Land Of Many Faces

On an 18-month, 50 000 km road trip from France to South Africa, Patrick and Marie Gurney crossed the border into culturally and scenically diverse Ethiopia.

- PATRICK GURNEY

Approaching the Ethiopian border post, we were excited to see green vegetation after four months of deserts in Jordan, Egypt and Sudan. We arrived at Gallabat, a sleepy border village with plenty of trucks, which we bypassed to get to the immigration office. The crossing was smooth, only taking two hours. We were in Ethiopia at last – one of our much-anticipated trip highlights.

From the border, we took a 350 km route towards Lake Tana. The road was sometimes tar, sometimes gravel, and it set the tone for the driving during the rest of our time in Ethiopia. In general, the roads were terrible. Because of this, we grossly underestimated our travel time and had to camp by the roadside when darkness caught up with us.

The next day, we drove to Bahir Dar at the southern end of Lake Tana. From there, we visited several Ethiopian Orthodox monasteries in the area, we visited the nearby Blue Nile Falls, and we took time out in restaurants to gorge ourselves on the tasty local cuisine.

We visited the Ura Kidane Mihret monastery and a lesser-known one nearby. Both have brightly painted interiors depicting scenes associated with the Orthodox religion.

Near midnight, as we lay in our rooftop tent just outside the Ura Kidane Mihret monastery, we were woken by a group of monks singing. The sound was angelical to start with, but after four hours we felt a bit differently…

The following day we pitched camp close to the Blue Nile Falls. We spent a day hiking through villages and we crossed a Portuguese bridge built in 1626, and a more modern suspension bridge, to see the 45 m-high waterfall. Unfortunately, the waterfall’s historical 400 m width has been diminished to less than 10 m due to a hydroelectric plant that was built upstream in 2003.

Chilled monkeys