Things don’t get fantastically better for me. A long conversation at the travel permit office ends: “You don’t need a permit to go to Wadi Halfa”. ‘So can I stop off along the way?” I ask. “I’d like to see the pyramids at Meroe, Atbara perhaps, the World Heritage Site… Continue reading
I have no reason to visit Khartoum, Sudan’s capital. I could stick ever so slightly closer to the coast of what has become the Red Sea in my absence by visiting Kassala. The Sudanese authorities have a reason for me to visit Khartoum though. I must register since I’m an… Continue reading
Visas finally sorted until the Egypto-Libyan frontier, I catch a coach to Gonder. It takes 2-3 hours to wind up and over a mountain range, at close to walking pace to stop us plummeting below. The road leads on to Lake Tana (the source of the Blue Nile). Its then 4… Continue reading
Being back in Ethiopia is a joy after Djibouti. The mentality seems to change as soon as I crossed the border. Suddenly people were eager to help me on my way, even if it was only to the embassy down the road. There are smiles, politeness, and cool highland air…. Continue reading
My bag is searched twice within about 500m by Djibouti police and customs at the border with Somaliland. My first impressions as we drive along the dusty road is of a desert converted into a rubbish dump. Camels graze on trees dripping with plastic bag blossom. It takes me 20… Continue reading
The road from Harar to Jijiga passes through the Valley of Marvels. The hills are made up of vertical shafts of rock that peak through the green of low shrubs like megalithic stones of Stonehenge or Malta. They rest on and against one another in different states of freedom, some… Continue reading
This isn’t the place to go into the dull complexities of modern visa application processes. Its enough to say things were simpler when consular permission from 5 European powers would have seen me through the entire continent. Awaiting Egyptian permission from the Addis embassy, I pitch east in search of… Continue reading
The past week has been my final designated ‘rest week’. I’ve been doing 2 things: wandering around the Ethiopian hinterland trying to find something interesting (not necessarily an easy task in such a vast country), and also fighting off the world’s worst cold. I suspect I caught the virus on… Continue reading
Without access to visas at either the embassy in Nairobi or the border town of Moyale it means Ethiopia is a closed country for North-bound overland travellers. Moyale is nowhere near as grim as I had been led to believe. Its quite picturesque surrounded by green and hills. All the… Continue reading
Some days Africa grinds you down. And some days Africa rips your heart out. Having been searched thoroughly I wait over an hour in the Ethiopian embassy Consular Section to be told I could not be given a visa because I didn’t have a re-entry pass for Kenya. ‘I’m not… Continue reading
