OVERVIEW

Somalia is a large island (about a million sq km, or 400,000 sq mi; a bit larger than Sumatra or Borneo), southeast of our Somalia; it's the floor of our Arabian Sea.

To the north and west is the huge, deep Eurafrasian Ocean, where (on Earth) our Old World would be. To the south and east is most of Abyssia's land; Somalia's on the edge, and may culturally be something of a backward frontier.

TOPOGRAPHY

Not much! The mainland is low--all flat or rolling hills. Long ridges do parallel Chain Sound in the north, and fuse to form a low divide in the south. But only Somalia's satellite islands have mountains of any height--Owen in the north and Amirante in the south are both rugged, as is Vema Island to the southeast.

CLIMATE

Abyssia's Somalia is climatically very unlike Earth's. Located further south than our Somalia (straddling the equator) and without Earth's great deserts near it, this Somalia is nearly unbroken rainforest--more Congolese or Amazonian than Somalian.

The woods do open up a bit in the far north, where summers are rainy but winters are dry and sunny. But most of the mainland is so equatorial it's rainy year round. In the far south around Cape Alphonse, there's a dry season again, out of phase with the north.

This is even truer on...

AMIRANTE

Amirante Island is a must-see for the visitor. This narrow island 400 km long has peaks over a mile high and coastal cliffs up to a kilometer high along parts of its eastern shore. Actually they're much taller than that: under the surface, they plummet four more kilometers down, into the Seychelle Trench. Even the visible parts are quite a sight, striped with waterfalls and green with hanging forest.

The underwater portion--at least the first few hundred meters--are equally impressive for divers: vertical reef gardens.

Amirante Island makes its own weather: it's so rugged it snags clouds and forces rain from them, supporting cool misty cloudforest high up and muggy rainforest on the east coast. The west varies but is generally drier; from groves and meadows in the south to open savanna and even red rock canyons in parts of the northwest, in the rainshadow of the island's spine.

THE CARLSBERG AND MADDINGLEY ISLANDS

Off Somalia's northeast coast is a broad complex of narrow, winding, ridged islands and reefs--hundreds of them, in a maze 1000 km long and half as wide.

Both above and below the waterline this labyrinth is exuberant with life. Islands look like green nappy mushrooms, with trees almost to the waterline; coral reefs flourish below.

THE ARABIAN ARCHIPELAGO

Much further offshore, over a thousand km east of Somalia, lies the Arabian Archipelago. Two chains of islets form a V shape: the Maldives and the Arabian Chain. All of these are, like Somalia itself, low islands with verdant forest, ringed in coral reefs--not so different from Earth's Maldive Islands (located just a few hundred kilometers to the east; on Abyssia, of course, they're a deep trench).

MADAGASCAR ISLANDS

A thousand km south of Amirante and Alphonse, there are some low desert islands, just east of the Madagascar Deep. How many islands? How big? I'm not sure. The shapes and locations on the map shouldn't be taken too seriously. Every atlas I've consulted has had a different configuration here.

All I am sure of is that these are low islands, nowhere rising more than 1-200 meters and perhaps little more than another maze of reefs. That has ecological implications. At this latitude, around 20 south, tropical rains will fall only for a few months in high summer; the rest of the year, such islands need mountains to force air up, generate clouds and wring rain from them. These dwarfed Madagascars, no matter what their exact configuration, just won't be high enough to snatch rain; so they'll be scrubby and fairly dry.

VEMA and the ARGO REEFS

These islands, on the edge of the Somalia map, are just off Chagosia, and will be dealt with on that page. If I ever get to write that page...

The following route snakes around Abyssia's major lands; italicized names have no pages yet.

the Lena Is. (brr!) - the Greek Is. - Atlantis -- Azorea -- Nazca and Chilea -- Morningtonia -- Agassiz -- South Pacifica -- East Pacifica -- Hawaiian Sea -- Pacifica Desert -- Filipinia -- Vanuatu and Banda Is. -- Tasman Is. -- Diamantina Pen. -- Whartonia -- Chagosia -- Somalia -- Mascarenia -- Crozetia -- Weddellia -- Argenta -- Pernambuco -- Angolia -- Tristania -- Agulhas -- Natalia --

Abyssia's homepage - map - (don't click yet) peoples of Abyssia - (don't click yet) Abyssia's evolution - regional tours - (don't click yet) Gazetteer

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