Metema
It's late afternoon when I cross the border and so I decide to stay in Metema. Border towns are always odd and this one is no exception. Against the advice of the hotel owner, I venture out after dark and find a little bar and chat with some 20-somethings. It prickles in every sentence, just how different this country is to the Arabic world I have just left. As yet I cannot articulate what that is. The Ethiopians have a barely-contained energy and an inner world full of pride and conflicts. Maybe it's a consequence of the dense population. The pride comes from being the only country in the continent never colonised. An outpost of Christianity in one of its fiercest forms. The conflict comes from being one of the poorest, torn apart by civil war and famine in the last half of the 20th century and used as a Cold War proxy battleground. I play pool and drink my first beer for a month. They are drawn to me and want to know all about me while simultaneously resenting my affluent freedom. After an hour or two one of them says "Time's Up" in an oddly aggressive way and I make an exit. Four of them walk with me and I have to stamp down on the feeling that they will attack me on one of the unlit streets. They misdirect me to my guesthouse - I don't know whether it is intentional or not - but fortunately I know where I am going.
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| Breakfast in Metema |
The lady who makes the fuul for breakfast almost screams in fright when I appear before her and then spends the rest of the time giggling about me with her friends. Berkem tries to sell me some lottery numbers and slips me a note saying he loves me. The owner of my guesthouse tells me we are brothers and suggests I take his sister with me - she is one of the most beautiful willowy women I have ever seen. He wants a large tip when I change some dollars with a man I call using his phone. When I refuse he paces around the courtyard muttering oaths and will not shake my hand as I leave.
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| Metema |
Gondar
I ride up into the mountains four hours to Gondar. After the stark desert moonscapes I have been traversing for months, the sheer abundance and drama of the landscape is breathtaking. I see flowers.
I ride up into the mountains four hours to Gondar. After the stark desert moonscapes I have been traversing for months, the sheer abundance and drama of the landscape is breathtaking. I see flowers.
Solitude is a distant memory. Even on the most apparently remote stretch of road, if I stop, twenty people materialise, hands out asking for money or pens or food with an off-putting demanding sense of entitlement. Ethiopia is a challenge to my sense of right and wrong. Giving to beggars leads to a dependency and I give to organisations not individuals but as clear as I feel about that, it weighs on me.
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| On the road to Gondar |
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| On the road to Gondar |
I check into Yohannes Guesthouse, a compound with a nice garden to pitch my tent in. Yohannes is a friendly helpful man and the climate is like heaven - sunny and fresh during the day and cool at night. The first afternoon there is an almighty hailstorm - the first falling water I have seen in 5 months.
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First rain in 5 months (Hail in fact)
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Normally at this point I would buy a SIM card for the country but with the recent unrest around the elections (a lot of people have died in clashes with the army) the government has switched off the 3G and a mobile is only usable for calls. Apparently also the government didn't want to pay the bill to Ethiocom. Win-win. After a week Dr. Abi is elected. He is Oromo, an ethnic group who had been suffering a lack of representation and in whose area much of the unrest had been taking place. His wife is from Gondar i.e. from the dominant Amara group, so most people are very happy with the outcome and the tensions in the country abate a little. A few days later they turn the 3G back on.
I meet Paulo, a 55-year-old biker from Padova who has been on the road for seven years.
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| Inscription on Paulo's bike |
He is absolutely lovely - He's Italian after all - with a healthy dose of crazy - and helps me with some bike issues. He has earned the nickname 'trashman' amongst overlanders because he is a master of improvising and manages to somehow keep his bike and gear going with bits and pieces he finds along the way. When we discover that my battery is not charging he helps me identify that the problem is the regulator and that I may be able to use one from the little Bajaj clown car/motorbike that Yohannes drives.
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Improvising a new regulator from a Bajaj
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The scent of Christianity is stronger here than in any other country I have visited, forged into a particularly ritualistic form by the proximity of fundamental Islam to the west, east and north. There is an equivalent of the Aden (Call to Prayer) which unfortunately has none of the mystery and beauty of the muezzins and I wince at the passionless toy voices constantly wavering off key. It doesn't help that it starts around 4am and moans and drones on for several hours.
Christianity does have its advantages however, idolatry being a case in point. I spend happy hours admiring the gloriously naïve and warm pictures adorning the walls of the serene Debre Birhan Selassie (church) with its garden overflowing with intensely coloured noisy birds.
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| Debre Birhan Selassie |
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| Debre Birhan Selassie |
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| Debre Birhan Selassie |
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| Debre Birhan Selassie |
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| Angels on the ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie |
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| Debre Birhan Selassie |
One of the truly amazing things about my journey is seeing the progression of cultures and landscapes in an almost unbroken line from my doorstep in London across Europe through the Middle East and now on down through Africa. Most often these show me the nonsense of borders and how peoples and places flow into one another and overlap creating constantly evolving hybrids.
Sometimes however there are stark contrasts and of all of the hundreds of border crossings I have made over the years, Ethiopia is the biggest readjustment. In Sudan I had become used to a sense of honour in business dealings. I never asked for a price because it was always fair and the same for everyone.
Too many Ethiopians see Farangi as walking ATMs and see epic overcharging as perfectly acceptable. I learn this the hard way when I go to get my temporary puncture repair more permanently fixed. After the work is done I innocently ask for the bill and they want 3500 birr - about 130 dollars. This for a job that I was expecting might cost me 20 or 30 dollars tops.
Dani, my negotiator recommended by Yohannes is a waste of skin and sides with the mechanic and I find myself alone against 18 suddenly surly men armed with tyre irons. I manage to bargain down to 100 dollars but I am also blaming myself for not having agreed a price in advance and leave with a bad taste in my mouth and a resignation to toughen up.
Unbelievably, the most-expensive-tyre-repair-in-africa goes flat the next day.
