May 8, 2020 | Free Auto Insurance Quotes 2022

Everybody knows about Somalia, but not many know about Somaliland, a territory within Somali boundaries that declared self-independence in 1991 but, since nobody in the international community recognized it as such, it became one of those self-administered ghost countries.

Legally, it belongs to Somalia but, from a tourism point of view, traveling to Somalia is like visiting a new country, a very intriguing and weird one.

Camel markets, Medieval mosques and ancient rock art painted by some of the oldest pastoralist societies, Somaliland is a truly off the beaten path – and very safe – destination which you can’t miss in your trip to the Horn of Africa.

I spent 10 days backpacking in Somaliland and this guide contains tips and everything you need to know to travel there, from visa tips to top experiences, approximate budget and more.

The first thing you need to know is that, despite being legally bound to Somalia, Somaliland acts like an independent country, so different immigration rules apply, similar to what happens between Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan (read my travel guide to Iraqi Kurdistan).

This means that a valid tourist visa for Somaliland doesn’t allow you to travel to Somalia, and a valid visa for Somalia doesn’t allow you to travel to Somaliland.

Therefore, in order to get your visa, you can’t apply at the Embassy of Somalia, but you need to find a specific Somaliland Mission.

However, since Somaliland isn’t an official country, this makes things particularly challenging, as they don’t have more than a few missions around the world.

Most travelers travel to Somaliland as part of a multi-country trip around the Horn of Africa, so getting a visa at the Embassy in Addis Ababa seems to be the most common choice.

It costs $100, and they only accept USD
2 passports photos, 1 passport copy
You get it on the same day

Since Djibouti is rather a small city, getting to the Mission was fairly quick and these were the requirements:

It cost $60, paid in local currency
2 passport photos, 1 passport copy, 1 Djibouti visa copy
You pick it up 24 hours later

If you aren’t traveling in the Horn of Africa, you may as well get the visa in your home country or any other where you find a Somaliland Mission.

Here you can see an updated list of Somaliland representative offices but I am not sure if you can get a visa in all of them, you will have to figure it out by yourself.

As far as I know, however, anyone can apply at the Mission in London and in Washington D.C and, apparently, getting one in London costs £30.

If you are flying in, you can also get a VOA if previously arranged with your hotel in Hargeisa.

However, only citizens of the EU, USA, Canada, China, and a few other Asian countries can apply for a VOA, but I recommend you contact the hotel to know all requirements, as well as their fees.

Hargeisa has an International Airport with flights from Addis Ababa, Djibouti, and even Dubai and Jeddah.

I recommend you check on Ethiopian Airlines, Daallo Airlines, Fly Dubai and Air Djibouti.

How to travel to Somaliland from Djibouti – I used this option and it was easy. In Djibouti City, there is a departure point for 4×4 heading to Somaliland and I am specifying 4×4 because, once you cross the border, there are no roads until Borama – almost 300km after – but just desert and sand. It was quite an adventure.
How to travel to Somaliland from Ethiopia – Very easy. I used it to get out of Somaliland. The closest, most famous city is Harar, but you may not find direct transportation to the border, but you should go first to Jijiga, the capital of Ethiopian Somalia.
How to travel to Somaliland from Oman – That’s right. You can enter Somaliland via Berbera from Salalah (Oman) by boat, and it’s completely legal and doable. I actually met a tourist couple who did it, on a cargo ship, but they had to wait in Salalah for almost 3 weeks for the ship to depart. Read my Oman travel guide.
How to travel to Somaliland from Somalia – This border is closed to foreigners.

I don’t know how can you handle the heat, but I can’t and, as you may imagine, Somaliland can get pretty hot in summer, especially the coastal part, with temperatures averaging 45ºC.

Hargeisa sits at an elevation of 1300m, so the weather might be slightly cooler there, but still, summer isn’t a great time to go.

I visited it at the end of January and the weather was great, especially in Hargeisa, where the temperature never reached above 25ºC, and we even had some rain one day.

Somaliland belongs to Somalia so, as you may imagine, most governments consider it a conflict zone and therefore, most travel insurance companies won’t cover for this trip, unfortunately.

However, I did some research and there are two insurance companies that do cover:

Budget travel insurance that covers Somalia and valid for any type of trip and nationality.

They have many different plans and readers of this blog can get an exclusive 5% discount.

Great travel insurance for backpackers also valid for Somalia but only Europeans can purchase it.

Khat is a drug, literally, a plant with amphetaminic effects typically consumed in the Horn of Africa and Yemen, and extremely popular across all Somalia.

If you are traveling in Somaliland, you must spend at least one afternoon eating khat with locals.

Difficult to say, my trip was overall great, but what surprised me the most was going for breakfast to a random café in Berbera and suddenly being surrounded by gazelles.

I won’t enter into the ethical issue of having wild animals in your garden, but several cafés have gazelles roaming around freely in their garden and if you get some leaves from a tree, they won’t hesitate to approach you.

