We had been thinking about Socotra for varying lengths of time and now here it was. We came in over the north-west coast. There was the salt-water creek I recognised from the map. The land was all yellow and barren. It looked inhospitable. I looked for signs of vegetation, but I could see none, and no signs of habitation. Just yellow and desolate rocks. Then we flew over Hadibo. I presumed it was Hadibo because that was about where it would be, recalling the map. Hadibo was white and clean-looking but very small, and there were patches of green where the palm trees grew. Behind Hadibo were the mountains, grey and scored by steep watercourses that were dry now. Everything looked dry. Dry and bare, with nothing growing and a fair old wind blowing and blowing and the sea impossible to navigate, and over all the mountains, heavy in cloud. It was rather formidable and very impressive.

We pulled up short of a high hill, turned around and went back along the coast the way we had come, circled the airstrip and landed after only two circuits. I thought our fuselage would hit the ground but it didn't. We landed without incident and stepped out on to Socotran soil.

We stepped out of the aircraft into a howling gale. The wind came over the hills behind us and raced across the plain and into the sea, taking with it uprooted scrub, rusty oil drums, my handkerchief. Dust and sand blew in our faces and our hair streamed out to one side of our heads. Sudden violent gusts would make us stagger and stop talking and lean into the wind, and we had to shout into each other's ears in order to make ourselves heard.

There were a number of Socotri and one or two camels at the side of the airstrip. They came up to us, milling around us like the frenzied eddies of the wind and just as noisy. They screamed at us above the wind, demanding baksheesh and biscuits, taking us confidentially by the wrist and rubbing their stomachs to signify their need for food. Some of them were making a motion with their right hand as though they were pouring peanuts into their mouths at a cocktail party, and this, too, we learnt, signified their need for food. Surprisingly, only a few old men looked thin and undernourished; the rest seemed to have adequate flesh on them, though I wondered where they got their food from, for the sea was too rough for fishing and nothing seemed to be growing for miles around but inedible camel-thorn struggling up between the flints and gravel that covered the plain.

Our first contact with Socotrans was tempered by the slightly suspicious curiosity of a tabby cat sniffing an unknown Manx of doubtful potential. They seemed very friendly people, very small and rather polyglot. They all wore tartan-coloured futahs or loin-cloths, and some of them had torn and faded shirts; they were barefoot and walked on the razor-edged stones of the plain without difficulty. Some of them had ugly-funny faces, some had striking hawk-like faces, a few were beautiful.

More and more of them appeared from nowhere and after some argument we managed to persuade them to help unload the aircraft. In a short time everything was piled in confusion at the side of the runway, the two aeroplanes taxied down towards the sea and with a roar and a leap in a cloud of red and yellow dust took off and disappeared westwards. I paid the porters some shillings and presented some letters to one of the Sultan's representatives.

My principal concern at this time was to find water. It seemed almost conventional to think about water in this dry place. I hired a camel and a camel-boy and left the others struggling with a small green tent at the side of the airstrip. Ali, our spindly, gruff-spoken cook, was holding one of the poles to which part of the tent was attached. I set off eastwards and when I looked back I could not see Ali but only a tall swaying mass of flapping green canvas, as though the tent had roman-candled like a parachute. It occurred to me that inside that tight envelope of tent was Ali, still holding on loyally to the tent-pole.