I go back ready for a fight. As it turns out it's an unrelated problem with the valve but I make damn sure they fix it for free and in fact the technician who does it is a nice guy who very creatively whittles a piece of rubber into the exact shape needed to make the seal. Little victories.
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| Improvising a new valve seal |
Gondar is where I finally meet the Nitty Gritty Nomads - four South African bikers who I have been in contact with since Khartoum. They've been on the road from Johannesburg for ten months. They started on four motorbikes but Istene crashed her bike after a month. She shows me her X-Rays showing an enormous bolt through her upper arm. She then switched to a car. Trent's bike died in Khartoum, which is where I met him. When they rock up to Yohannes' place, there is just one bike left, Mike's, Tom's is inoperable and is in the process of crushing a taxi's roof, location unknown as they got separated in a rainstorm. Also Istene has malaria and Tom has typhoid. Africa is not to be trifled with.
I have a memorably hard-to-remember evening on the tiles with Trent. Swilling Jumbos (0.4 litre draught beers), playing pool and finally running aground in a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar where we are serenaded by a mazunko (single string fiddle) player and a woman who sings like her life depends on it - which of course is the only way anyone should ever sing - improvising lyrics in Amharic about me and my journey. Now if only the priests could sing like that..
Simian Mountains
Simian Mountains
I have a race against time trying to find a new regulator for my bike before a trip up to the Simian mountains. Three of the Nittys (Tom is too weak from his typhoid), two cyclists from London, Zac and James, and I head north in Istene's car with Mike and I on our bikes. In the gnarly gateway town of Debark we pay our park entrance fees and engage a scout - a man with an AK47 who we are obliged to take with us. His name is Addis. We shoehorn him and his gun into the back of the car. He sleeps and lives in his blanket which quite possibly has never been washed and he farts prolifically so I am glad of my open-air form of transport.
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Our guard, Addis, Simian Mountains
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The mountains are stunningly beautiful, on a scale that stretches your perceptions, and are full of monkeys and outlandishly beautiful birds.
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Monkeys in the Simian Mountains
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| Monkeys in the Simian Mountains |
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| Simian Mountains |
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| Simian Mountains |
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| Istene, Simian Mountains |
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| Simian Mountains |
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| Simian Mountains |
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| Summit of Imet Gogo, 3926m, Simian Mountains |
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| Trent and Istene, Simian Mountains |
On the way back down, Addis gestures urgently for us to hide ourselves and we huddle behind a grassy knoll while he shouts challenges to some armed men he has spotted up ahead. There is a problem with bandits in these mountains but it's hard to know how he would differentiate a bandit from any other mountain dweller since so many people carry guns here. After twenty minutes or so of yells echoing back and forth across the crevasses, we are able to continue, now with Addis hurrying us a little. Happily this happens on the downhill stretch.
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| Waiting out the ambush, Simian Mountains |
As we return to our vehicles, it starts to rain heavily. We make a break for it in a pause but now it's late and the rain comes back, turning to ice. The track quickly becomes a river full of hidden boulders and with the sun now gone it becomes an intense battle to stay upright. The visibility is so bad I manage to pass Mike, with Zac on his pillion seat in the foetal position, without noticing and then we somehow find each other at the GPS position I am expecting our camp at Cheneek to be. There are no signs of habitability here and we struggle on, extremities numb wondering just how this will end. By a miracle, I spy a truck with its lights on illuminating a building and we make a beeline for it like moths to a flame. It turns out to be a lodge and they make us a fire in one of the outhouses.
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| Trying to get dry and warm, Simian Mountains |
All seven of us sleep in one tiny room, the rain thundering on the tin roof all night long and the next day we ride up further into the park, up beyond the snowline. We spot a rare Ethiopian wolf, also known as a Simian Fox - which is coloured like a fox and moves like a wolf. I have a lovely lingering encounter with a group of the endemic Walia (Ibex)
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| Walia (Ibex), Simian Mountains |
On some of the rougher inclines I can't help but stare at the trucks that battle like spawning salmon to make each crest. Often all 40-50 passengers have to get out and pull with ropes, usually laughing good-naturedly.
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| Simian Mountains |
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| Mike, Simian Mountains |
On the way back to Gondar, Mike and I are riding up ahead - it's a beautiful evening and the late light filters through the charcoal smoke and leafy meadows as we swoop and sway through the curves. We have to stay alert for the many obstacles. Ethiopians were never taught the Green Cross Code and amble guilelessly into the road when you least expect them to. Eratic driving, potholes and livestock are a constant threat too. At one stretch I narrowly avoid a sheep that bolts in front of me. I hear a dismal, slightly wet impact behind me and as Mike comes up alongside me I turn and ask him "Did you hit a sheep?" He nods expressionlessly. "Let's move" I say. No way do we want to get mixed up in a discussion of who's fault this is - we both have heard too many stories of how badly this can end.
Ten miles down the road I am flagged down by an armed policeman. Mike has gone on ahead and avoided this. The policeman yells at me "You are criminal! You kill sheep!" and the scene becomes absolute pandemonium. Maybe 300 villagers crushing around the bike. Some laughing. Some very agressive and shoving me. Some just plain insane and speaking in tongues. It takes all my will to stay calm. After a few minutes the car with Istene and Trent and the rest of them arrives and, with this reinforcement, we try to shout back at the challenges. They want me to pull over to the side of the road. I will not. Then they would really have me where they want me and God knows how much they might try to extort from me to pay for the sheep. I stay where I am, blocking the road and yell back that I did not hit a sheep and they can examine my bike and that they will find no traces of blood on it. Various random people do this. The policemen look nervously at the crowd and the traffic starting to build up, and after one of the most intense 20 minutes of my life, the crowd magically parts in front of us. I do not hesitate. I hit the gas.
Gondar
Gondar
Back in Gondar, I bid the Nittys and the cyclists a fond goodbye - they are all headed south and I am stranded with my latest wrinkle - despite my newly installed Bajaj regulator, my battery is still not charging. I find a local called Abraham in the market who helps me find a place to charge the battery and various other bits and pieces I need.