Somaliland is a very traditional country and livestock markets abound, and I strongly recommend you visit the one in Hargeisa, which takes place every single day.

Backpacking in Somaliland is one of those trips where, honestly, there isn’t much to do, but the highlight is meeting new people.

Expect loads of smiles, people asking you for photos and endless chewing-khat invitations, like this funny Somali dancing:

The only proper touristic thing as such to do is checking out a few caves containing some 5,000-old rock art paintings which apparently, are some of the most impressive and well-preserved of this particular kind in Africa, and ONE of the highlights of my visit to Somaliland.

I believe the story between Somaliland and Somalia is a complicated situation that goes beyond my understanding, but let me just give you my 5 cents.

During colonialism, today’s Somalia was split into 2 different regions: the western part was under British rule, while the eastern part was under Italian rule.

Like it has been happening with most of the colonies, at the end of the colonial times, the British and the UN drew the borders as they pleased, this way unifying the 2 Somalias into a single one.

Therefore, Somaliland has always had a feeling of becoming an independent nation, and, because of many reasons, mainly conflicts and political problems, in 1991, Somaliland decided to self-declare independence from Somalia.

However, as I highlighted in the introduction, nobody recognized it as such, and, when I say nobody, I mean nobody, not even its former colonizer (the UK), the Olympic committee, the FIFA or the World Bank.

Somaliland is on his own, abandoned and, even though they have full right to become independent, they will never will, as this decision has been delegated to the African Union and they don’t want to recognize them because this could lead a massive African revolution, as hundreds of minorities across the continent might claim the same thing.

Yet, do you know what is the main difference versus Somalia?
While Somalia is an authoritarian regime immersed in a Civil War and, basically, a failed state, Somaliland is a peaceful, safe democracy and, the reason why despite all the internal problems, especially economical, Somalilanders will never regret gaining their independence.

Somaliland is mostly composed of Somalis, a massive ethnic group spread across Djibouti, Eastern Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and of course, Somalia.

It is a very patriarchal society – very Muslim conservative – where I believe women have very little rights, and I don’t recall seeing a single woman not wearing a hijab, in the areas I visited at least.

Other than that, Somalis are nice, warm and welcoming people but, of course, this is an extremely poor country and sometimes you do meet people who at first, seem they just want to have a conversation but then they ask for money.

This is something I have noticed a lot in Africa. While in Muslim Asian countries such as Iran or Pakistan, people are always willing to offer their help for free, some people I when backpacking in Somaliland (not all, of course) were then asking for a tip.

You also need to be careful with your camera, and always ask first, because many Somalis don’t like cameras, and they can get very angry, even if you take a shot from far away, and I am talking by own experience.

In any case, most interactions and experiences with the local people are truly great.

Chewing khat
Eating khat is kind of a lifestyle in Somaliland. All men eat it and basically, life in the country stops after lunchtime until the evening. Regardless of all the social issues khat has brought to the Somali society, it’s an interesting event to see and experience. Khat gets you high (if you get a good-quality one, which costs from $10) but you need to chew it (and swallow) for a couple of hours at least, washing it down with soda or any sweet drink because khat is extremely bittered.

All Somalis speak Somali a Cushitic language, the family of many languages spoken in northeastern Africa.

It’s difficult to describe how it sounds like, but what I can tell you is that they use some Arabic words, as Arabs have been trading in this region for centuries and in fact, Arabic is widely taught in schools.

Since this used to be a British colony, you meet many Somalilanders speaking impeccable English and most people will know some basic words.

In fact, they use many English words in their language, like numbers for example.

Actually, this is one of the worst countries I have been to when it comes to food.

All right, it’s not that bad, but it’s just boring, basic, and there’s nothing memorable to bring back home, except for some fresh fish I had in Berbera. That was good.

Their star dish, which they eat throughout the day is a lentils stew called ”penis”, and literally pronounced like ”penis”, no kidding.

When you walk in a café, you just say you want a ”penis” and they will bring you these lentils.

Other than that, pasta with tomato sauce is also the staple but, as you may imagine, it is not good pasta.

Alcohol is illegal in Somaliland
It is only available in the black market but some locals do make their own at home and you are likely to see some drunk people at night. I arrived in the city of Boroma at 3am and, while looking for a hotel, there was this creepy local who approached me holding a plastic bottle with some weird matt white liquid in it. He was massively wasted, drooling, and trying to hug me or something, but it was very easy to push him out. After a few days, a young, well-educated local told me that home-made alcohol is a big deal in Somaliland, but most of it is just so strong and basically, very dangerous, so seeing people fucked up like that guy from Boroma is very normal.

All the negative things you see in the media about Somalia referring to pirates, bombs, or Al Shabab, happen in Somalia mainland.

There have been some terrorist attacks in Somaliland, yes, but the last one was back in 2008, a long time ago and, since then, nothing has happened so far, plus the country enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in the world.

Look, I am no expert, and the FCO advice claims that all the country is a massive NO-GO, but you already know that their judgment is very biased and all I can tell you is that so far, all travelers have had a great time traveling in Somaliland.

