by Red

40 – From Aksum to Mekele, Crushed Underneath My Backpack

Tue 5th Jan, Dallas Hotel, Mekele
Traveling by bus can be tiring. Traveling by bus from one 2100m town to another 2100m high town over 6 hours with your 60 litre Osprey luggage on your lap restricting your movement can be very tiring. Thank goodness the road was paved.
Reached Mekele at 12pm (why oh why do Ethiopian long distance buses set off at 6am and earlier?) and found a hotel near the bus station. Mekele is a larger town in the northeastern Tigray region (the girls here are prettier!) with nothing much to see, but it is a pleasant place to wander about. Slower pace for me than Gonder’s castles, the Simien Mountains’ baboons and Aksum’s tombs and stelae. I can finally relax and type decent entries here too. The last few days deserved much lengthier accounts and i feel guilty about slipshod work. So attached below will be backdated photos from Kassala back in Sudan (day 33), and Aksum (day 39).
We could leave the day after to Lalibela and still catch Leddet festival on the 6th and 7th but after some thought decided against it. The Norwegian girl we met in Aksum is flying to Lalibela and needed to reserve hotel rooms at 3 times the normal price. We need 2 more days by bus and will arrive at the tail end of the festival, with possibly no vacancies or exorbitant prices. Hence the decision was to stay two nights in Mekele and chill. I think we must be the only tourists in Ethiopia trying to avoid the festival on the 6th in Lalibela.
The Dallas Hotel was near the bus station. Rooms with shared bathrooms are 30 birr but there’s no running water (no i don’t get it either) or power sockets. I stayed in a room with bathroom (60 birr) that comes with a power outlet. Dinner was tibs, strips of meat with berbere sauce together with what tastes like wasabe. It was pretty good, especially since i got bread instead of injeera. But i really miss Sudanese food. And chicken rice. =/
Ok. The following pics are of me back in Day 33 scampering atop Toteel Mountain, and hanging out with the Kassala street vendor. Oh and the barber that shaved it all off…
The next set are yesterday’s photos Day 39 with shots of Aksumite ruins, stelae and my bread/tomato/yoghurt/egg dish.
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 by Red

39 – Stelae is a new word in my dictionary

Mon 4th Jan, Africa Hotel, Aksum
Started out the day late. We may pass on the festival days in Lalibella on the 6th and 7th, since the crowd there would mean advance booking and private transport. Going by public transport, it takes maybe 3 days, with stops in Mekele and Woldia. Not worth the trouble in my opinion.
Had brunch in one of the cafe/restaurants. In my quest to find local food that suites my palate that is not injeera, i have come across special fir fir (at least that’s what i think it is called). It is a dish of pieces of torn bread drowned in some sort of bolognaise sauce, topped with sour yoghurt and scrambled egg. It actually tastes better than it sounds.
Next I visited the sites Aksum is famous for. The remnants of the Aksum dynasty litter the now small town of Aksum. The ticket (50 birr / half price students) covers all the sites around Aksum except the Mary Zion church (100 birr). First was the Northern Stelae Park. A stelae is a tall pylon or obelisk or plinth erected upwards that extolls the might of the Aksumite rulers. And the park had the biggest ones. The highest (around 30m) has toppled. Around the ruins are tombs as well. Took walks to the Tombs of King Caleb and the Queen of Sheba’s palace in the other direction.
(Have not uploaded the photos for this entry yet. And frankly i have no idea how to edit my post later it since i am posting as emails for now. This will be how it’s done till i get out to the next country. Plan is to hit Djibouti and Somaliland wherehopefully I can access my OWN blog!)

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 by Red

38 – On the winding road to Aksum

Sun 3rd Jan, Africa Hotel, Aksum
Not too much to be said of the day. It was a full day of travel. Beginning at the lodge, we headed down at 7+ am. The terrain was truly spectacular, winding through the mountains, into the valleys and back up into the mountains. To Aksum, it was a full 12 hour journey, with a lunch stop at Adi Arkay. The road was gravel and sand. Everyone was breathing dust, and i could imagine how much more uncomfortable it would have been had we taken a public bus instead of the minivan.
On reaching Aksum, we boarded at Africa Hotel (90 birr, double bed), before going out for dinner. Tomorrow’s plan would be to explore the town and its surrounds.

