Five-thousand-year-old rock art is tucked into an outcropping 40 miles northeast of Hargeisa, the capital of this breakaway region of Somalia. But its ambiguous political status has made protecting the site especially challenging. Hidden in the Somali desert, beneath stunning, ancient rock cave paintings, the thin trail of a snake…
Take a holiday in Somaliland: journey to the state that isn’t
Michela Wrong once wrote that you can tell a lot about an African country by the way they issue, or refuse you a visa. This remains true, but as African leaders see the benefits of liberalisation (in a variety of different guises), heralding a stream of hot money flowing in…
Tourists are heading to Somalia to see the ruins of a two-decade civil war
For a trip to the Puntland region in northeastern Somalia, Christian Matzenauer didn’t know what to expect. After traveling from Dusseldorf, Germany to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia he flew to the Somali city of Bosaso in January, drove along the coast to the towns of Alula and Bareeda, before finally…