Muslim and every man and woman in the world".

How Socotra became the place visitors still reach

Tourism to the Socotra archipelago has gone on through the war, with a growing number of operators offering trips there, according to the Socotra article. Before its airport was built the island could be reached only by cargo ship, and the only port, 5 kilometres east of the main town of Hadibu, still connects to Mukalla on the mainland by a crossing of two to three days that carries mostly freight. Flights from Sanaa and Aden by way of Riyan were cancelled in March 2015, and the Socotra article records weekly scheduled flights from Cairo and Abu Dhabi.

The island received over 1,000 tourists a year until 2014. It has no well-established hotels and a few guesthouses; public transport is a few minibuses, and getting around means hiring a four-wheel-drive vehicle with a driver. Road building is contested on the island itself, where it is blamed for pollution and for breaking up habitats.

The arrangements have been political. In May 2021 Yemen's Ministry of Information accused the United Arab Emirates of running trips to the island for foreign tourists without the Yemeni government's permission. In early 2026, when a state of emergency closed all of Socotra's ports, hundreds of European and American tourists were stranded, and 609 of them were later flown to Jeddah.

What visitors go for is what UNESCO inscribed in 2008: an archipelago 250 kilometres long whose plants include 307 species found nowhere else, among them the umbrella-crowned dragon's blood tree, and a coast with 253 species of reef-building coral. The Yemen article also lists the island's coast among the country's places for surfing, sailing and diving.

Who lives on the island and where

About 50,000 people live in the archipelago, almost all of them on the main island, according to the Socotra article. The towns are on the north coast: Hadibu, the principal town, had 8,545 people at the census of 2004, Qalansiyah 3,862 and Qadub 929. About 450 people live on Abd al-Kuri and 100 on Samhah, and Darsa and the rocky islets are empty. Most islanders are Soqotri, of South Arabian descent, and speak Soqotri, a Semitic language related to Mehri on the mainland; the island holds a poetry competition every year.

The interior is the draw. Three limestone plateaus, Momi, Homhil and Diksam, carry the karst country where families have long herded goats and sheep and harvested rainwater, and the granite Hajhir massif rises above them. Among the endemic plants are the cucumber tree, Dendrosicyos socotranus, which can grow more than six metres high, and the dragon's blood tree, and white dunes line the coast where the summer monsoon piles up the sand.

The island's recent politics shape any visit. Emirati troops landed in April 2018 and took control of the airport and seaport; the Southern Transitional Council took Socotra in June 2020 and in 2023 the Presidential Leadership Council recognised its rule there. Britannica records that the Emirates withdrew its forces from Socotra in January 2026. Weather has closed the island too: the cyclones Chapala and Megh struck it in 2015 and severely damaged its infrastructure, and the tsunami of 2004 damaged 40 of its fishing boats from an epicentre 4,600 kilometres away.

What the walled towns hold

The mainland's attractions are its towns, and all three of its World Heritage towns are on UNESCO's danger list.

Sanaa's old city is the one most visitors saw. Its suq sells salt beside bread, spices and raisins, and copper, pottery and silverware beside antiques, according to the Old City of Sana'a article, and its commercial quarter of Al Madina had three large hotels. Yemen has also put forward other places for the World Heritage List, the Tourism in Yemen article notes, among them the historic city of Thula, Jabal Haraz and Jabal Bura, the Amiriya Madrasa at Rada', Jibla and the old city of Saada.

What the highland villages hold

West of Sanaa the mountains fall towards the Red Sea in terraced country; Britannica describes terraces that cover the slopes from base to peak, their soil gathered and fed with compost over centuries. The Haraz range is one of the places Yemen has put forward for the World Heritage List, in 2002, together with Jabal Bura and the hill town of Thula. Jabal an-Nabi Shu'ayb, the country's highest summit, stands in the Harazi subrange of the Sarawat, according to the Geography of Yemen article.

The Haraz region and Jabal Manakhah, west of Sanaa, are also home to Yemen's Ismaili community, Britannica notes, now a relatively small group. Houses in the mountain interior are built of stone blocks and brick, four to six storeys high, in Britannica's account. Temperatures in the highlands swing widely between day and night, from about 30 °C to near freezing on the central plateau, and the western slopes are wetter still, with over 1,000 mm of rain a year at Ibb.

