There is a forest in Somalia. It sounds like a mistake, but it's true: on the Cal Madow escarpment, in the northeastern corner of Somaliland, the mist rising from the Gulf of Aden feeds a strip of evergreen juniper forest where some trees are over a thousand years old. It's called Daallo, it's less than an hour from Erigavo, and from its edge you can see the sea two thousand metres below.
It is one of the most biologically valuable and least studied places in Africa. Around a thousand plant species, some two hundred of them endemic; junipers, box, the boswellias that yield the frankincense that made this coast famous since the time of the pharaohs, and even a relative of the dragon's blood tree. And a bird list that brings ornithologists from the other side of the world: the Warsangli linnet, the Somali thrush, Archer's francolin and Archer's buzzard, the golden-winged grosbeak.
It also needs to be said plainly from the start: this is the most difficult and most sensitive of all Somaliland's destinations. Cal Madow is in the Sanaag region, disputed between Somaliland, Puntland and the SSC-Khatumo administration, with fighting in Erigavo in December 2024 and in eastern Sanaag in January 2025. It does not share the relatively stable status of Hargeisa, Berbera or Laas Geel, and foreign ministries treat it differently. This guide covers what is there, how to get there and what you need to know before even considering it.
Cal Madow is a limestone and gypsum escarpment pushed up by the tectonics that opened the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, leaving the Horn of Africa with a mountain range right by the sea and a desert plain at its feet. Millions of years ago, that geography created a moisture trap: moisture-laden winds from the gulf hit the northern wall, condense and feed a cloud forest that survived in isolation while the regional climate dried out. The result is a biological island with a very high level of endemism, the largest relict of the Somali montane xeric woodland. For people, these mountains were for millennia the source of the frankincense and myrrh that supplied Egypt, Arabia, Greece and Rome —the legendary “land of Punt” and the “coast of aromatics” of classical sources— and the territory of the Warsangli clan, which gave its name to one of the most sought-after birds here. Scientifically, the massif was explored very late: a botanical expedition led by Mats Thulin in 1995 described around eight plant species new to science and recommended protecting the forest as a natural monument. Today Daallo is recognised as an Important Bird Area by BirdLife International and as a protected area by the Somaliland authorities, but deforestation for firewood and charcoal, overgrazing and the political dispute over the Sanaag region keep it in a fragile state.
Read the full history ↓From the Gulf of Aden to the 2,400 metres of Cal Madow: ports that appear in the Greek Periplus, Zeila's mosque of the two qiblas, an airstrip built by the Soviets and the world's last great frankincense forest.
Read the history of Somaliland: the coast and the northern mountains →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Cal Madow exists as a direct result of one of the great fractures in the Earth's crust. For around thirty million years, the Arabian plate has been pulling away from the African plate. That opening created the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and it lifted the edges of the rift into steep escarpments on both sides. On the African side, the result is a mountain range pressed right up against the sea: a wall that rises almost all at once from the coastal plain of the Gulf of Aden to more than two thousand metres.
The rock is limestone and gypsum. These are marine sedimentary rocks laid down long before, then lifted by tectonics and carved over time by water and wind. The range as a whole is known as Cal Madow, “the black mountain”, and some sources treat it as part of the Ogo mountains or the eastern Golis. It runs parallel to the coast and peaks at Mount Shimbiris, at around 2,400 to 2,460 metres depending on the source. That makes it the highest point in Somaliland and in all of Somalia.
Without anyone planning it, that shape created a moisture trap. Winds coming off the gulf arrive loaded with vapour, hit the northern wall of the escarpment and are forced upwards. As they rise they cool, and as they cool they condense. The result is fog, drizzle and rainfall estimated at about 650 mm a year on the summit at Daallo, with 750-850 mm cited for the wettest parts of the massif. In absolute terms these are modest figures, but they are extremely high for a country where the national average is a few hundred millimetres and where drought shapes everyday life.
During the African Humid Period, between nine thousand and three thousand years ago, much of North Africa and the Horn was far greener than it is today, with wooded savannahs, lakes and rivers. When the climate dried out, the forest pulled back to the few places that still got enough moisture. In the northeastern Horn of Africa, that place was the northern face of Cal Madow.
That is where the Daallo forest was left stranded. It is a strip of evergreen forest dominated by African juniper (Juniperus procera, dayib in Somali) and boxwood, with some trees more than a thousand years old. Ecologists call this a relict: a fragment of an ecosystem that was once widespread and now survives in isolation. Daallo is the largest and most accessible relict of the Somali montane xeric woodlands, an ecoregion confined to an escarpment of about three hundred kilometres that runs inland from the northern coast.
Isolation has a predictable consequence: evolution goes its own way. When a population is cut off from the rest of its species for thousands of years, it drifts on its own. That is why Cal Madow is a storehouse of endemic species. Around a thousand plant species have been recorded in the massif, and some two hundred of them exist nowhere else on the planet. The oddities include succulents that look like they came from another world, relatives of the dragon's blood tree (the same lineage behind the famous specimens on Socotra, the Yemeni island just across the gulf), and the frankincense-producing boswellias.
