Bruno doesn’t even look down at the dirty yellow container, which is surely carrying an impure mixture of oil and diesel, anyway.

The normal price of diesel is 17 birr per litre (just under $1). But Gondar doesn’t have any left. Actually, the entire region has a diesel shortage.

We’d come to Gondar a day earlier to continue our historical tour of Northern Ethiopia. Gondar had been the capital of Ethiopia in the 17^th century, home of a series of emperors. Now it is the site of the ruins of the castles and palaces built by these emperors within a 70,000 square-meter compound, called the Royal Enclosure.

We approach Gondar from Lake Tana below. Sitting at the top of the hill are the domed towers of Fasiladas’ palace, the founding king of Gondar. At 32 meters tall, and the only building not in ruins or in the midst of repairs, it is the most impressive building within the Royal Enclosure.

We spend an afternoon walking around these 17^th century ruins. I could be walking through the abandoned grounds of a European nobleman. There are palaces and castles, a Turkish bath, stables, banquet halls, a library and an archive, even a few cages for lions (which were reputably kept here until the 90s!).

In truth, though, I have to imagine the splendour that existed here for over a century. With only a few exceptions, most of the structures are roofless, have half-size walls, and are difficult to identify. It’s a stretch to picture the extensive gardens, opulence, court pageantry, elaborate feasts, and extreme brutality and conspiracy that occurred within these grounds.

Fasiladas’ Castle

The stables.

No roof in Iyasu’s Palace!

Ruins, ruins everywhere!

I guess after Lalibela, Gondar feels a tad underwhelming.

We return to Terera Hotel, one of the oldest in Gondar, on a hill with extensive land. I know that once the gardens here were beautiful, but now they are just overgrown. I know that once the paint on the walls was fresh and the toilets flushed and there was running water. But now I have to draw ant-infested water from a well, and the hallway leading to the “bathroom” (read: a room where you can go to the toilet or take a shower if you haul up your own water bucket) looks like a scene from The Shining.

Today’s Gondar is a far cry from its regal past.

We go out for injira that night. On the way to the restaurant we pass tiny tin boxes elevated slightly from the ground. They look like giant cupboards with sliding doors. Inside are magazine cut-outs pasted onto the walls and soiled blankets on the floor. These are homes. A single man can squeeze himself into one and lie flat if his legs are bent. He can use the “toilet” in the grass behind. This is a neighborhood. It reeks of urine.

Time to leave Gondar behind.

The following morning, we pack up, thank the hotel receptionist, and drive to the town’s gas station to fill up before heading to the Simien Mountains. But there’s no diesel.   We check across the street. No diesel there, either. I consult my map of Gondar. There’s a gas station at the northern end of town. We drive there.

“There’s no diesel in Gondar,” says the man in the station. “Maybe tomorrow.” He uses the word tomorrow like they use it in Africa – to mean sometime in the future, maybe.

“There’s always the black market,” Bruno says to me. He’s obviously been in this situation before.

We head back to Terera Hotel (which I’d hoped never to see again) to ask them for help. The receptionists and guards are all keen to help. They all hop on the phone to call friends and contacts for a bit of black market diesel. They’ve obviously done this before.

Initially I’m hopeful. I calculate that we need 40 liters to get to the Simien Moutains and back, by which time surely Gondar will once again have diesel (“I mean, this kind of shortage is rare, right? Without diesel, life stops!”). Ever prudent, Bruno says we should try to get 80 liters, so that we can make it to the border of Sudan, too. My optimism diminishes slightly.

We spend the morning waiting and negotiating, waiting again and negotiating some more. Loads of “helpful” locals show up to solve our fuel needs – we are farenj, foreigners, after all – but the price is so exaggerated, and the quality of the diesel so dubious, that we don’t buy.

“We can wait,” says Bruno. “We are blessed with the gift of time.”

But I don’t want to wait. Not in this murder-scene ant-water bath hotel.