What the Hadhramaut and the coasts offer

East of the highlands, the Wadi Hadhramaut is the setting of Shibam and of a chain of towns clustered round oasis wells, where farmers grow wheat, millet, dates and coffee, according to the Hadhramaut article. The valley is separated from the sea by a high plateau and by the Jowl escarpment, which rises to about 1,370 metres behind a narrow coastal plain, and Mukalla on that coast is the mainland port for the ships to Socotra.

The Red Sea coast is a different country again. The Tihamah plain is hot and humid, with the port of Hodeidah on its coast and Zabid inland. Mocha, south along the coast, gave its name to a style of coffee: Britannica records that most of Yemen's coffee was shipped from it between the 16th and 18th centuries, before the town shrank to a village of a few hundred people. The Zaraniq tribe of the west coast holds camel-jumping contests, in which a runner leaps over camels standing side by side.

Aden, on the south coast, has the deep-water berths and port facilities the British built up after taking it in 1839. Its archaeological museum, like the national museum in Sanaa, holds treasures from the pre-Islamic kingdoms.

Which roads join the highlands to the coast

Before the 1960s there were almost no all-weather roads outside Aden, Britannica writes. The first were built with Chinese, American and Soviet aid in the last years of the imamate: one from Hodeidah up to Sanaa and one from Mocha to Sanaa by way of Taiz. Each cut journeys between those towns from days to hours. All the major towns are now joined by paved roads, but thousands of miles of tracks can be driven only by all-terrain vehicles, and travel between most smaller towns runs through the two old hubs, Sanaa in the north and Aden in the south.

Public transport is built on buses and shared taxis, a system that grew in the 1970s and 1980s, and goods move on large lorries that are often overloaded. Britannica describes the accident rate on Yemeni roads as disproportionately high.

Which airports have carried passengers

The main airports are at Aden, Sanaa and Hodeidah, and the national carrier Yemenia was formed when the two Yemens' state airlines merged nearly a decade after unification. The war has repeatedly closed the routes. The Council on Foreign Relations reports the suspension in 2023 of the only commercial air route out of Sanaa, and Britannica records an Israeli strike on Sanaa airport in May 2025, days after a Houthi missile hit Ben Gurion airport in Israel.

When the seasons suit a visit

The seasons follow altitude. In Sanaa daytime temperatures average in the low 20s Celsius and humidity is low, while Aden and Hodeidah often reach the upper 30s with high humidity. The northern highlands have two rainy seasons, from March to May and from July to September, and the high ground can see frost in winter.

Socotra runs to its own calendar. The Socotra article gives October to April as the time to visit, because the south-west monsoon from June to September brings strong winds and high seas and flights are often cancelled. The mountains have their own season too: the Yemen article records trekking and climbing tours to the Sarawat range and to Jabal an-Nabi Shu'ayb organised seasonally by local and foreign agencies.

Ramadan changes the rhythm of a visit. British travel advice summarised in the Tourism in Yemen article asks visitors to respect local Islamic customs, to dress modestly and not to drink alcohol in public, especially during that month.

What rules visitors travel under

Entry rules are set and enforced by the Yemeni authorities. For British passport holders, the UK government's travel advice read on 2 October 2026 states that a visa is required, obtained through the Yemeni embassy, and that a passport must be valid for at least six months after arrival. Anyone staying more than 14 days must register with the immigration authorities; the Tourism in Yemen article gives a fine of YR 5,000 at departure for failing to do so. Citizens of Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Hong Kong and the Gulf Cooperation Council states need no visa, according to the same article.

Money has its own rules. Importing or exporting Yemeni rials is illegal, foreign currency above 3,000 US dollars must be declared on arrival, and no more may leave than came in. ATMs are scarce outside Sanaa, and US dollars in cash are the easiest currency to exchange. Visitors also meet two exchange rates: since the central bank split in 2016, the rial has traded at very different prices in Aden and in Sanaa, as the economy article sets out.

The same UK page carried, on 2 October 2026, the government's advice against all travel to Yemen. This catalogue records the advice and its date and gives no verdict of its own; the renewed fighting of September 2026 is described in the history article.