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Abraham, Gondar market
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He also takes me to little chat cafes and I have a couple of very pleasant afternoons chewing the leaves, which taste a lot less bitter if you have them with peanuts, and getting though my to-do list at a supernatural rate of knots. A lot like coca but actually a more friendly warm sort of experience.
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Chat, Gondar
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Finally I figure out that my alternator is burnt out - it literally looks like charcoal when I open up the case to investigate.
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Burned-out alternator, Gondar
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So it comes to this. One of the worst-case scenarios I imagined when planning my trip was having to obtain spares in either Sudan or Ethiopia with their notoriously bad postal services and heinous import taxes. As it turns out I now need to receive 5 different items - a fuel filter (from Northern England), a water filter (from Southern England) (the one I laboriously managed to receive in Jordan is faulty), a special reinforcement bracket to fix my shock absorber (from California), a new camera (from Germany) and now a regulator and stator to fix my faulty alternator. (Also from Germany)
For most of these I can wait til Addis Ababa, but without the alternator, I am going nowhere. I settle in for a wait.
Abraham takes me to a club to hear some Ethiopian music. People stare at me all evening and one of the performers sings a whole song in English directed at me - welcoming me and then asking me to give him a big tip.
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| Nightclub, Gondar |
Abraham is already getting free chat and drinks from me and of course I am paying farangi prices for everything so he is getting kickbacks from that. He fills up a memory stick with a bunch of Ethiopian music and overcharges me. Then one evening, when I don't feel like going out, he pressures me to give him money so he can go buy chat. I give him 20 birr and ignore his calls afterwards. Another unfortunate pattern in Ethiopia. Almost no-one does even the smallest favour without expecting money - even just asking directions - and no-one is upfront about it - they pretend to be friendly and then later start to wheedle for a tip. It leaves me resentful and makes it almost impossible to have simple interactions with locals.
I have arrived in Ethiopia at the end of Lent. It is a fasting period when no meat is eaten. When Easter comes, the town fills with nervous looking sheep and men shouldering sticks filled with rows of wriggling chickens. I come back to the guesthouse to find a man cutting the throats of 3 sheep suspended from a branch over my bike which is now covered in intestines and blood in addition to the oily mud from the Simian mountains.
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| Breaking the fast, Gondar |
I resign myself to being a civilian, without wheels, and book a trip to the Danakil Depression. It breaks my heart to travel the roads around the north by car, through the mountains to Aksum which I had eagerly anticipated from before my trip as some of the best biking roads in the world but I do quite enjoy taking in the view from a comfortable landcruiser, freed from having to keep my eyes on the road.
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| Dulet (sheep's stomach) for breakfast, Debark |
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| Debark |
Aksum
In Aksum I go visit the Stelae - like giant tombstones with oddly modernist decoration and false doors like the pharoanic ones in Egyptian tombs. The portentious collapse of the Great Stele was reputed to have caused the coming of Christianity to Ethiopia.
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| Great Stele, Aksum |
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| Stele, Aksum |
I share the ride from Debark to Aksum with Dennis and Maureen who are a German-Kenyan couple. He a water engineer in Zambia and she a criminal profiler for the Nairobi police. They are lovely and interesting and I learn a lot about Africa from them. It's another of the amazing privileges of my journey - I have met almost no straight-forward 'tourists' since leaving Egypt - everyone has been an ex-pat worker, volunteer or long-term overlander. So many interesting stories and characters - I could fill books.
On the streets, people call them "Pepsi and Mirinda"
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| Dennis and Maureen, Queen Sheba's bath, Aksum |
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| Aksum |
Aksum is a nice town with some interesting history. I take a look at Azana's inscription, a kind of Rosetta Stone that is written in Greek, Sabaean (Southern Arabian) and Ge'ez, the semitic liturgical linguistic precursor to Amharic. I wander the streets, take a look at the pretty churches
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| Aksum |
and watch some Esxesta (Serse'et in Tigray) dancing with its energetic upper-body spasms.
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| Culural performance, Aksum |
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| Shop, Aksum |
Mek'ele
On the drive to Mek'ele I talk music with the driver Imanuel. He recommends a few artists and I enjoy Helen Berhe, a female artist from Addis with Ethio-Jazz leanings and also Eyasu Berhe from the civil war days, a symbol of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) - lovely old crackly recordings employing real instruments - way too much Ethiopian music is made with sterile 80s synths, which is a shame as the singers are often amazing and the rhythms and melodies quite alien and infectious.
On the drive to Mek'ele I talk music with the driver Imanuel. He recommends a few artists and I enjoy Helen Berhe, a female artist from Addis with Ethio-Jazz leanings and also Eyasu Berhe from the civil war days, a symbol of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) - lovely old crackly recordings employing real instruments - way too much Ethiopian music is made with sterile 80s synths, which is a shame as the singers are often amazing and the rhythms and melodies quite alien and infectious.
In Mek'ele I prepare for my Danakil trip with fuul and clovey shay by the bus station. This becomes a regular haunt and I have a lovely smiley non-verbal relationship with the lady who runs the stall.
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| Fuul lady, bus station, Mek'ele |
Afar
We set off in 8 landcruisers and head into Afar. It gets both beautiful and hot. Really hot. The Danakil Depression is the hottest inhabited place on Earth, although after Sudan I am game.
We set off in 8 landcruisers and head into Afar. It gets both beautiful and hot. Really hot. The Danakil Depression is the hottest inhabited place on Earth, although after Sudan I am game.
We drive out onto Lake Karum, a salt lake, and I walk barefoot across the crunchy wet crystals, my footfalls breaking through to iron oxides which languorously plume around my toes in mystical clouds the colour of dried blood.
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
I climb an island made of exquisite fragile mineral sculptures. Honey wine and Ouzo for sundowners.