I head off to do some more tourism, leaving Bruno to deal with the diesel waiting-game. Several kilometers out of town is Fasiladas’ Bath, the supposed vacation spot of Gondar’s emperors. The immense rectangular pool sits in a peaceful garden where I can hear more birds chirp than tuk-tuks honk (a welcome respite). Giant tree roots have grown over the walls and outer seating. I sit in the shade and watch a family sweeping the dead leaves from the walkway and think about the amazing pool parties that must have happened here (in inflated goat-skin lifejackets, no less!).

Fasiladas’ Bath

Overgrown tree roots

But in the back of my mind is diesel and the Simien Mountains and the God-forsaken Terera Hotel. Curse us for not filling up our tank when we could have!

When I return to our hotel, Bruno has managed to find 14 liters of diesel at an only-slightly inflated price. He’s also managed to acquire information about the situation – the government has just announced a much lower fuel price, and gas stations, who had purchased their fuel at the higher price, don’t want to dispense it at a loss, so they are holding onto it for now.

It could be days or weeks before this problem is resolved and the diesel free-flows in Gondar. We have just enough diesel in the tank to get us to the Ethiopian border. The Simien Mountains will have to wait another day. We are driving to Sudan tomorrow.

Gondar may have once been a place of splendour and magnificence. But, just like its crumbling castles and palaces, the majesty of Gondar has disintegrated, and it is now but a ruined shell of its glorious legacy.

Goodbye Gondar.  Goodbye Ethiopia.

Filling up for Sudan.

In Ethiopia, one of the first Christian nations in the world, the faithful must wait another two weeks to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

That’s fine by them. Ethiopian Christians have always done things a little bit differently than in the rest of the world. Here, in the highland town of Lalibela, is living, breathing proof of that.

A woman, draped in a white netela, removes her sandals and kisses the limestone doorway before entering the church. We follow her. Inside, a priest, draped also in white, chants from an ancient holy book made from animal hide. He faces a wall filled with brightly painted depictions of Christ and the Virgin Mary – or “Maryam” as they call her in Ethiopia. The woman enters the chanting room, contemplates an image, bows her head and kisses the artwork, and then moves on to the next painting. All the while, the priest’s ancient Ge’ez song echoes ethereally against the stone walls of this ancient church.

I am in Bet Gabriel-Raphael , the main entrance of the southeastern cluster of Lalibela churches. It is Saturday morning, and Lalibela is alive with worshippers. This is the heart of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

As with all things, Ethiopians have a unique brand of religion. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church dates back to the 4^th century, a strange amalgamation of Judaism and various forms of Christianity, including Greek Orthodoxy and Coptic Christianity. This was in the days of the great Axum empire, one of the four great kingdoms of the time (the others being Persia, China, and Rome!).

What made Ethiopian Orthodoxy different from other forms of Christianity, exactly, I did not know. Yet I was drawn to this mysterious religion from the outset. I captured photos of its churches all over the country, their ornate crosses reaching high above the trees, building, and hills that encircled them. I visited the Ethnological Museum in Addis Ababa, where I studied the caricature-like religious paintings and learned about the development in styles of hand crosses. I read the guide book, where I learned that Ethiopians particularly revered the Virgin Mary, and that they had a large collection of saints and stories unfamiliar to the rest of Christianity.

Churches from around Ethiopia.

You have to look closely to see this one.

A priest on the side of the highway collecting alms.

But I still didn’t feel I had a grasp of Ethiopian Orthodoxy. A piece of the puzzle was eluding me.

I am standing on a hill overlooking Bet Giyorgis, the most famous of all of Lalibela’s churches. Saint George Church stands alone, carved down into its own rocky mountain in the form of a Greek cross. The sun is rising to my left, illuminating the highlands of Ethiopia that roll out onto the land as far as the eye can see. Below me, two priests, clad in colourful gold-bordered vestments, are reading from the Bible under the shade of an equally colourful umbrella. Around them are dozens of white-clad believers prostrating themselves before the priest, the cross-shaped church, and the holy hills. I am witnessing Sunday Mass as it has been played out here for almost a millennium.

Sunday morning mass in Lalibela.

Bet Giyorgis, the most photographed of Lalibela’s churches.

