Socotra

he took that skin and he shook that skin and he scrubbed that skin and he rubbed that skin just as full of old dry stale tickly cake crumbs and some burned currants as ever it could possibly hold and he climbed to the top of his palm tree and waited for the rhinoceros to come out of the water and put it on and the rhinoceros did he buttoned it up with the three buttons and it tickled like cake crumbs in bed then he wanted to scratch but that made it worse and then he lay down on the sands and rolled and rolled and rolled and every time he rolled the cake crumbs tickled him worse and worse and worse then he ran to the palm tree and rubbed and rubbed and rubbed himself against it he rubbed so much and so hard that he rubbed his skin into a great fold over his shoulders and another fold underneath where the buttons used to be but he rubbed the buttons off and he rubbed some more folds over his legs and it spoiled his temper but it didn't make the least difference to the cake crumbs they were inside his skin and they tickled so he went home very angry indeed and horribly scratchy and from that day to this every rhinoceros has great folds in his skin and a very bad temper all on account of the cake-crumbs inside but the parsee came down from his palm-tree wearing his hat from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more than oriental splendour packed up his cooking-stove and went away in the direction of orotavo amigdala the upland meadows of anantarivo and the marshes of sonaput

This uninhabited island is off Cape Gaddafui, by the beaches of Sukutra and the pink Arabian Sea.

But it's hot, too hot from Suez, for the likes of you and me.

Ever to go in a P&O and call on the cake-parsie.

Short term, yes, there's certain things that they could do.

They got off to a very good start at the beginning of this conflict by taking Aden and then controlling the mouth of the Bab-el-Mandeb as well as Socotra and these other key islands like Perim and so forth.

But as time wears on and these h- guns for hire, and the U- the UAE's resources are, uh, really diminished compared to what they were a few years ago.

They don't have nearly the influence.

They've had to, uh, pull up stakes in Socotra and this key islands that, that b- basically, uh, act as gatekeepers in the Gulf of Aden.

So ...

And Ansar Allah just keeps getting stronger.

There's so much I have not.

Number one is a place called Socotra.

I don't know if you've ever heard of it.

Where is it? It's Socotra.

It's an island off the coast of Yemen that is...

It looks very unique in the world.

Now they have, of course.

So you were literally, you were on the second plane to Socotra after it had been closed.

So have you been there multiple times? Yes.

Yes, I have been there multiple times and my last time was two years ago.

Then we used toilet pump.

Then we use mounds to inflate our balloons.

But before we started, we need to move these balloons from Abu Dhabi to Socotra.

They have a restriction for 20 kilograms luggage only.

Some trees hold a startling surprise beneath their bark, bright red sap that looks strikingly like blood.

The dragon's blood tree of the Socotra Islands and the bloodwood tree of Australia both exude crimson resin when cut or injured.

For centuries, this sap has been harvested for dyes, medicines, and rituals, valued as much for its strange appearance as its practical uses.

To see a tree bleed scarlet liquid is jarring, as if the pant world were imitating the animal world.

Scientists sampled one by accident.

The visible scene is a research vessel near Socotra lowering bottles into luminous water during the only direct scientific encounter widely cited.

Beneath it are the 1985 research vessel encounter, water samples, luminous bacteria, colonies, depth, chance discovery, and the absence of a planned modern expedition inside an active event.

The only direct incident study occurred through a chance encounter in 1985, leaving the global phenomenon dramatically undersampled.

Different organisms use different light-producing chemistry, and the signal can last less than a second or remain visible across many nights.

Color, timing, response to disturbance, location, and scale are therefore evidence.

A useful way to picture this action is watching a research vessel near Socotra lowering bottles into luminous water during the only direct scientific encounter widely cited, while the invisible biology beneath it becomes measurable.

Most familiar glowing surf comes from microscopic plankton that flash when water motion deforms their cells.

Um, good question.

There's an island in Yemen called Socotra, and it's a beautiful island.

Mm.

And I...

Egyptian ships began to go beyond the Gulf of Aden, so much so that we have tidbits of information suggesting the setup of new outposts.

The modern Yemeni island of Socotra, known as Dioscorides in antiquity, became host to a population of Greeks who allegedly were settled there as Ptolemaic colonists and whose descendants continued to speak Greek up to the 6th century AD.

No archaeological evidence of a permanent settlement survives, but the Hulk Cave Formation, discovered in 2001, has produced hundreds of graffiti, which did include a few Greek inscriptions among the many other languages present.

The cave itself was probably a shrine for merchants and sailors during the first century AD onwards, who gave offerings before setting out on their journeys.