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 by Red

37 – Trekking the Simien Mountains (Day 2)

Sat 2nd Jan, Sankaber Lodge, Simien Mountains National Park
Today we made our way to the next lodge, a 3 – 4 hour trek. This time, we caught sight of an entire community of baboons, thanks to our scout Bokat. At points, I was less than 3m away from them. They were scratching themselves, foraging for food, completely oblivious to the humans around them.
Reached the next lodge (40 birr) and dumped our bags there. It was my bag, for without it, i had no problem keeping up with the much fitter duo in front of me. We saw deers, more gelada baboons, ravens and some breathtaking views below. After that was done, we headed back to camp.
Of course, there was much more to see if we were to trek beyond Sankaber, but that would be a lot more costly. Instead we slept at the lodge. The family manning the place were a lot friendlier than the previous night’s and we really enjoyed the stay. We (no, kang) had injeera (20 birr each, overpriced but hey, we’re at 3000+ m). Plus there was a room heater, i’m not sure what you call them.. We bought a stack of wood (15 birr) and chucked them to burn inside the stove heater thingy. The whole room was lovely and warm. I really hated the cold. For someone who comes from a country where the average temp is 30 degrees, 0 degrees at night is unbearable. Also, with the metal tray used for the injeera, we cooked our instant noodles by placing the tray with water on top of the stove thingy.
All in all, it was a great evening by the fire inside the dorm. And we meet a couple of drivers who stayed in the dorm lodge with us. They would be picking up some campers and bringing them down to Debark, before departing to Aksum. This is great, we agreed on a price (300 birr each, steep). We’ll hitch a ride with them tomorrow and make the long journey to Aksum in a day.

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 by Red

36 – Trekking the Simien Mountains

Fri 1st Jan, “Lodge”, Simien Mountains National Park
Took the 8am local bus out from Gonder to Debark (4hrs, 30 birr). The bus ride included a couple of scares where the bus stalled and needed fixing. On reaching Debark, we waited outside the tourist information centre / park headquarters till they re-opened at 1.30pm. Initially the HQ people said that it was not possible to leave at that time, since it is too late to arrange all the logistics. Fees were 90 birr per day per person, 40 birr for the mandatory Scout. Besides that, a Guide costs 120 birr and a Cook would cost 75 birr. Further costs would include mules, their handlers, cooking material, tents, and maybe some arrangement for 4WD hire. After consideration, we decided to go ahead for 3D2N, with one Scout. We will not camp, instead will pay 40 birr per night at two lodges along the way. Our target would be Sankaber, over the 2 days. Any further up will require camping since there would be no other lodges.
The terrain was spectacular, covering hills and valleys, bypassing villages. The first day didn’t see us spotting any interesting. Though i was completely exhausted by the time we reached the lodge, no thanks to me carrying extra unneeded weight. Reached the lodge just after dark, it was effing cold, my nose was running and we had no gear. All we had amongst the two of us were 20 hard boiled eggs, some biscuits, and 10 packs of instant noodles (with no cooking material). We had leftover injeera from this afternoon’s breakfast, but i passed on it. And so, after 4 hard boiled eggs, i went to sleep at 8am, effing cold. Altitude: around 3260m.

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 by Red

35 – Oh Injeera, Why Art Thou So Sour?