Ethiopians claim deep roots between their land and their religion. They say that Ethiopia was settled by Ethiopic, the great-grandson of Noah. They assert that there are at least thirty references to Ethiopia (or “Abyssinia,” the old name of the country) in the Old Testament. And most of all, they believe that the holy Ark of the Covenant (the tablet of law given to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai) has rested safely in Ethiopia for more than a thousand years.

This story goes all the way back to the Queen of Sheba (who may or may not have existed). This Ethiopian Queen supposedly went to Jerusalem and had a child with King Soloman. Menelik (“son of the king”) became the first great Solomonic king of Ethiopia, a line that is claimed to have ruled almost unbroken until the 1970s (an impossibility). When Menelik went to Jerusalem, he returned to Ethiopia with the son of a high priest of the temple of Jerusalem, who carried with him the Ark of the Covenant.

No one has seen the Ark inside Ethiopia, and history lost track of it over a thousand years ago. But Ethiopians believe it is resting in the inner sanctuary of the Church of Saint Mary in Axum. And as with all things religion, their faith is enough.

Faith is what propelled the creation of the churches of Lalibela in the 12^th century. In a dream, King Lalibela was inspired to recreate Jerusalem in his own country. In twenty three years, and with the help of angels, King Lalibela had eleven churches carved down into three separate mountains. Four of the churches were completely freed from the mountain rock around them, one was carved out of a cave (made for Queen Lalibela in a single night with the help of angels), and several underground passageways connected the churches.

Bet Amanuel, a monolithic, or free-standing, church.

The courtyard around Bet Giyorgis.

Posing at the entrance of Bet Uraiel.

We are walking down the longest passageway. It is pitch-black. I have my left hand on our guide’s shoulder as my right hand glides along the wall of the tunnel. My hair skims the ceiling. All I can do is walk forward and wait for the light.

That is the point of the tunnel. This particular passage, between Bet Gabriel-Raphael and Bet Merkorios, represents Hell. The light at the end of the tunnel represents Heaven. It certainly feels heavenly to emerge into the bright courtyard of Bet Merkorios.

Emerging from one of the many tunnels connecting the churches of Lalibela.

I enter the church. It’s not nearly as large as it looks from the outside. This church is typical of the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela – arched ceilings, a few faded paintings displayed haphazardly, a wearied priest leaning on a prayer stick. The walls and entranceways have been smoothed and darkened by the hands and socked feet of centuries of believers. A smell of incense that I recognize from my Catholic days sits in the still air.

The inside of the church is divided into three sections – the holy room, the chanting area, and the sanctuary. The sanctuary is the private area of the priest, and is always hidden by a bright satin curtain. Behind the curtain lie the treasures – scriptures, crosses, and most importantly, the tabot. This is the sacred part of the church for Ethiopians – in fact, the church itself isn’t sacred. The tabot is a wooden representation of the Ark of the Covenant, and every church in Ethiopia has one.

The area of offerings to the Virgin Mary.

The interior of Bet Medhane Alem.

With the exception of Bet Maryan – dedicated to the much-beloved Virgin Mary – the interior of Lalibela’s churches aren’t spectacular. There are very few [remaining?] frescoes, the ceilings are undecorated, and the walls – which still display the carving marks from tools – seem almost unfinished.

We have to drive two hours away from Lalibela to witness a church with an intricately designed interior. Yemrehanna Kristos was created by an earlier king of the Zagwe Dynasty in the hills where that dynasty had ruled for hundreds of years. Several remote churches and monasteries dot the hills of Northern Ethiopia, but this church is a particularly well-preserved example of the Axumite style. Since we weren’t going to Axum, we decide to visit.

Despite being built less than a hundred years before the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, Yemrehanna Kristos couldn’t feel more different. For one thing, it’s not rock hewn – it is built into the mouth of a cave hidden in forested hills. The exterior walls are made of alternating wood and stone layers. And, of course, almost every inch of the interior is decorated.

Yemrehanna Kristos.

The cave (with an ugly wall recently built for security) that contains Yemrehanna Kristos.

The ceiling of Yemrehanna Kristos.