The wildlife follows the same pattern. The most sought-after birds here have tiny ranges: the Warsangli linnet (Linaria johannis), the Somali thrush (Turdus ludoviciae), the Somali or Socotra golden-winged grosbeak, Archer's francolin and Archer's buzzard. Among mammals, the massif and the land around it are home to the beira, a dwarf antelope endemic to the Horn of Africa, and the dorcas gazelle. BirdLife International recognises the site as an Important Bird Area.
Long before anyone cared about endemic species, these mountains were famous in the ancient world for one very specific thing: resin. The boswellias growing on the escarpment produce frankincense (beeyo and maydi in Somali), and the commiphoras produce myrrh. Both resins were burned in temples and used in medicine and embalming, and they were worth their weight in gold.
This is the coast that classical sources called “the coast of aromatics”. It appears in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, the first-century Greek sailing manual, as the source of the best frankincense available. Even earlier, the Egyptians sent expeditions to the legendary land of Punt to bring back frankincense, myrrh, ebony and gold. Where exactly Punt was is still debated, but the Horn of Africa is one of the main candidates. Greeks, Romans, Persians and Arabs traded here for centuries, and the incense routes linked these mountains with the Mediterranean and with Asia.
The trade never fully stopped. Families on the escarpment still tap the trees the traditional way: they cut into the bark, the resin seeps out and hardens into “tears”, and it is collected weeks later. It is one of the few sources of cash income in the region, and one of the reasons local people have a direct interest in keeping the forest standing.
This is also the land of the Warsangli clan, traditionally settled in eastern Sanaag and along the coast, who gave their name to the best-known bird in these mountains. Nomadic herding, resin gathering and coastal trade have always been the economy of Cal Madow, and they still are.
Unlike almost any other biodiversity hotspot in the world, Cal Madow has barely been studied. The reasons are obvious: difficult access, no infrastructure, decades of war and state collapse in Somalia, and a lack of well-funded local scientific institutions.
The most cited milestone is a botanical expedition in 1995 led by the Swedish botanist Mats Thulin, a specialist in the flora of the Horn of Africa. He travelled across the massif and described around eight plant species new to science in a single trip. That says less about the team's skill than about the state of knowledge: in 1995, in a mountain range spanning an entire country, you could still find eight unknown species in one field season. The expedition's report recommended declaring the forest a natural monument and protecting it from overexploitation and human-caused destruction.
Since then, the work has been patchy: wildlife surveys backed by conservation organisations, antelope counts such as the one documented by David Mallon and Abdi Jama for the IUCN, BirdLife reports and occasional campaigns by organisations working to conserve frankincense. Practically everything is still missing: full inventories, studies of forest dynamics, population monitoring, detailed mapping.
Meanwhile, the forest is shrinking. The threats identified are the usual ones, and all of them are local: cutting firewood and making charcoal, overgrazing by goats that stops the junipers from regenerating, over-tapping of resin and population pressure. Daallo is listed as a protected area under Somaliland law and as a BirdLife Important Bird Area, but actual management on the ground is minimal.
Any conversation about visiting Cal Madow inevitably ends up in politics. The massif lies in the Sanaag region, whose capital is Erigavo (Ceerigaabo), at 1,786 metres above sea level and one of the coolest towns in all of Somalia. And Sanaag is disputed territory.
Somaliland claims the region because it lay within the borders of the former British protectorate, which is the legal basis for its claim to independence since 1991. Puntland, the federal state in northeastern Somalia, claims it on clan grounds: part of Sanaag's population belongs to clans linked to Puntland. And since 2023 there has been a third player: the SSC-Khatumo administration, which emerged after the Las Anod conflict, rejects Somaliland's control over the Sool, Sanaag and Cayn regions and is seeking autonomy within Somalia.
The dispute is not theoretical. In December 2024 there was fighting in Erigavo itself between Somaliland forces and SSC-Khatumo militias; Somaliland won and kept control of the town. In January 2025, Somaliland forces took Jiidali, in eastern Sanaag. Routes between these regions and the rest of Somaliland have been disrupted since 2023.
For travellers, this means a clear difference from Somaliland's other destinations. The British Foreign Office exempts only Awdal, Maroodi Jeex and Sahil (that is, Zeila, Hargeisa, Laas Geel, Berbera and Sheikh) from its highest warning level, and for those it advises against all but essential travel. Sanaag is not exempted: for Sanaag, the advice is not to travel at all. The US State Department, for its part, keeps all of Somalia at Level 4.
It is a situation sadly in keeping with the rest of the place's history: one of the most biologically valuable and least-known forests in Africa, in a corner of the world where sovereignty is contested, with no possibility of international protection and only a handful of scientists who have passed through in the last thirty years. Meanwhile, the forest keeps doing what it has done for thousands of years: catching the fog that rises from the Gulf of Aden.