Thu 31st Dec, Queen Tayum Hotel, Gondar
(ok. this is a test post. apparently Blogger.com is filtered here. so i can’t access anything. Trying to post from email now).
Early 6am, went to the bus station, taking the minibus from Shihedi to Gondar (50 birr). The terrain starts to elevate from here. The road, contracted to the Chinese, are on the way to becoming fully paved and should be all done within a year. Travel should be much easier then. Reached around 10 am, and did the usual routine of looking for a place to stay. Gondar is cool compared to the last 2 weeks in Sudan. Immediately the walled royal compounds loom into view and I can see why they call this town Africa’s Camelot.
I have no money on me, since all I did was convert around 25 SDP to birr (about 12.50 SGD) and had already spent all of that on last night’s lodging and today’s bus ride. So i went to the tourist information building, where the helpful guy helped changed by USD to birr and showed me a hotel. The Queen Tayum Pension (80 birr) was a nice place with hot water, a welcomed change. Next was to find some food and some Internet time. Internet was expensive, and painfully slow. To make it worse, i left my flash drive at the shop…=( Managed to upload the last few entries; there will be no pic uploads till I get to Addis probably.
Ethiopian dining at this point is a bit of an enigma. Unlike Egypt or Sudan, where you have food around every corner, plus bright signs or the displays where you can just point at what you want, in Ethiopia, food is not shown up front. Maybe the signboards are in Amharic, so i can’t read them. But then, even those typed out in English are all “bar and restaurant”s. When i enter, it’s all bars, with local drinking and no one eating. Finally settled on one and ordered my first plate of the much maligned injeera, the Ethiopian flat bread made out of some sort of sour dough. And boy is it sour…each mouthful is a chore. Where normally i would eat injeera with meat, now it is me eating meat with injeera. It is not that bad actually, especially when you mask the sour taste by dunking it in the various types of sauces/curries. Over the next few days though, my liking for the bread grew less and less. Maybe over time i would grow to like it, but for now i will
avoid eating it unless there is no choice.
Next i went for a stroll to the top of the hill to see the Debre Berhan Selassie Church, with it’s colourful cherubs smiling from the ceiling. Nothing really spectacular, but as i was intending to take it slow, I planned to see the inside of the Royal Enclosure tomorrow. However, as i was walking along the main piazza area, guess who walked past. Kang from back in Sudan! He flew into Ethiopia and had spent a week here before reaching Gondar. We caught up on stuff over dinner and i found out he made plans to trek the Simien Mountains. Of course it was a brilliant opportunity to travel together again, as well as cut the cost of hiring guides, scouts etc in the park. Doing it alone would be too costly, plus Kang’s take no prisoners approach of getting the cheapest deal around would certainly help a budget traveler like me.
So it is set, tomorrow we will take a bus from Gondar to Debark, the set-off point to the Simien Mountains. Instead of going through a company to plan out the itinerary, we intend to go direct to the park office in Debark and pay for trekking fees etc there.

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 by Red

33 – Welcome to Ethiopia

Wed 30th Dec, Unknown Hotel, Shihedi, Ethiopia

Yes i have reached Ethiopia, and boy is it a culture shock from Sudan. I’m typing this from my unnamed hotel. I haven’t seen female clevage for the last month, the music is different, and i am started to get hassled.

I started the day at Kassala, took the bus from Souq As-shabi station to Gedaref (10 SDP, 3 hrs, regular buses leave when full from 7am to maybe 10am). This was a “normal” bus without the bells and whistles like lunch etc. I slept through it. Oh sat beside a Rashaida man with his wooden flat stake-like stick (or very big boomerang!). At Gederef, took a cab down to the station that goes to Gallabat. This was around 11am. Took the bus down to the border town of Gallabat (10 SDP, 2 hours). The roads must have been improved, since it was supposed to take 5 hrs.

Got off the bus and immediately got overwhelmed by “official people/border guides who work here” who directed me to somewhere. I met a japanese couple in the bus to Gallabat (first other tourists for a week, yay) and we stopped for lunch to fend off the unwanted touts. After which I did my random walk around the border town to bamboozle the touts before asking shopkeepers for directions. Found the immigration customs in the complete opposite direction from where those guys were pointing to me. Border procedures were pretty painless, cross over and did the same on the Ethiopian side.

Both towns set up along a linear road, i just walked to the end of the border town on the Ethiopia side, Metema. It is too late to get to Gonder, so I am going to try to get tho Shiendi, a larger town 1 hour down the road. Trailed by a bunch of kids, I was pointed to a long petrol truck. I hitched and had my first conversation with an Ethiopian. Also tried some of his qat. He dropped me in Shiendi, in the middle of some truckers parking area around the highway. Shihedi is just a small roadside town and the only tourists that end up here are the ones doing the Sudan-Ethiopia border crossing. Again i was beset by a ‘cultural guide’ until a fellow trucker, a Sudanese man, whisked me away. Coming from Sudan, i trust the guy completely and he brought me to this nearby nameless place, where no one speaks English (50 Birr). He tells me that Ethiopia isn’t the same as Sudan and i need to be careful.