The grounds around the church are dark. We feel our way to the back of the cave, where bats coexist with a mound of bones of those who asked to be buried here. Inside the church, the wooden walls and ceiling display a variety of geometric patterns, each of them integrating a different type of cross. The windows display different styles of crosses, too.

I hadn’t known that there were so many different types of crosses. In Lalibela, our guide, Abay, had pointed out Greek crosses (four equal sides), Roman crosses (a longer tail), Scottish and Maltese crosses, and even a swastika (reportedly used during the rise of Islam so that Christians could hide their religion from the Muslims while still wearing the symbol of Jesus). To this day, many Amharic women tattoo crosses onto their foreheads, temples, and wrists as a form of protection, and on Sunday morning, ash crosses are drawn onto foreheads of believers.

A tiny bit of ceiling of Yemrehanna Kristos.

I didn’t capture the cross tattoes, but I did snap a photo of these young girls coming back from Sunday mass in Lalibela.

The faithful buried at Yemrehanna Kristos.

The priest at Yemrehanna Kristos shows off his Axumite cross for a photo. It’s large and detailed, with circular patterns. A few days before, I’d seen an example of a Lalibela-style cross, the Gold Cross, by chance in Bet Medhane Alem. The Gold Cross is 7kg of pure gold, which is probably why it was stolen in 1997. It was later located, repurchased, and returned to Lalibela, whereby the priest of Bet Medhane Alem decided only to display it on special occasions.

My visit to Lalibela is evidently such an occasion, because as I walk into the church, the priest pulls the cross out and allows believers to kiss the cross and receive its blessing, giving me the opportunity to look at its symbolism. The twelve apostles stand in an arch along the top, dove wings flap along the sides, and the center cross is formed by four sets of angel wings.

The priest at Yemrehanna Kristos showing me his Axumite-style cross.

The Gold Cross of Bed Medhane Alem.

Crosses are far from the only symbolism I see that day in Lalibela. A series of ten arches outside one curch represent God’s Ten Commandments. The four sets of three pillars in a courtyard represent the holy trinity and the twelve apostles. There is the tomb of Adam, and those of the apostles. The River Jordan runs between the two church clusters. An entire church represents Mt. Sinai!

In the end, though, it isn’t the symbolism that makes me finally grasp the essence of Ethiopian Orthodoxy. It is experiencing ancient rituals alive today. The insides of the church feels like they are breathing, so vibrating are they with chanting and the slow rhythm of the drums. Priests and monks contemplate the same walls as a thousand years ago, and believers still wear the rock smooth and thin with their prayers and prostrations. Faith is everywhere – in the kissing of walls and hand-crosses, in the reading-aloud from mini prayer books, in the ancient stories Abay tells us with conviction, and in the white netelas, wrapped tightly around devoted bodies.

Sunday morning chanting in the courtyard outside Bet Maryam.

A monk admiring the ornate ceilings of Bet Maryam.

Christmas may be another two weeks away in Ethiopia, but their faith is as alive as if it were Christmas in Ethiopia today, too.

I was shocked. I’d had injera several times before – in Chicago with Muna, in Cape Town with Rory, in Dakar with Sahnah, in Ottawa with my mom and brother, in Nairobi with Jo – and I’d rather liked it. Sure, the injera itself was slightly sour and had a spongy texture, but the vegetables and lentil curries that topped the injera perfectly complemented its strange texture and taste.

Plus, you got to eat the meal with your hands. I was a fan of Ethiopian food.

This is injera.

This is injera loaded with spicy wats. Yum!

“Maybe injera is good in the West,” continued Ana. “But in Ethiopia, the batter is fermented for days in dirty corners of dirty huts. Just seeing how they prepare the stuff will turn you off of injera forever.”

That got me worried. I’d been looking forward to eating my way through Ethiopia. Now I wasn’t so sure.

When we crossed the Moyale border from Kenya into Ethiopia, I watched a woman performing a traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony. Leaves and flowers were strewn about the ground, a clay stove with hot coals sat waiting, and a tray with several tiny cups had been placed on a tiny table. The woman soaked and washed green coffee beans in water, then dry-roasted them over the coals. It smelled of roasted maize mixed with the incense stick she had lit to accompany the ritual. When the beans were dark brown, she pounded them into a powder with a mortar and pestle. Finally, she brewed the coffee.

