Visiting Ethiopia

Sorry H, circumstances conspired and we ended up with no time in AA to do anything. Only just back and will post more at length later (plus a Flickr link once I have weeded out 1200+ photos) but an awesome, incredible place and I will definitely be back - looking at Danakil in the 'cold' season next year maybe, with stop-offs in AA, Mekele, Harar, Tigray and maybe Simien mountains.

Did the Northern history route - AA, Bahir Dar, Gonder, Lalibela, Axum - then a couple of days in the rift valley and a week in South Omo. Although I can sympathise with the zoo comments above, I didn't find that to be my experience at all - the tribespeople were actually far less money-focused than in the North and once beyond Arber Minch there was very little of the hands flat out asking for Birr you got elsewhere at the side of the road, and if anything we were as much of an ethnographic experience for them as vice versa - you couldn't walk anywhere without small children taking your hand and walking with you, or school children trying out their English.

Anyway, as I said, more detail later and apologies again to H.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alan_stephen/collections/72157626328664632/

Yes, there are lots.

I think Axum was my favourite place in the North, which I loved. It's held on to a concept that it's still a capital of sorts, and treats itself accordingly, which means you get back street bars and dancing halls inlcuding the one we were in (that, fantastically, was named after Mother Theresa and was done out in her order's colours). Other Northern highlights included sitting in a tej house full of priests in Lalibela, which only played liturgical music (mainly on the begena); the exposure to donkeys covered in Eucalyptus in Addis which, at a distance, looked like some weird new species; DERG tanks turning up wrecked in random places like the middle of a market; and teenagers taking cameraphone pictures of us in the piazza of Gonder.

The South was complex, bewildering and astonishing. I was completely unprepared for how devastating the landscape was going to be, to be honest. I was also unprepared for eating the Dorze bread made from ensett that's been buried in the ground for a month with hot sauce that might as well have been napalm, for drinking araaki still warm from the still with the A'ari, for random men coming up to me in markets and suddenly being my best mate ever (which may be because they had been drinking bootleg beer), for kids playing at grinding sorghum flour with stones and dust, for a reaxed attitude to electricity which saw water tank isolators actually being inside the shower area, for carrying a paid mercenary in the car near the Ugandan border who seemed keen to start a gunfight over 2 Birr.

I am definitely going back, I just need to work out when. Maybe the most bewitching and delightful place I've ever been.

I'm enjoying your photos. The ones of the South are interesting to me, as I never made it down there. It looks a lot more, eh, African.

Also, I can see what H. was getting at upthread about the southern people seeming a bit like exhibits.

That's maybe a function of the way they behaved more than anything else - when they got a sniff of a camera they went into bizarre fixed poses, it was very difficult to take a picture that looked natural even if they'd been laughing and joking with you a minute before. As I said before, we were as much (if not more) an exhibit as they were. If they'd had cameras, they would have been taking photos.

FWIW, I'm finding this thread totally inspiring, even though I know I will likely never get to Ethiopia.

hey aldo, would have been nice to meet but of course no need to apologise, glad your trip went well tho

will check out your pics and also post thoughts re the south stuff

and ha, have so many pics from years ago when used to do lots more driving around the country and we'd come across burnt out tanks in random spots and go climbing over them - tho think many have been cleared away now

quick question tho, what did you mean abt the landscape being devastating?

Devastasting in that I found it absolutely incredible, that it devastated my opinions and my mind as I looked at it. I come from Scotland, which many people people would consider one fo the most beautiful countries geologically in Europe, but it pales into insignificanc in comparison to the outstanding landscape in yr country.

I will we be back and we will meet then, I have no doubt.

got it, and yeah, we do have amazing landscapes here

on another note, was at a dinner last night and started talking to this guy who recently moved back here, ask him what he does and he is exporting camel meat so as i said abt killing all our animals - not satisfied with killing our hippos for shields, lions for decorative headwear, elephants as sign of manhood we are now exporting camel meat, just fab

this thread is a gold mine. booked a trip at the end of september/beginning of october with gf & friend, probably doing a northern route. would be really keen to hear as much music as possible, anyone have any particular recommendations for festivals, clubs/nightlife, things to watch out for, record shops &c., or any good primers/ways to give myself an overview? also wondering if anyone has any advice for picking up a bit of amharic?

http://builtforslow.com/blog

Never heard of this one-man-band rock guy who is traveling in Ethiopia

hey ogmor, just came to the thread to find a quote from someone and saw your post that you are coming, drop me a line when yer coming

re built for slow, went to the blog, not heard of anything in addis he's done, not even sure who here (including expats) would be into that or where he is playing/would play, will keep eye out

H, that would be excellent. we'll be coming down at the end of september, I will ilx-mail you if that works?