Updated: I took a walk around Shihedi. In terms of languange, i am completely at square one. All the arabic i picked up isn’t useful here. Amharic sounds difficult, even thank you is a longish word. The other thing is that time expressed in Ethiopian terms is really weird. 6am our time is 0 o’clock in morning. So 7am is 1 o’clock all the way till 6pm, which is 0 o’clock in the night. I had to ask what time the bus departs for Gonder tomorrow, and you can imagine the confusion. The guy tells me to be at the bus station at quarter past 11 in the night….go figure. Lastly, i got the reason for the cleavage mentioned earlier. My hotel doubled as a love shack (ahhh, so that’s why there were xmas lights hanging off the balcony) and at 11pm (our time), i got a knock on my door asking me if i wanted some. Er, no but thank you. =) Tomorrow i head towards Gonder, and do the northern historical circuit in Ethiopia.

in Africa / Ethiopia / Sudan 1 comments
 by Red

32 – Red, Conqueror of Toteel Mountain, Well Almost!

Tue 29th Dec, Hotel Al Nada, Kassala

I woke up early today, very sleepy, no thanks to cable movies that lasted late into the night. (I’m watching The Perfect Storm as type this). The plan today was to go to Toteel mountain, described in Wikipedia’s Kassala entry as an easy half hour climb halfway up before resting at the many cafes built into the rocks.
Set off on the Katmiya bus (0.5 SDP, ask to stop at Toteel) and got off at the houses near the base. It seems that Toteel is a local attraction as well, since there is a ticket booth (1 SDP) and at the base are all these cafes (everyone’s a bob marley reggae wannabe). Bypassed them, and turned my attention to the mountains beyond. Now back in Kadogli, the Nuba Mountains weren’t actually mountains; they were rolling hills covering really large expanses with flat plateaus alternating. The Kassala peaks on the other hand are large chunks of boulders and rocks stacked all the way to the top.

The climb was quite tough. If you have experienced trekking, think Malaysian mountain peaks’ last 30-50m or so to the summit, when all you have are rock escarpments. Take that kind of climb from the start and you have the Toteel. In addition, in my infinite wisdom, i brought two buns and a 500ml of 7UP (“yeah, so back at Nuba i brought 1 litre and had excess, this Toteel is a half hour climb, no problem”). So in the hot afternoon sun (damn these rocks are hot to the touch!), with barely a trail, I was scampering and half-scaling across rocks. It took well above half hour. The entire trek took 4 hours, my water ran out around 3 hours even after rationing. There was no one else on the mountain, and i kept comfort in seeing goat droppings. Wherever there are goat droppings, theres a decent trail and I won’t suddenly drop off a cliff. There were no goats, mind you, i was just following their shit.

So at 1pm, with my throat parched, lower part of my palms burnt, and my pants torn, i reached the prize. It wasn’t the peak. There was no way i would reach the peak without any equipment, unless I’m Spiderman. Instead i followed the ridgeline and now could see OVER the mountain. Into Eritrea. I may not have obtained the elusive visa, but dammit, i will get my glance at that country. And maybe someday, I will be back (through Yemen hopefully! 🙂 ) Lingered at the summit area, went back down. The downclimb really took its toll.With no water, and I kept following wrong trails that lead to drop offs, so had to retrace my steps or lower myself down tediously. It was tough, but really worth it. I should reconsider my itinerary though. I had ideas, time permitting, to trek the Simien mountains, Mount Kenya or maybe even Kilimanjaro, but i’m really not geared for it (yes, I’m still in my sandals, Chaco is great btw).

