- Eva zu Beck is an
adventure traveler who gained her following by documenting her travels to destinations such as Syria and Pakistan. - She landed in
Socotra Island,Yemen , on March 11, to run the remote island's first marathon. - Shortly after the race, she and her fellow runners were informed that they had to leave immediately, as the coronavirus pandemic was spreading and countries around the world were closing their borders.
- She decided to stay. Little did she know she would spend three months on the island.
- At the time of writing, zu Beck told Insider via email that she managed to leave Socotra on a cargo ship on May 30 — a full three months after arriving.
Socotra Island is not your usual vacation destination.
Despite being part of Yemen, the remote island is actually closer to Somalia, sitting in the middle of the Indian Ocean. It is often described as one of the most "alien-looking" places on Earth, thanks to its unusual dragon's blood trees, which grow nowhere else in the world. In fact, the island is so remote that 37% of its plants are completely unique to it, making it comparable to the Galapagos Islands in terms of endemic species.
While Eva zu Beck, 29, an adventure
Eva zu Beck had been to Socotra before, in 2019, and said she fell in love with the island
When the island hosted its first marathon this March, she jumped at the chance of returning and signed up.
On March 11, zu Beck and a group of about 40 runners from all corners of the world descended on Socotra for the race, planning to stay until at least March 18 since flights to the island were only once weekly, from Cairo, Egypt.
A few days after the race, however, they were all awakened in the middle of the night and encouraged to leave as soon as possible: The island was closing its borders.
"After being offline for several days we got a call that suddenly the world is shutting down, and that if we want to make a connection to our home country, then we should probably get on the last commercial flight available," zu Beck told Insider.
This was on March 15. Zu Beck says that most of the people in her group chose to leave then, but that she decided to stay, along with four others.
"I figured I love the island, it's safe to stay there, and my local friends were very encouraging of the idea to just stay and wait out," she said, adding that she thought it would be a good time to practice her Arabic and participate in a few local projects to support the community. She took the opportunity as a sign.
However, she also says that she had nowhere else to go.
"I also have nowhere to go back to, I travel full-time. I don't have a flat, I don't have a car or a mortgage anywhere. There was nowhere for me to go, so I decided to stay," she said.
However, in a recent Instagram post she wanted to make clear that she doesn't encourage active travel to a remote location during a pandemic. "Rather, I wanted to share the beauty of a place I was already in, a place that's little-known and needs to be protected," she writes.
It's worth noting that nonessential travel within the US and internationally is currently not recommended by the Centers for Disease Control, so if you do choose to travel, it's best to check each state's health and travel advisories and the CDC's travel recommendations for each country.
To date, zu Beck hasn't heard of any reported cases of the coronavirus on the island, which has a population of around 42,000
She adds that without any testing kits, however, no one can be sure, and that to her knowledge there have been no reports by health professionals of anyone on the island having COVID-19-like symptoms either. Socotra is hard to reach in the best of times, but now, during a global pandemic, there are no commercial flights in or out of it, and she says the cargo ships bringing in provisions are asked to quarantine off the coast before allowing anyone to disembark. Furthermore, Socotra is heading into its monsoon season; high winds tend to blast the island from June through August.
"Basically it means that for about four months in the summer, the island becomes pretty much cut off from the rest of the world," zu Beck said. "In a way, it's a bit of a blessing in disguise, because it means less of a likelihood of bringing the coronavirus to the island from, for example, mainland Yemen." Mainland Yemen has had 354 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 84 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.
'I don't think any of us expected this to last quite so long,' she said of her time on the island
For the first six weeks, zu Beck and her fellow runners set up camp on a beach, watching the sunrise from their tents, fishing and bartering for their meals, cooking on an open fire, and exploring the island on extended hikes. She then moved in with a local family — she spent most of her nights camping outside of their home — and taught herself how to ride a motorbike, which she used to get around, though she said she spent the last few weeks mostly staying put.
"I'm so happy that I got kind of a semi-normal reality here on the island. We've been very lucky and I realize that I'm very privileged to even be able to be here, and in time like this," she said. "I feel extremely lucky."
She says that while the island's professional class is growing, most locals are farmers and fishermen.
"People live quite modestly, there are no luxuries here. I think the most Western thing that you can purchase on the island is a jar of Nutella," she said, adding that items like ice cream and pizza are nonexistent.
"People who have very little are actually keen to share. I've been on the receiving end of this incredible hospitality here," she said, explaining that locals have what she calls a "code of honor" called "Karam," in which hosts welcome any and all guests, and are reluctant to take anything in return. She says she contributed as much as her host would allow her to towards food and rent.
All in all, she said one of the biggest obstacles was reliable internet, which means that she couldn't have video calls with her boyfriend or family
"Being so far away from everything and everyone just means that you have to take good care of your mental health," she said, adding that she often found herself struggling with the distance to her friends and family, and not knowing when she could get off the island.
At the time of writing, zu Beck emailed Insider with an important update: She and her four fellow marathon runners who remained managed to evacuate on a cargo ship on May 30 — a full three months after arriving. They're currently headed to the United Arab Emirates, which will take them about a week.
She says getting off the island wasn't easy, given the pandemic, but also because of the political situation on mainland Yemen, which has been in the midst of a civil war for years. While zu Beck says the violence of the mainland rarely reaches Socotra, and while she adds that the island "has its own set of political issues," she notes that "they're nowhere near as dangerous as those affecting mainland Yemen."
In fact, in 2018, the United Arab Emirates sent hundreds of troops to the island without Yemeni permission: Despite the two countries being allies, this led to power clashes. According to the BBC, Mainland Yemen's civil war can be traced back to 2011, when the country's then-president was forced to hand over power after 33 years, following pro-democracy protests. His successor, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, struggled to bring much-anticipated stability to Yemen, and fighting began in 2014 when the Houthi Shia Muslim rebel movement seized control of the capital, exiling Hadi in the process. The crisis escalated in 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, intervened against the Houthi rebels to restore Hadi's government. An estimated 100,000 people have died in the conflict.
Zu Beck says she doesn't regret her time on the island
She said she spent the last few weeks there reading, writing, and meditating a lot.
"All those things are good for your mental health, just kind of keeping you distracted and keeping you productive," she said. "I know that a lot of people have been struggling with productivity and feeling like nothing's moving forward, nothing's progressing because of the pandemic. But I've been trying to avoid that by just, you know, just doing little things like that."
She adds that her time on the island taught her not to rely on external distractions to find happiness.
"The atmosphere is kind of conducive to that because things just move quite slowly on the island. Life is peaceful and very calm — definitely nothing like the kind of life that I used to have back in London, just a couple of years ago," zu Beck said. "It feels like I'm living a completely different life."
"I feel like I'm emerging out of this crisis a bit stronger than I was, and I'm much more content with whatever I do," she said. "It's not about the external things, it's not about the distractions, it's all about what's in your head and what's in your heart. That's been quite enlightening. It's one of the things that we all know, but sometimes you kind of really have to live it and experience it to truly believe it."
When asked whether she would make the decision of staying in Socotra again, given what she knows about the pandemic now, she says "The luxury of hindsight is a beautiful thing, but you know how they say, 'all's well that ends well.'"
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