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
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| Guard, Lake Karum, Afar |
In the evening I go with a couple of Germans to drink beer at the nearby army camp and watch WWE wrestling and find myself drawn into the absurd story of the fight despite myself.
We sleep outside in the little village of Hamedela on string-strung beds. It starts to get almost bearably cool with a little wind that picks up around 3am.
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Hamedela, Afar
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At dawn I watch a camel train carrying salt pass.
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| Camel train carrying salt, Hamedela |
We head back out onto the lake
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
and visit an island where chemicals such as sodium chloride, iron, manganese and sulphur bubble up from the earth's mantle creating a riot of colour like landlocked coral
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
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| Lake Karum, Afar |
We visit a highly toxic pool, littered with the bodies of unwary birds.
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| Dead bird, Volcanic pool, Lake Karum, Afar |
and somewhere, nowhere, on this alien planet, we find people toiling in the crushing heat to cut bricks of salt, the white gold that they have harvested for millennia, that used to be worth more than its weight in gold. Now they get paid 70 birr, about 2 dollars per camel load.
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| Salt harvesting, Lake Karum, Afar |
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| Salt harvesting, Lake Karum, Afar |
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| Salt harvesting, Lake Karum, Afar |
The drivers race each other to Abaala, a steady stream of chat sticks flying out from the window of the car in front.
It's a beautiful village to wake in.
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| Abaala, Afar |
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| Abaala, Afar |
It's a long drive to the volcano, Erta'Ale, but a beautiful one
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| Sodom Apples and Dragonblood tree, Afar |
It takes us across one of the most inhospitable regions in the world
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| On the road to Erta'Ale |
and yet even here kids appear (from where?!) to beg for money
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| On the road to Erta'Ale |
After the long slither across the sands, we have several hours of jarring 'Ethiopian Massage' crossing the dried lava flows until we finally arrive at basecamp shortly before dusk.
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| Erta'Ale from basecamp |
After dinner we walk 4 hours up the twisted rock in a moonless night. We are just a little bubble of hushed humanity with our torchlight feebly challenging the blackness and razor-sharp basalt as we ascend to the abyss.
At first the smoke from the crater obscures everything, there is just a demonic red glow and every time the wind changes we all gasp for breath through the scarves wrapped around our heads, our eyes streaming and lungs smarting from the noxious chemicals spewed up from the depths. We run from one vantage point to another, perilously near the crumbling edge of the pit. For a while it's farcical, all this insane travel to be gassed, blinded and roasted, but after a time there are gaps in the smoke and we are rewarded with glimpses of the seething hell below. Rivers and waterfalls of lava. It is irresistible.
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| Crater, Erta'Ale |
We sleep just below the crater on the mattresses that the camels carried. After all the warnings of how dangerous these fumes are, it is pretty absurd that we don't sleep a little further away but hey, we survive. Even despite the Chinese family who form an impressively virtuoso barbershop quartet of snoring inches from my head.
We start our descent around 4am and as the light arrives we start to see the strange territory we have been traversing.
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| Cooled lava flows, Erta'Ale |
Back at basecamp, the drivers pour buckets of water over us and for a few seconds we feel almost comfortable. We eat shakshuka prepared by the bubbly cook Shaka Zulu. We undo the whole journey.
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| On the road from Erta'Ale, Afar |
We stop at Eript for a glorious swim in Lake Afrera's hot waters. There is even an especially hot pool heated from underground lava I manage a few minutes in. After this my body goes into perspiration overdrive. I literally have never watched so much water flowing out of my skin. I drink litre after litre of water.
Mek'ele
Mek'ele
Back in Mek'ele, solo again, I visit the TPLF museum, a fascinating document in pictures of the civil war that tore the country apart from the mid seventies to the early nineties. The communist Derg government against the mostly Arabic opposition from Tigray, Eritrea (a country created by the conflict) and the Somali region. But that's to vastly oversimplify. It was a proxy battle in the Cold War. The Derg, a Marxist-Leninist group who overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974 were massively supported by the Soviet Union, North Korea and Cuba to repel a Somali invasion and the Arabic opposition were also a Marxist-Leninist setup backed by the US, China and West Germany. In the later years, Israel got involved on the side of the Derg in an attempt to limit the Arabic influence in the region.
My only image of Ethiopia at this time was through the lens of Live Aid and Simon le-Bon crooning on Christmas singles.
600,000 people died in the armed struggle and one million in the famine it contributed to.
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| TPLF museum, Mek'ele |
Women were a large part of the fighting forces but the Church and Mosque grew uneasy with this and their numbers were limited later on.
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| TPLF museum, Mek'ele |
The usual edginess of interacting with the locals continues in Mek'ele. At my breakfast fuul stall a lady across the road makes goggle shapes with her fingers like a child making fun of my glasses. Ten minutes later she comes over to me demanding money. A twenty-something man rushes up to me and bites the piece of bread I have partly in my mouth. Not sure I get this sense of humour. A guy called Sami sits with me and tells me how he is studying the saxophone and repeatedly asks is there is anything he can do for me. Of course he is hoping for some tips. All the time everyone in the vicinity stares at me. Only if I directly meet their gaze and stare back very deliberately do they look away.
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| Near straw market, Mek'ele |
Takatisfi - Tigray Churches
I take a minibus north past Wukro to the Takatisfi region where there are four churches I want to visit. At first I am shadowed by a gaggle of schoolgirls shrieking but when I get out into the countryside I find myself mostly alone. It's absolutely lovely here walking in the pretty countryside.
I take a minibus north past Wukro to the Takatisfi region where there are four churches I want to visit. At first I am shadowed by a gaggle of schoolgirls shrieking but when I get out into the countryside I find myself mostly alone. It's absolutely lovely here walking in the pretty countryside.
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| Mikael Meka'e church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
These churches were all built in hidden and defensible positions, hewn at least partly from the rock.