I've been neglecting my duty in updating the thread, but i had a superb time in ethiopia. we went at the end of the rainy season for just over two weeks, seemingly just before tourists arrive in earnest. everything was lush and beautiful. we did a fairly standard northern-circuit, everywhere we went was fantastic & the more we saw of the country the more obvious it became that we could spend much longer there.
i have to give huge props to h for giving us an amazing introduction to the country and for being very generous with his prodigious expertise&knowledge. i wasn't really sure what to expect, but h seems to be pretty much the best connected man in addis, clued us into all sorts of things we'd never have found out about otherwise, and on our first night invited us along to have cocktails with a group of his friends - including ethiopiques founder francis falceto (!) - and took us to a wonderful azmari bet (minstrel house), in which we joined maybe forty or so patrons sat around the edge while a rotating cast of traditional singers&dancers took the floor, singing wax & gold, improvising about patrons - h kindly translating as they ripped on me for having shoes that were too hot, wanting to take the singer outside to have my way with her (because i was white), and eating dogs (because i was chinese?). we went to other azmari bets later but that first place was special, w/ a fantastic singer, an incredible traditional dance turned michael jackson pastiche & a good crowd. we stayed late drinking the dangerously cheap beer & periodically being pulled up to dance, and then jumped in the back of a pick up truck at about 4am to head back. obviously it blew us all away & props to h for showing us an unforgettable time on our first night.
addis was very hectic, half the city seemingly under construction in traditional wooden scaffolding. serendipitous chats led to being let into the church where menelik is buried then having them roll up the carpet and take us down to the tomb. taking a moment to hang out in haile selassie's bathroom in the old imperial palace. going to see samuel yirga playing with his band, during which special guest mahmood ahmed turned up to sing and everyone went crazy (we were clueless as to who it was until afterwards when the aforementioned francis coyly admitted he'd persuaded him to come down), then there's a powercut and everyone, used to this, keeps playing by candlelight.
we made most of the journeys by air because ethiopian airlines are excellent, efficient, easy and cheap. in bahir dar we were right on lake tana which was beautiful, meskel flowers in bloom, lots of young couples going for walks, sitting out at night watching lightning light up the sky kilometers away across the lake, taking a boat trip to harass pelicans and hippos at the start of the nile & visiting the gorgeous, surprisingly inviting ~700 year old island monasteries.
everywhere we went in ethiopia, however remote, a guide or taxi driver would soon bemoan david moyes' new tenureship as manager of manchester united. this was also one of the things that was sung about on the first night when the azmari singers were having fun with us. the premier league is omnipresent, lots of arsenal & man utd fans, and i had a couple of good experiences watching games in enormous makeshift cinemas, sometimes showing two games side by side, drinking beer as everyone poured scorn on nicklas bendtner. there was huge anticipation in the run up to the world cup qualifier against nigeria, genuinely infectious enthusiasm, even the day before the match people were wearing make-up.
gondar was cooler, the old mountain capital, lots of vultures circling overhead, roving packs of dogs that would wake us up in the middle of the night making an incredible racket, great views of the surrounding lands, & the castles/palace grounds were one of my favourite things we saw. axum was hot, dusty, full of huge green fields of t'ef and rolling hills. it's fairly small but full of archaeological sites; the famous stelae/obelisks, unearthed palaces, networks of subterranean tunnels, tombs, tablets documenting the achievements of axumite kings in ge'ez, sabean and greek, as well as all the churches & associated paraphernalia, even haile selassie's much maligned aya sofya-aping church looked beautiful with all the light flooding in through stained glass windows. everyone played it down but standing in front of the chapel of the ark of the covenant was exciting, trying to glimpse the lone guardian allowed inside. apparently there have been two westerners who claimed to have been shown the contents of the ark, and from their accounts it's clear they've been shown different things, which is well-played by the monks.
lalibela is just as amazing as everyone says. it's really two separate complexes, plus the famous church of st george, and i didn't realize how huge it was. it took us hours to go round, walking through the winding passageways carved deep into the rock, suddenly appearing out of a large rock face, sometimes following a tunnel through the pitch black for minutes at a time. i went back early in the morning, which i would recommend, when it was quieter, and beautiful. i'm sure the monks are used to it, but it could be a bit invasive, especially when it's not so busy, but just hanging back outside listening to early morning prayers being chanted is a pretty wonderful experience. we nearly got locked overnight in a subterranean tunnel but it was fine.
most of the music we heard was ethiopian, in the clubs there was also west african music, dancehall, dub & southern rap. i had no idea how big reggae&dub were in ethiopia, but i got pretty fond of a few ethiopian tracks. i heard dbanj being played a few times, an amharic freestyle over in da club, and quite a bit of older ethiopian music. i picked up a few things over there, some pop cds and some older cassettes, and playing them back now i just wish i'd bought more.
it feels ridiculous to try to summarise the experience, and we got through more than i can do justice to here. maybe we were lucky, but we didn't really have much in the way of negative experiences while we were out there; i was sort of expecting for us to get sick/pickpocketed/stranded at some point but things were consistently excellent the whole time. i'm recommending it to everyone who asks, & if you get the chance you should absolutely go.

ugh, apologies for the formatting