I have only talked to one lady about her trip to Somaliland and all she told me was that she had a great time there, but I am afraid she didn’t give me any further details, but she was a woman with a large traveling experience in traditional Muslim countries, and I believe the experience in Somaliland as a solo woman shouldn’t differ much from the one in Sudan or Pakistan.

If you are a woman who traveled to Somaliland (solo or accompanied) let me know if you’d like to write a guest post for Against the Compass or just send me your experience to [email protected].

Before traveling to Somaliland, I heard that in some areas, basically anywhere outside Hargeisa, a police escort was mandatory, and they would assign you one upon your arrival in that destination.

This wasn’t my case nevertheless (and I visited many places and went through a lot of checkpoints).

In the beginning, I thought that may had been an old rule which didn’t apply anymore but I heard there was a solo female traveler who visited Somaliland just a few weeks before I and the police did assign her an escort.

This means that it might just depend on the policeman’s mood and perception and, since Somalis are an extremely patriarchal society, you might have a higher chance of getting a police escort if you are a solo female traveler.

In any case, your experience regarding this topic is very welcome in the comments section 🙂

Funny story: this guy was an enormous fraud who followed me for like 1 hour, pretending he was a police escort and, as a proof, he was wearing a shirt that clearly said ”escort”, but he was too stupid to understand that his shirt meant being a male escort (like a female accompanying). He made up this story to get some money, of course

Somaliland has its own currency, which is the Somaliland Shilling and, approximately:

Their currency has suffered a massive devaluation and today, their biggest is note worth 5000Sh, which is barely 60 cents.

On the other hand, USD are widely accepted, to the extent that in most places, you can even pay a bottle of water in USD and get the change in Somaliland Shillings.

Theoretically, if dollars are accepted everywhere, you would not need to exchange, but getting some local currency is more comfortable as, in traditional places, you will always get the price in shillings, so you don’t need to make unnecessary calculations.

You can easily exchange in many places but I recommend you go to the money market in Hargeisa, which is an attraction in itself, as you get to see locals loaded with hundreds of cash bricks but, in fact, most bricks are composed of 1000 notes, which means that they aren’t carrying much money in their hands.

International credit cards are not accepted, but there are a few ATMs in Hargeisa from where you can withdraw some USD at a 3% commission.

These banks are Premiere Bank and Dahabshil Bank and you can find their ATMs in downtown Hargeisa.

Somaliland is the cheapest country I visited in the Horn of Africa, not only because prices are low, but also because there is nothing to spend money on.

Meal in a local place (penis): 10,000Sh
Meal in a local place (with meat): 20,000Sh
Meal in mid-range place: 30,000-40,000Sh
Main course in a top restaurant: $8-$12
Fresh juice: 10,000Sh
Water 1L: 2,000-3,000Sh
Local bus to pretty much any town: 20,000-40,000Sh
Budget accommodation: $10-$15
Mid-range accommodation: From $25

Other than that, the only expensive things I had to pay were the entrance to Las Geel ($35 with guide included) and the 4×4 trip from Zeyla to Borama ($50).

Most towns are connected by bus, including Boroma, Berbera, or Burao and you just need to go to the bus station and ask for departure times. In Hargeisa, the bus station is in the city center.

If you want to go south of Boroma, to Zeyla and Djibouti border, you need a 4×4 but you can share it with other locals if you go to the station.

There is actually some domestic tourism, especially among foreign Somalis who are visiting the country. I met a few of them in 2 different hotels.

Zeyla: Kaboode Guest House – There is only 1 guest house and paid $20 for one night. Extremely overpriced (it’s a rudimentary shack), but it can be negotiated if staying more nights.
Borama: Oslo Hotel – Basic but clean, and paid $15.
Hargeisa: Maamu Hotel – Super value-for-money, around $20-$25 per night, but they have many different rooms.
Berbera: Barwaqo hotel – Basic but clean and paid $10 for a private room with its own bathroom. The hotel restaurant serves amazing fish.

Outside of my hotels, except for a fancy restaurant in Hargeisa, I never saw Wi-Fi.

I got Telesom and I think I paid like $3 for a SIM Card with 1GB internet and calls. It’s so cheap.

Somaliland travel guide by Bradt – The only proper travel guidebook to Somaliland is the one from Bradt, published in December 2018, so it is quite updated and gives a great overview of the country. I love Bradt.

Becoming Somaliland by Mark Bradbury – Great analysis to understanding the story of Somaliland, from declaring independence to becoming a democracy in one of the most turbulent regions on Earth.

Appuyez sur ensemble sous la couverture et procédez à des traits prometteurs de zones érogènes à travers des vêtements. Ce prélude comme il devrait vous dissiper, alors plus tard, vous acheter viagra feminin riche en ecstasy dans le tact rythmant des brouillards!

First-time claims for unemployment insurance were expected to increase 3.05 million last week, according to economists surveyed by Dow Jones.