I meet Haile Mariyam and his family and finally have a lovely and simple interaction with friendly locals who don't ask me for money, just make me coffee and sit and talk.
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(right to left) Tsige, her brother Haile Mariyam and his wife
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Monkeys skitter all over the place. At one point I feel rain and then we realise it is the monkeys peeing up in the tree above.
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| Mikael Meka'e church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Petros w Paulos church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| near Petros w Paulos church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| stairs to Petros w Paulos church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| entourage, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Mikael Milhaizengi church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Cactus flowers, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Takatisfi, Tigray |
At the last church, the priest tells me I cannot use flash to take photos of the carved crosses in the ceiling because it will 'push the crosses up'. He says I must not go too near the altar and the 'holy of holies' because 'Jesus will eat fire'. A few minutes later, having pondered the decent tip I have given him he says it fine for me to use the flash.
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| Medhane Alem Kesho church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Medhane Alem Kesho church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Medhane Alem Kesho church, Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Takatisfi, Tigray |
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| Priest, Takatisfi, Tigray |
It's getting late by the time I make it make to the road and finding a bus going south is tricky. I end up hitching a lift with a priest in his landcruiser. His name is Abba (father) Gebre and he is the dean of Queen Mary college in Wukro which teaches IT and Agriculture. He is absolutely lovely and when we arrive in the dark at Wukro he drives all over town, his hazard lights on trying to flag cars down to take me to Mek'ele. Eventually he finds me a couple in a petrol station who agree to take me and they are also lovely. We chat happily the whole way. They run a stationery store in Mek'ele and are just returning from supplying a military base. All in all the day restores my faith in the friendliness of the Ethiopians. Maybe I just need to spend more time with middle class Ethiopians!
Lalibela
The next day at 5am I get the first of 3 minibuses to Lalibela. The first one smells like poo. The second one smells like pee and the final one like vomit and I wonder if there is some obscure Ethiopian bye-law that controls this olfactory delineation. The drivers cross themselves before departing and especially dangerous sections. In the worst places they put their crucifixes in their mouths. Doesn't stop them texting and talking on their phones while careening past lumbering trucks with no margin for error.
The second bus, from Alamat to Weldiya, has 24 people squeezed into the space of a double bed. At one place a girl gets on with a skirt full of toasted seeds which she the puts into bags and dispenses. Of course I get a lapful on one large pothole. The bus has one of the best sound systems I have heard in a vehicle - rich deep low end and high-end detail to make a muso cry. We stop several times to reattach some large metallic object that falls sonorously off the underside. Possibly they should spend some of the money they invested in the sound system on maintenance.
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| Sugarcane sellers - near Kulmersk, bus journey to Lalibela |
While we are waiting for the bus to fill in Weldiya, the driver announces that the fare will be 100 birr instead of the 75 birr agreed. Everyone gets off. After much discussion they revise the price to 80 birr and everyone gets back on.
Once underway, the woman behind me talks nonstop for 3 hours with literally every sentence containing the word 'farangi' and ending in peals of giggles. A man sits in the window seat next to me then gets his son on his lap and we engage in a fight for real estate. I am an amateur and end up half in the aisle but then at the next stop 20 people get on and sit in the aisle and I have to push back.
I make friends by offering around nuts and raisins. I am happy to discover that my favourite Arabic word, for raisins, zbeep is also understood here. A man in the back row brings out his mazunko and attempts to serenade me as we lurch along the rutted dirt road. There is a constant passing of black plastic bags back to various children who stoically uphold the bye-laws. I chat with an English teacher called Demeke Gelaw. His English is appalling but we manage to make a sort of conversation.
The scenery is possibly the most beautiful of my entire trip - the 'road' being the roughest of rough mountain tracks - hard to believe anyone would run a bus service along it at all. I gaze out at the little villages, my heart in my mouth. The villagers gaze back mostly shocked to see a white face, some even holding out hands for money as we speed past. The boy next to me gives me one of his sugar cane sticks and I tear it apart with my teeth drooling sweet juice all over myself.
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| Mazunko player, bus journey to Lalibela |
Arriving in Lalibela in the dark, Demeke tells me that a Bajaj to my hotel should costs 5 birr or 10 birr maximum. The drivers all insist, with malice in their eyes, it is 100 birr and what with the 14 hours of travel I lose my temper and swear blue murder at them. I set off on foot into the night and they all follow me telling me I am going the wrong way and that the road is not safe. I tell them to go fuck themselves. Eventually they give up and leave me be and after a little more angry trudging I find a nicer driver who takes me for 20 birr.
I wander around the pleasant little hill station. Pleasant apart from the main square which is a gauntlet of grifters.
Zaritu, the lady who runs a balcony restaurant called Segenet is a welcome breath of fresh air and I chat a long evening with her. I tell her how I find it hard to find the Ethiopian food that I enjoy in London and describe the cabbage and spicy lentil and split-pea dishes I like. She says this is called beyenet and is a fasting (vegetarian) dish which nobody orders in the carnivorous frenzy that follows Easter. She makes it specially for me and it is delicious.
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| Roadworks, Lalibela |
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| Lalibela |
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| Tukul house, Lalibela |
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| Lalibela |
The cultural museum is very well presented and has some interesting exhibits about Aksumite architecture and its origins.
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| Christian writings, Cultural museum, Lalibela |
There is an extortionate $50 fee to see the churches here. Apparently the bishop who raised the price from $20 to $50 recently absconded to the US after emptying the bank account. I agonise about whether to pay it. Sometimes you can find someone who has a few days left on their ticket which lasts for 5 days but I'm not in luck. In the end I pay up.
The churches, carved directly from the pink rock, are wonderful.