Reached the hotel, cleaned up and went out into the souqs again. There are really interesting looking tribal people around. Too bad I do not dare take out my camera here. Photography is sensitive here. Heck, even the women lift up the veils higher when they see me. From reading up LP’s info, the Nara or maybe Hedareb tribes are the ones I see where the men scarify their cheeks with 3 short lines. And the women with the large nose rings could be possibly Bilen (though LP says they are in Keren, Eritrea so i don’t know if they spread all the way up to the Sudan border. I know the colourful Rashaida tribe has a souq somewhere in town but was unable to find it.

I got invited to sit down with a shirt stall holder and had a shai. Talked lots, took some photos with them and went for dinner. Oh, I took a haircut (5 SDP) so I am now the proud owner of an authentic Sudanese close cropped hairstyle.

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 by Red

31 – Enter Kassala

Mon 28th Dec, Hotel Al Nada, Kassala

So close, but yet so far. Tonight I am in Kassala, 30km from the border to Eritrea. One guy tells me they travel over the border, drink themselves silly then go back into Sudan. The trip from Khartoum was another 7 hour bus ride, aboard another made in China bus, with me asleep most of the time. I’m quite amazed at the service on these buses. I had lunch in a styrofoam box, drinks from a cup, then later a packet of butter cake and a bottled soft drink. It’s a wonder why bus companies elsewhere don’t provide such things on their long distance journeys.

Approaching Kassala (50 SDP, 7 hours), the Taka, Toteel and Aweitila mountains loom above the city. I got off at the bus station (Souq As-Shabi) and take the minibus (0.5 SDP) with the locals into the main square bus terminal (Al mawkaf al-aan). The fella beside me from the bus makes a call to his friend to bring me to my hotel. Unfortunately the hotel was full and I went round and round the central area looking for a hotel. All were full. Kassala must really be a touristy place for the locals then… I must have checked out at least 10 hotels / lokandas. Finally settled on an expensive option (Al Nada, 50 SDP!, but it comes with lousy aircon, cable tv and privacy).

From what I found out walking around, Toteel, Bashar are probably the best bets. Beside them is the more expensive Hipton. El-Sharg is just as pricey and probably as top end here too. The rest are El-Safa hotel and Hotel Africa. In Arabic were Lokanda Riduan & hotel elnoor. Every single one was full. Never mind, as I am writing this, I am watching From Dusk Till Dawn, a welcome change from movies in Arabic and Sudanese variety shows on the buses. I don’t think it is worth the room price, but the alternative is sleeping on the street.

Kassala’s main square where the minibuses leave from are surrounded by souqs. Didn’t manage to see much today but here’s my first take on it. The city feels much less developed compared to Khartoum and has a mountain town feel about it. The souqs are colourful, due to all the tribes that come into the city to sell their wares. The women wear colourful robes. And the men wear sleeveless jackets over their white jabailiyas. And they are obviously different from elsewhere. Some have frizzy hair, uncommon when everyone ive seen so far have close cropped cuts.

Dinner was your typical bread with meat dish on the many roadside setups. I’ve got so used to eating bread off tables just wiped with dirty rags and drinking untreated water that it hardly bothers me any longer (when in Rome…)

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 by Red

30 – And guess what, STILL in Khartoum

Sun 27th Dec, Hotel Al Nadi, Khatoum

It’s not that I love the capital so much, it is because all the buses seem to leave in the morning. And i spent today morning going to the Eritrean embassy. So much for leaving today. To make my day worse, I did not manage to get the Eritrean visa. Wikipedia entry says that from Dec08, all foreigners are to get visas from their country of origin, or nearest embassy, which in Singapore’s case, is China (beijing isn’t so near…) The guy in my dorm (we talk in a mish-mash of broken Arabic and English) is from Kassala and he has a friend there working at the passports office. He reckons he can get insider help and a stamp on my passport into Eritrea. After some thinking, I decided not to take such a risky move. Even if i can get in, i will have trouble getting out, no help anywhere, and the situation there now isn’t too friendly (see Dec 24 news on newly imposed sanctions). So with that, there goes my hopes of doing the border crossing. No matter, I have rescheduled the itinerary and timed Leddat and Timkat in Ethiopia’s Gonder and Lalibela.

And again the Sudanese are really helpful. The guy in my dorm insists on taking me down to the Mina Bary terminal tomorrow and sending me off, waking up with me at 530am.

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