I didn’t sleep well last night.  This has been the case on-and-off during my Ethiopian trip.  It might be the Lariam I’m taking, or just the awkward sleep patterns that’s required for all the early bus trips. We left around 0930 for the bus station for a short outing to the Blue Nile falls at […]

The islands (and a peninsular) on Lake Tana are home to many monasteries. We had an early boat ride arranged for 0800 but we had to pack up and move to Ghion Hotel before that. After a mango juice and a macchiato, we set off with one extra hanger-on from Netherlands. The cruise on Lake […]

Today we travel to our last stop in Ethiopia, not counting our return to Addis afterwards.  We had a van ride booked at 0700 to take us to Bahir Dar.  While on the bog, still way before our pick-up, the hotel man came to let us know that the van was nearly here.  Not long […]

We were advised to be at the Fasilades Baths by around 5am.  Surely nothing much can happen before sunrise.  So Stephen and I took a gamble and got there by 5:45am.  It was still rather cool.  We waited patiently till nearly 0800 before anything significant happened.  I guess we did absorb a bit of atmosphere […]

Today is the eve of Timkat, which is Epiphany on the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar.  This is when celebrations begin rather than tomorrow.  While we didn’t know what to expect, we were advised to be at the Piazza at 1500. That gave me time in the morning to do some sightseeing.  I thought of going to […]

Soon after waking up, we decided to go to Misrak Pension next door to secure two rooms at 3x the normal price; they have no twin rooms.  The joys of travelling during a festival.  With that sorted, our minds were put at ease. After attending to money and lunch, we visited Gonder’s Royal Enclosure.  I […]

Our original plan was to travel to Axum to Gonder via the Simien National Park (Debark), staying a night there to take in the gorgeous scenery we had seen in pictures.  In view of crowded buses in the leadup to Timkat (Epiphany), uncertainty with accommodation in Debark and successive 5am starts … we decided to […]

Axum is famous for two things.  Firstly there’s the stelae or obelisks made from stone, and secondly there’s the Ark of the Covenant (according to Ethiopian Orthodox belief). We took a guide to Stelae Park this morning.  He gave us a good explanation of the site but I was a bit disappointed with the obelisk […]