Somaliland Tour

Our Somaliland Tour will take you to the Horn of Africa’s most fascinating and least visited regions. For Somaliland tours. You will visit best highlights in Somaliland tours including Hargeisa, Laasgeel, Berbera, Ga’an Libah, Burao, Daallo Forest, Gabiley, Borama and Dhagax kuure.

Somaliland Places of Interest.

Places of Interest in Somaliland: Somaliland is blessed with countless beautiful and enchanting tourist destinations. There are a number of places to visit in and around Somaliland as follows.

Hargeisa: the capital of the self-proclaimed republic, it is one of the safest places in the Somali region. It’s from this city one can venture out into the outskirts of Somaliland, such as a trek to the twin summits of Hablood – or Virgin’s Breast Mountain – located in the scrubby desert area of Woqooyi Galbeed province. Alternatively, a three-hour drive will take you to the port city of Berbera on the Gulf of Aden where camels roam free on beaches and one can discover the old buildings and history left behind by the British when it formed the capital of their Somaliland protectorate.

Laasgeel: In the deserts north of the Somaliland capital are the remarkable cave paintings of Las Geel. Las Geel means Camel watering hole in Somali and 6000 – 9000 years ago the people of the region covered a nearby rock outcrop with hundreds of stylized images of cows, dogs, people, and giraffes. One of the Horn of Africa’s most intriguing sights.

Berbera: The historic town of Berbera has been a center of maritime trade since ancient times. It stands on the Gulf of Aden opposite Yemen, a strategic location along the ancient trade route between the Red Sea and India, and of similar importance during the more recent Cold War. Indeed, in the 1970s, Berbera was an important base for the USSR, which built the 4km runway (one of the longest anywhere in Africa) that somewhat redundantly graces the international airport a few kilometers south of town. Today, Berbera is the main commercial seaport in Somaliland, serving not only the capital Hargeisa, about 150km to the south, but also bordering parts of eastern Ethiopia.

Zeila: Once a prosperous 1st Century port used by the Avalites, Zeila is now a quiet coastal town not far from Djibouti. Being located on the Red Sea there’s a considerable amount of coral reefs, mangroves, and offshore islands to visit which form the Sa’ad ad-Din Archipelago named in honor of the Sultanate of Ifat ruled over the region between the 13th-15th Century.

Ga’an Libah: A southwesterly extension of the Golis Range – the long escarpment that also includes Mount Wagar and the Daallo Forest – Ga’an Libah (sometimes transcribed as Gacan  Libaax) is a tall limestone ridge that rises to an elevation of 1,720m within the triangle formed by the surfaced roads connecting Berbera to Hargeisa and Burao.

Dhagax Kuure: Situated 45km northwest of Hargeisa amid a chain of spectacular granite outcrops, Dhagax Khoure (also transliterated as Dagah Kuure, Dagax Gure and variations thereof) was the most celebrated rock art site in Somaliland prior to the 2002 discovery of Laasgeel. It remains a site of exceptional merit, comprising hundreds of individual bovid, human and other figures spread across at least six different panels on a massive turtleback protuberance. Tragically, however, several of the paintings  –  which may be more than  5,000  years old  –  were defaced in early 2011, reputedly as a result of a dispute between two local factions over their curatorship. It remains to be seen whether the damage can be reversed. Although Dhagax Kuure is of great interest to rock art enthusiasts, its overall impact doesn’t compare to  Laasgeel,  and it should certainly be the second choice for anybody whose resources only stretch to visiting one Somaliland rock art site.

Daallo: Somaliland’s foremost natural attraction, the Daallo (or Buurta Daallo) Forest lies in the spectacular Calmadow (or Al Mado) Range, a tall limestone and gypsum escarpment that rises dramatically from the low-lying coastal plain between Maydh and Bosaso.

Little known to outsiders and as yet undeveloped for tourism, Daallo is less than an hour’s drive north of Erigavo, close to the base of Mount Shimbiris, the highest point anywhere in Somalia.

The main attractions of Daallo are the stupendous clifftop views from the top of the escarpment to the distant Gulf of Aden more than 2,000m below, and rich biodiversity that includes at least 200  endemic plant species,  along with many woodland birds and other animals whose range is confined to the Somali region.

Borama: is the capital of Awdal Province and it is set at an altitude of 1,450m amid relatively fertile hills 110km west of Hargeisa and 1km from the international boundary with Ethiopia (note, however, that there is no border crossing in town, though a lot of foot traffic passes through the Goroyocawl customs post off the Hargeisa Road just 10km to the east).

The few tourists who pass through Borama are mostly making their way between Hargeisa and the port of  Zeila or the neighbouring country of  Djibouti,  and stopping here overnight can feel like an attractive way to break up this arduous trip.

Gabiley and Dhagah-Marodi (Dhagax Maroodi): Straddling the Borama road about 50km west of Hargeisa, the ancient settlement of Gabiley is – rather astonishingly – the fifth-largest town in Somaliland, with a population estimated at 80,000 in 2015.

Despite its rather arid and dustily nondescript façade, Gabiley is well known within Somaliland as a center of citrus cultivation (oranges sold on the roadside here cost half what they would in the capital).

It is also the birthplace of Mo Farah, the most successful-ever British long-distance runner, who grew up in Djibouti and the UK, but still has close family living in Gabiley and paid for the construction of its football stadium.