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| Drums, Bet Medhane Alem, Lalibela |
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| Window, Bet Maryam, Lalibela |
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| Bet Maryam, Lalibela |
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| Bet Maryam, Lalibela |
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| Bet Maryam, Lalibela |
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| Bet Maryam, Lalibela |
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| Bet Giyorgis, Lalibela |
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| Priest, Bet Giyorgis, Lalibela |
A large part of the atmosphere of these buildings is finding and losing your way through the rough tunnels that connect them
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| Tunnel to Bet Giyorgis, Lalibela |
In one crawlspace, in the pitch black, as the leathery wings of bats brush my ears, I come upon a pair of engineers measuring the tunnel. They are overjoyed to see me as they have no torch, just a flickering candle. They press me into service with mine while they complete their work
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Engineers, tunnel under Bet Merkorios
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| tunnel under Bet Merkorios |
At Bet Rufael there is a dramatic drawbridge over a chasm to the door
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| Bet Rufael, Lalibela |
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| Priest, Bet Rufael, Lalibela |
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| Holy Communion Preparation Place, near Bet Abba Libanos, Lalibela |
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| Steps to Bet Merkorios, Lalibela |
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| Bet Abba Libanos, Lalibela |
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| Painting, Bet Amanuel, Lalibela |
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| Painting, Bet Amanuel, Lalibela |
Gondar
I take another another absurd set of bus journeys back to Gondar. The novelty has worn off now and although I'm glad I experienced a little bus travel in Africa, I am so ready to be back on my bike. However there has been a big issue with my parcel coming from Germany. Despite my clear instruction about urgency, the idiots in Bavaria who sent it used a DHL service that, rather than couriering it the whole way, hands it over to Ethiopia Post on arrival in the country. This costs me a whole two weeks and it is only because of my negotiating the deepest passages of the Kafkaesque Ethiopian postal system that I get my parts at all. I make 3 or 4 calls every day for a week to a friendly lifeline of an official, called Ato Samuel, at Addis Ababa airport and eventually haggle the parcels way past customs.
In the meantime I finally visit Gondar's famous castles. For a European who has seen a lot of castles back home, they are not hugely impressive but it is interesting to think that here and Lalibela are basically as far south as any real lasting architecture exists in Africa.
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| Royal Enclosure, Gondar |
I mooch around Gondar for a few days, hanging out with Yohannes and getting to know his family. He takes me to where some friends are building a house in the traditional style, closely spacing branches and then filling the gaps with mud. I arrange to help with the construction. In the end they have no water to make the mud.
I have my other packages and I take my time fitting the new fuel filter and shock absorber bracket methodically and do a few other small jobs.
I meet some absolutely lovely people passing through, such as Gulcin and Ferry, a couple from Turkey and The Netherlands respectively, on motorbikes, coming to the end of a year and a half around Africa. Gulcin is one of the very few solo female motorbike travellers I have met, having spent most of the last seven years on the road. She is a force of nature.
I meet Victoria and Christian, from Bueno Aires and San Salvador respectively who I click with very easily. They are both filmmakers interested in the civil war in El Salvador. He has made documentaries about it, she has written a book on it. They live in San Francisco. We make plans to work together in the future.
I meet David from Heidelberg. He is travelling alone in a huge truck. He's been on the road 2 and a half years. Started in Morocco with his wife and daughter and, by the time he'd spent a year and a half making it all the way down the west coast, they left him. He has had a rough time in Ethiopia. There was a road accident in which a young boy died. He suspects the boy was pushed. He narrowly avoided being lynched by the local villagers and spent 3 months in prison. His descriptions of Ethiopian prison send shudders down my spine. He plans to join a hippy commune in Leipzig ("The new Berlin") when he gets back and sell cotton that he can source from here.
I meet Blanca, who has cycled all the way from London. She is originally from Spain but has lived in London a long time and has recently retired from her NHS job at the centre for tropical diseases. She's an inspiring very positive lady and we get on famously.
I hear a lilting farangi voice in the guesthouse and it is Julieta, another Argentinian. She has been travelling solo up from South Africa for a couple of months and is unequivocally from my tribe. An art director for theatre she has travelled all over the world with productions in a similar sense to the touring I have done with bands. She is lateral, creativity pours from her in half-crazy streams and she has a connected-ness that lights me up inside. She is basically Italian. She's also very easy on the eye which doesn't hurt. We chat chat chat in conversations that bend my brain and we laugh a lot. For a short while we are going the same way and the very next day providence finally relents and sends me both my spare parts and my camera which a kind overlander couple, Gus and Franziska, have brought from Germany for me. It is like all my birthdays and Christmases have come at once. I am so happy. I spend a few hours fitting the new stator and regulator and suddenly I have a working motorbike. It's been a long 4 weeks. I parcel up Julieta on my passenger seat and we head south to Gorgora on the north of Lake Tana.
Gorgora - Laka Tana
Gorgora - Laka Tana
We camp right on the lake. It's paradise. We wake to one of the richest dawn choruses I have ever heard and when I unzip the tent door the sunrise that greets us ties our tongues for a long while.
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| Sunrise over lake Tana, source of the Blue Nile, Gorgora |
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| Lake Tana, Gorgora |
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| Julieta, Gorgora |
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| Gorgora |
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| Lake Tana, Gorgora |
We head back north, stopping briefly in Gondar to find Yohannes with a big lump on his head and all wrapped up like a Roman emperor - he drank a lot of whisky last night and fell over.
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| Yohannes, Yohannes guest house, Gondar |
On to the north and, despite having travelled this road in a car just a couple of weeks before, I am struck by just why exactly I travel on a motorbike. To be present in the landscape, not just an observer of it. To feel the miles and breathe the air. Stunning.
