Addis Ababa - Entoto Hills

Selam!

Two weeks now in Addis Ababa and it seems that it will be a great year.
Ethiopia is indeed a completely different place from what I have visited so far.....
You can see people walking around the city, talking to you, staring at you (obviously I am a foreigner), but they are all so friendly and make you feel that you want to explore more and more....
Different culture, way of living, and everything happens too slowly...as Ethiopians say "kes be kes inculal becuro iyihedal " (step by step the egg starts walking) and it is indeed very true!

In the first tour of the city we reached the Entoto Hills, Menelik's capital before Addis Ababa was founded in 1887. It is a great place to view the natural beauty of town. On the top there is the Entoto Maryam Church and the palace of emperor Menelik, both really interesting to visit.

But what really impressed me on the way to Entoto Hills is that you can see local women carrying woods in their backs and going all the way down the hill. They have also established gift shops, selling hand-wooven cotton shawls, hats, baskets etc 

It is worth having a walk over there, breathe fresh air and become familiar with the ethiopian culture!

Lake Tana

Lake Tana was described by a 5th century Greek dramatist as the "copper-tinted lake...that is the jewellery of Ethiopia". (Bradtguide, 6th edition, p. 189)

Fancy for a tropical site in Ethiopia? Lake Tana then is the right place to go....it is renowed for its three-dozen (and more) islands, its varried birdlife and the different fish species. Bahir Dar is the largest city in the Tana region, and the ideal base to view the Blue Nile Falls and the myriad monasteries dotted around the lake.

Ethiopian festivals

Leddet (Christmas)- 6-7 January. Best places to be are Addis and Lalibela, we will probably be in

Addis in Jan 2013.

Timkat (Epiphany) - 19 January, three day festival. Best places to be are Gonder and Addis, we will probably fly to Gonder for that in Jan 2013.

Fasika (Easter) - Mar/Apr. No plans at this stage, very likely Addis.

Meskel (finding of the True Cross) - 27 September. Addis, Gonder and Axum are good places to experience Meskel, may be when we visit Axum!

p.248 of the Lonely Planet guide has a fuller list of festivals (thanks guys!), will try to further update this entry when I have time. 

The donkey, the dog, and the goat

Once there was a dog, a goat and a donkey. They wanted to go on a journey together, and decided to take a taxi. The donkey paid and got out, the dog paid, got out but never got its change, and the goat got out but never paid.
To this day, and whenever a vehicle passes, the dog still chases his change, the goat scatters at the first approach, and the donkey just plods tranquilly on.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ethiopian folk tale

This is from the Lonely Planet guide to Ethiopia & Eritrea (with information on travelling to Djibouti and Somaliland).

There are two comprehensive guides to Ethiopia, Lonely Planet and Bradt. I found both to be excellent, well written, and make for entertaining reads (there's tons of anecdotes and some great humour to be found in both).

The Bradt guide is a lot more comprehensive (which may be a disadvantage if you just want summarised information), and more accurate in places. The Bradt guide's 6th edition also just hit shelves at the time I'm writing this (November 2012), and as a result it is a lot more up to date than Lonely Planet. I have bought and consult both regularly, and a lot of the information in this blog is lifted directly from them. 

Lalibela

Lalibela is one of the top destinations when someone is visiting Ethiopia...The isolated city of Lalibela is mostly known for its churches, and it is worth doing this trip to the wild craggy mountains because it is, undoubtedly, an amazing experience. During Ethiopian Christmas (7th of January), celebrations are taking place and devoted people are hiking for days to get there, and even more they are sleeping on the ground out of churches. There is the possiblitity to be there on Christmas time, or finally prefer another date, less crowded in order to enjoy the magnitude of this religious city.

                                                      St Lalibela Ethiopian Christmas eve

Jijiga

Our first trip will be to Jijika (the capital of Ethiopia's Somali Federal Region). It is not a city of great importance but the drive there from Addis Ababa, and especially from Harar (due to Valley of Marvels and Karamara Mountains) is amazing! We are planning to spend most of the time at Harar (the heart of Ethiopian's Islamic community) and have the unique chance to attend the "Hyenas event"...

Babile elephant sanctuary

We are planning a road-trip to Jijiga on the 15th of December 2012 (the road is said to be good and we expect the trip from Addis to take 9 to 12 hours). On the way back we plan to make a 4 day stop at the walled city of Harar, including spending a day visiting the nearby Babile elephant sanctuary.

The ears of African elephants look like a map of Africa - that's an easy way to tell them apart from the Asian cousins.

Babile is also home to the endangered black-maned Abyssinian lion.

South Omo Valley tribes

Visiting the tribes of the Lower Omo valley is one of the trips I am most looking forward to. It is meant to be hard, and it will be expensive as there's a need to hire a 4WD and guide (will check and update this with specific numbers once I've asked around in Addis, but I would expect around £1500 per person for 8-10 days) but we are definitely doing it! Also, no set date for when we are visiting as of yet - but probably late-ish 2013, and outside of the rainy season (according to the guide, South Omo becomes impossible to traverse for 3 or 4 months of the year - October and mid-March to June are no good according to Lonely planet).

The best time to visit is June to September, so we are most probably travelling around that time.

There's more fantastic pictures where the picture above came from here. Or google Lower Omo Tribes!

Gonder

Our plan is to fly to Gonder for Timkat (Epiphany) on the 18th of January (see image above). Apparently, it is important to book hotels in advance and rates are much higher than usual around festivals, but Gonder is said to be the best place in the country to celebrate Timkat and we feel the journey will be well worth it.

Harar

The Hyena man of Harar feeds the hyenas every night outside the city gates, and tourists are in fact invited to join in, as you can see in the picture above (click for more pictures from this particular guy)

Addis Ababa

View of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa

Our home is on Bole road, near the airport: