A Trip to the Bale Mountains

Lunar landscapes, freezing winds, bizarre endemic animals – could I really be describing a place in Africa? The Bale Mountains of Ethiopia may not be your typical African national park, but that’s what makes them worth the visit. We weren’t going to miss them, no sir, not for anything.

To get to the Bale Mountains, we had to pass through the town of Shashamene. An otherwise regular Ethiopian town, Shashamene is renowned internationally as the Rastafarian capital of the world.

It all started with the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie. Marcus Garvey and the Jamaican “return to Africa” movement saw in Selassie the fulfilment of a biblical prophecy that “kings would come out of Africa”. A new religion was born – Rastafarianism. Selassie’s pre-emperor name was Ras Tafari.

With Haile Selassie as God incarnate, the Rastafarians were gifted a small piece of land 250km south of Ethiopia’s capital. This is their Zion, their promised land.

To be honest, I expected more the supposed promised land. I expected dreadlocks to be flying around left, right and center. I expected Bob Marley to be busting out from speakers from every shop. I expected to smell the pungent earthy scent of marijuana. I expected to hear shouts of “Jah! Ras Tafari!”

Instead, I saw a few shops painted green, yellow, and red (the Rasta colors, as well as the colors of the Ethiopian flag), a couple of cafes named “One Love” and “Zion Train,” and a single set of dreadlocks. Good thing we hadn’t passed through here for any other reason than a trip to the Bale Mountains.

Thankfully, things got more interesting east of Shashamene. Here, the road cut through golden fields of teff (more on that in a future blog) before weaving up into the hilly highlands of Ethiopia. Conical huts popped through the tall grasses, boulders littered the hills, and jagged peaks burst through the hillside patchwork. Horses were everywhere – being ridden by young boys, being loaded with wood or market goods, grazing by the side of the road. Horse-drawn carriages rode side by side with donkey carts.

As the road veered upward, the donkeys and horses and dogs displayed thicker, more matted fur. The men wrapped thick blankets around their torsos and turbans around their heads. I shut my window to block out the crisp noon air.

We had reached the Bale Mountains, and it was cold. That night, we camped near the headquarters, in the mid-altitude grasslands, and we drank hot soup and shut ourselves inside until it was time to leave the next day. As the temperature outside hit five degrees, I thanked Bruno for having repaired our heater in Nairobi.

The following morning, we drove on the Dola-Mena Road, the highest all-weather road in Africa. (I’m not exactly sure why it’s got the “all-weather” qualifier, as the remnants of rainy season mud-holes told a different tale.) The road takes you right through the national park, up the Sanetti Plateau and down the other side to the Harenna Forest. We drove [slowly, in 4WD low gear due to low oxygen] up to the peak of the plateau, Tullu Deemtu. At 4377m, it’s the second highest point in Ethiopia, and the highest I’ve ever been in my life. I was proud that I didn’t get a headache or feel overly tired.

I was incredibly cold, though. With a yak-wool blanket wrapped around me, I took a glimpse at the clouds approaching along the horizon, snapped a photo with the sign-post, and hopped into the car for masala tea with the heater on full-blast.

This place was like no other place in Africa. I didn’t even think Africa could look like this. I felt like I was in Mongolia, or Patagonia, or Siberia. Or maybe the moon. Yes, the landscape looked like we were on the moon. Boulders littered the landscape. Deep blue lakes faced off with rocky plateaus. Shrubs looking like a cross between cactuses and palm trees stood tall against the strong wind. It was incredibly beautiful, in a bleak winter day kind of way.

But the real reason we drove along this highest of plateaus – or indeed, visited the Bale Mountains at all – was to spot the Ethiopian wolf. A small, rust-colored dog that looks more like a fox than a wolf, he is the rarest canid in all of Africa – even more than the wild dog. He is endemic to Ethiopia, existing only in small, isolated pockets of the country, almost all on the Bale Mountains’ Sanetti Plateau.

And we spotted him! We saw six Ethiopian wolves over the course of two days. The first two happened to be along the side of the road as we drove slowly past, but eventually we got good at spotting them trotting in the distance, and would park our car and wait for them to approach. They always did – they weren’t particularly shy.

And, in any case, they were too busy hunting the also-endemic giant molerat to really notice us. When the plateau warms up enough in the late morning, the ground begins to move with thousands of molerats darting from hole to hole. We watched wolves try in vain to dig deep enough into the holes to reach a rat. And we watched a wolf hide behind a bush – catlike – before pouncing upon his prey. The poor little molerat was devoured in seconds flat, after which the wolf sat contently for a few minutes before trotting off in search of his next victim.

Ethiopian wolves and giant molerats weren’t the only endemic species we saw in the Bale Mountains. We had already seen the rare mountain nyala, a kudu-like antelope, in the northern grasslands area near the park headquarters. And later, we would see a group of fifty bamboo-eating Bale monkeys in the lower altitude Harenna Forest. They reminded me of the l’Hoest Monkey in Rwanda, with their dull brown fur color and bushy white beard. But they had one distinctive feature – a human-like thin white mustache.

Indeed, the Bale Mountains hold more endemic mammals than in any other area of equal size in the entire world. We were overjoyed to see almost all of them.

But the Bale Mountains made me sad, too. The Ethiopian government has long been criticised on their environmental record, and specifically their neglect of the country’s national parks. In my experience, the criticisms are just. I saw more cows grazing on the Sanetti Plateau than all the other animals combined. Between the plateau and the forest is a massive settlement of people and farms. And local busses ply the Dola-Mena road, their passengers littering the roadside with plastic bottles and wrappers.

The park’s facilities seem to have been left to degrade, too. We wanted to camp in the park’s campsites, but we failed on both occasions. In one instance, the road to the camp was blocked by a giant mound of rocks, and in the other, the campsite had been replaced by a new luxury lodge (the Bale Mountain Lodge is beautiful, by the way, with very friendly British owners – a stay here is sure to be incredible). It was incomprehensible to me that the rangers at the park headquarters didn’t know about the state of these two campsites – especially that one of them was a mere kilometer away.

But, I guess that’s why the national parks of Ethiopia only cost $5 a person to enter. They must be the least expensive parks in all of Africa.

We were ready to leave the park after our three night visit. We could have done a walking or horseback trek, but quite frankly, we were sick of being cold. We’d seen the animals we’d come to see, marvelled at the starkly beautiful scenery, and been able to recharge our much-assaulted batteries with a bit of the great outdoors.

And so, we began our drive back through the horse-filled hills and yellow fields toward Shashamene’s few Rastas. But the Bale Mountains had a few parting gifts for us – warthogs grazing on the side of the road, a black-backed jackal crossing the road, and – best of all – my first serval cat creeping through the grasslands.

Yes, the Bale Mountains had given us many gifts. We were ready to face the challenges of Ethiopia again. We were ready to drive to Addis Ababa.