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| Julieta, Debark-Shire road |
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| Debark-Shire road |
Shire
Beautiful roads are also often slow roads and we don't make it all the way to Aksum. It's an inky black night and above the barely-visible silhouettes of the ranges I can see the Southern Cross for the first time. "My stars!" says Julieta. We overnight in Shire an hour or so short of Aksum which turns out to be a lovely town. Not one annoying grifter, just some very friendly sweet people in the hotel and places we eat (Enjira with salad and tahina... I so missed tahina!). Even a bunch of young guys who talk to me in the street while I'm waiting with the bike are just interested as opposed to pushy. We visit a local church which has a beautiful graveyard and paintings
Beautiful roads are also often slow roads and we don't make it all the way to Aksum. It's an inky black night and above the barely-visible silhouettes of the ranges I can see the Southern Cross for the first time. "My stars!" says Julieta. We overnight in Shire an hour or so short of Aksum which turns out to be a lovely town. Not one annoying grifter, just some very friendly sweet people in the hotel and places we eat (Enjira with salad and tahina... I so missed tahina!). Even a bunch of young guys who talk to me in the street while I'm waiting with the bike are just interested as opposed to pushy. We visit a local church which has a beautiful graveyard and paintings
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| Graves, Abune Aregawi church, Shire |
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| Abune Aregawi church, Shire |
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| Detail of painting, Abune Aregawi church, Shire |
Of course, the universe will not allow everything to go perfectly and just as I am all packed-up and ready to leave I get a weird warning of electrical problems on the bike and simultaneously notice that oil is leaking from the alternator cover. I again curse the Bavarians who sent me the stator. They didn't package the gasket seal properly and it arrived ripped. I had hoped for the best but clearly it has failed. A friendly guy, in the crowd that has gathered, offers to go to a shop to get some instant gasket and dutifully returns with exactly what I need in about 15 minutes. He doesn't even ask for money for his trouble. In the meantime I research the electrical warning and figure out that it is connected with the wireless box that I broke with my Evel Knievel antics in Sudan and with a bit of gaffer tape origami I am able to make it shut up, at least for the moment. I check the oil and I am not losing a huge amount so we can at least continue to Mek'ele today.
Mek'ele
Mek'ele
Julieta goes off on a trip to the Danakil and I deal with the leak and take a day just very easy - I have been full-tilt for over a week what with one thing and another and I feel infinitely more human for a day off. It's one of the odd things about long-term travelling, you have to remember to give yourself a holiday from your holiday occasionally.
In the evening, over Shiru and Walia beer, I get talking to a 70-something Dutch man who has lived here since 2004. He is married to an Ethiopian woman with whom he has 2 biological children and 5 adopted. He tells me the church is partly to blame for all the begging which it encourages and also that it does not distribute alms in the way that the European churches do. I suggest that maybe a habit formed from all the foreign aid sent here in the late seventies and eighties and that a generation of Ethiopians grew up seeing a foreigner as a kind of leprechaun with a convenient pot of gold. He agrees, saying he hadn't really looked at it like that before. Where he lives, in Adwa, the unemployment is 50%. His parents-in-law still work their land even into their eighties and how much food they have is entirely dependent on how much rain comes and that is becoming more unpredictable every year. He says the government forces the farmers to buy fertilizers they don't need - they have a ready supply of animal dung after all - if they don't use the environmentally unsound fertilizer they are not allowed to buy the teff seed that is their basic staple from which enjira bread is made.
The following day I speed off into the lovely countryside to visit one of the more intriguing and remote Tigray churches near Abiy Addi. I pass a couple of packs of very state-of-the-art looking cyclists in training
In the evening, over Shiru and Walia beer, I get talking to a 70-something Dutch man who has lived here since 2004. He is married to an Ethiopian woman with whom he has 2 biological children and 5 adopted. He tells me the church is partly to blame for all the begging which it encourages and also that it does not distribute alms in the way that the European churches do. I suggest that maybe a habit formed from all the foreign aid sent here in the late seventies and eighties and that a generation of Ethiopians grew up seeing a foreigner as a kind of leprechaun with a convenient pot of gold. He agrees, saying he hadn't really looked at it like that before. Where he lives, in Adwa, the unemployment is 50%. His parents-in-law still work their land even into their eighties and how much food they have is entirely dependent on how much rain comes and that is becoming more unpredictable every year. He says the government forces the farmers to buy fertilizers they don't need - they have a ready supply of animal dung after all - if they don't use the environmentally unsound fertilizer they are not allowed to buy the teff seed that is their basic staple from which enjira bread is made.
Abiy Addi
The following day I speed off into the lovely countryside to visit one of the more intriguing and remote Tigray churches near Abiy Addi. I pass a couple of packs of very state-of-the-art looking cyclists in training
It's pure pleasure to be on the bike out here with no luggage.
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| Mek'ele - Abiy Addi road |
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| Mek'ele - Abiy Addi road |
The church, actually a monastery, is set 300 metres up a sheer cliff and is reached by a series of tunnels and bridges.
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| Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Detail of fresco, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Priest, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Drums and rattles, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Frescos, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Detail of fresco, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Detail of fresco, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
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| Fresco, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
The bells are chunks of rock from the hillside and sound with a pure sparkling resonance across the plain.
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| Bells, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
The priest goes to his little house, also nestled into the rockface and brings me some collo sinday (barley)seeds to eat.
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| Priest and his house, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
Then I go and eat with some men at the foot of the rockface. They are making K'cha - a thick crusty bread - they spread great dollops of batter onto hot sheets of iron - very good and filling.
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| Making K'cha, Abba Yohani monastery, near Abiy Addi, Tigray |
The men are very good-natured and friendly. A dwarf priest comes along and the men play with him like a toy, pinning him to the ground in a headlock and giggling.
But not everyone is good-natured. As I pass back through Abiy Addi, a man steps out of a cafe and kicks me. I pull a 180 and charge him down. He jumps back out of the way with a satisfyingly scared look on his face.
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| Road from Abiy Addi to Wukro, Tigray |
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| Road from Abiy Addi to Wukro, Tigray |
Wukro
In Wukro, I meet up, for the third time, with Abba Gebre and he shows me his college. It's an idyllic campus with lush gardens. They make their own cheese and honey. He wants me to return and teach English. Tempting.
In Wukro, I meet up, for the third time, with Abba Gebre and he shows me his college. It's an idyllic campus with lush gardens. They make their own cheese and honey. He wants me to return and teach English. Tempting.
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| Abba Gebre, Wukro, Tigray |
Mek'ele
Julieta comes back from her trip and tells me about the four Russians who loved her for being from Argentina and sang old Peronista songs to her while spending hours posing their girlfriends like pornstars in front of the sights.
Julieta comes back from her trip and tells me about the four Russians who loved her for being from Argentina and sang old Peronista songs to her while spending hours posing their girlfriends like pornstars in front of the sights.
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| Julieta, Mek'ele |
Lalibela
Taking the backroads to Lalibela via Sekota is to step outside time, we slither in the bulldust, back and forth and up and down the heartbreaking landscape and stop in a little town where the central statue has incongruous murals of reggae stars. A man in a woman's dress comes up to us and spews a stream of vitriol at us and walks away. He comes back after a little while and steals my half-finished coffee. The buna maker shoos him away and shrugs her shoulders apologetically at me. A gaggle of priests pass by and women come to them and kiss their wooden crosses. People come sit near us, not to greet us exactly but more to show solidarity and to get a free show.
Taking the backroads to Lalibela via Sekota is to step outside time, we slither in the bulldust, back and forth and up and down the heartbreaking landscape and stop in a little town where the central statue has incongruous murals of reggae stars. A man in a woman's dress comes up to us and spews a stream of vitriol at us and walks away. He comes back after a little while and steals my half-finished coffee. The buna maker shoos him away and shrugs her shoulders apologetically at me. A gaggle of priests pass by and women come to them and kiss their wooden crosses. People come sit near us, not to greet us exactly but more to show solidarity and to get a free show.
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| Backroad from Mek'ele to Lalibela - near Sekota |
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| Backroad from Mek'ele to Lalibela - near Sekota |
We stop a kilometre or so from a little village and the entire child population sprints all the way to meet us. The put their hands out and say "money!" It's not a friendly request but a sullen demand and expectation. One asks for food and I share my bread with him. He does not say thank-you. Their hands are all over the bike. We go to drive off and for a moment the bike stutters. Fortunately it is just a blip and I am very glad not to breakdown just there and then.
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| Backroad from Mek'ele to Lalibela - near Sekota |
In Sekota we stop for lunch. I sit a metre away from the bike, watching it like a hawk, but still when I go to leave a teenager brings me my knife - "baby thief" he says - he wants 100 birr reward. I give him 20 and I can't be sure it wasn't him who was the thief.
In Lalibela, while Julieta visits the central churches, I go to one out in the countryside, taking the turn at Bilbala onto a tiny goat track up into the hills to Inbrahan.
In Lalibela, while Julieta visits the central churches, I go to one out in the countryside, taking the turn at Bilbala onto a tiny goat track up into the hills to Inbrahan.
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| Track to Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
After half an hour, I reach Inbrahan and the track gets more and more steep and rocky and finally at one corner, I start to get concerned that I will fall. Just there there is a man standing in the doorway of his hut and I ask where the church is. He points up the crazy track. I take a deep breath and battle my way up to the crest of the hill. There is nothing here but an amazing view. 20 children from the village run up to see what the mad farangi is doing. I ask them where the church is and they point back down the track. Very, very gingerly, I descend, not entirely aided by the throng yelling "Careful! Careful!" and leaning on the bike at every opportunity
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| Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
I find a ticket collector sitting under a tree by a stream and pay him 400 birr. Two women arrive, one from Ottawa and one from Albuquerque. They are teachers in Chad and have trekked 2 days from Lalibela. We walk together up through the junipers to the church, well hidden from the marauding Arabs of the twelfth century in a natural cave fringed with amazing hexagonal rock formations. It predates the Lalibela churches by a century and is made of alternating layers of recessed timber beams and projecting plastered stone. The windows are covered by carved cruciform lattices. It's a supernatural place and I pace around barefoot drinking in the atmosphere.
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| Yemrehana Christos church, Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
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| Yemrehana Christos church, Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
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| Yemrehana Christos church, Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
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| Priest, Yemrehana Christos church, Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
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| Inbrahan, near Lalibela |
Addis Ababa
In the morning I take Julieta to the tiny Lalibela airport - she is on a schedule and must fly out of Addis Ababa to Lebanon in the small hours of the following day. I start the long ride to Addis myself, planning to break the journey halfway. The little track to Dilb via Kulmersk captures my heart again, and once more I feel grateful for the chance to ride it on a motorbike. In Weldiya there is no petrol and for a while it seems likely I will be stranded but then I manage to find a place that has a few litres. Somehow the bit is between my teeth and I am on a mission to make Addis today. It's a long and intense 12 hour ride, battling the rumbling trucks and treacherous twists on the road but by 11pm I am in the big city, disorientingly modern-looking after the last couple of months with its tall buildings, traffic lights and elevated trains. I find Julieta at a petrol station with her bags like a homeless lady. We teeter on the overloaded bike to the second airport of the day. Two times farewell.
In the morning I take Julieta to the tiny Lalibela airport - she is on a schedule and must fly out of Addis Ababa to Lebanon in the small hours of the following day. I start the long ride to Addis myself, planning to break the journey halfway. The little track to Dilb via Kulmersk captures my heart again, and once more I feel grateful for the chance to ride it on a motorbike. In Weldiya there is no petrol and for a while it seems likely I will be stranded but then I manage to find a place that has a few litres. Somehow the bit is between my teeth and I am on a mission to make Addis today. It's a long and intense 12 hour ride, battling the rumbling trucks and treacherous twists on the road but by 11pm I am in the big city, disorientingly modern-looking after the last couple of months with its tall buildings, traffic lights and elevated trains. I find Julieta at a petrol station with her bags like a homeless lady. We teeter on the overloaded bike to the second airport of the day. Two times farewell.
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| Julieta, Mek'ele |