The lengthy ritual is performed throughout the country, every day, by hundreds of thousands of people. The patience and love put into this ritual suffused me with renewed confidence in Ethiopian cuisine, and I decided to face my injera fear head-on. I would eat it that very night.

Washing the raw coffee beans several times is step one of the traditional Ethiopian coffee ceremony.

Step 2 is roasting them until they are dark brown.

Coffee ceremonies take place literally everywhere throughout Ethiopia, even on the side of the highway!

We chose the cleanest restaurant in Moyale – the one that had the disgusting toilets I wrote about, ironic isn’t it? – and ordered – with difficulty – injera with vegetables. I didn’t yet know how to order the typical wats (stews) whose names I’d soon master.

When the meal came, I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d read that the lighter the injera, the higher the quality (thus less sour). This injera was pale yellow. We were good to go.

My first taste of injera in Ethiopia.

When I’d eaten Ethiopian food in other countries, the injera had always been laid out flat on a large common platter with several dishes slopped on top. Often, the platter was placed on a small hour-glass table made of bamboo. Sometimes, African art hung on the walls and traditional Ethiopian music played overhead.

I’d imagined this type of culinary experience in Ethiopia. I thought this is how we would eat every day.

It wasn’t.

And so began my search for the full injera experience. Ethiopia, for me, became about finding the perfect injera.

Injera at Lake Langano. It was only so-so in taste and presentation.

But first I needed to learn the lingo. First up, yalleh sega yalleh dorro. Without meat and without chicken. This was an important one, since Ethiopians love – I mean L.O.V.E. – meat. Ethiopian wats almost always contain meat – lamb, goat, and chicken, sure, but also tripe and liver, beef tongue, and raw meat. Yes, Ethiopians love tere sega, and there are restaurants entirely devoted to preparing this luxury dish. They brandish carcasses at the doorways to advertise the freshness of their ingredients and to lure you in. Naturally, I steered clear.

Shiro and vegetables in Arba Minch. Amazing taste, but served on an individual plate with injera on the side, so still not perfect.

Instead, I learned the vocabulary for the vegetarian dishes – shiro,a delicious wat made from chickpea powder and berbere spice (the main spice in all Ethiopian stews); misr, or lentil wat; tegabino, similar to shiro but thicker, often served on a hot pan; enkulal tibs, scrambled eggs; and fir fir, spicy sauced injira.

The best phrase I learned, though, was baiyaina tu, a platter of all the vegetarian dishes spooned onto injera. This was what I had always eaten outside of Ethiopia. Inside the country, however, it wasn’t easy to find. But when we did, boy did we feast!

I managed to find baiyaina tu in a local restaurant in Addis. A rare feat! Delicious, but in a noisy pub, so still not perfection.

I already knew that Wednesday and Friday are fasting days in Ethiopia. Followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church are commanded to eat a single meal on these days, and it must be entirely free of meat products. This was good news for me – as a vegetarian, I’d imagined that on Wednesdays and Fridays, I would simply sit down at a local restaurant and be automatically handed a full platter of varied vegetarian foods.

Another assumption that turned out to be wrong.

In most local restaurants, the only dish served on fasting days is shiro. It is delicious, and is in fact most Ethiopian people’s favourite dish. But because it’s the center of an Ethiopian meal, you can actually get it seven days a week and don’t have to wait for a fasting day at all.

It turns out you don’t have to wait for a fasting day to get a vegetarian meal in a tourist restaurant, either. If the place is nice and busy enough, it will serve baiyaina tu almost every day of the week.

Suddenly, I didn’t need to search for the perfect injera only on Wednesdays and Fridays – I was in business seven days a week.

Tegabino and injira in Dire Dawa. The restaurant didn’t have any vegetables, though, so it wasn’t perfect.

I started to venture to the tourist restaurants. This is something I generally avoid when traveling, since I’m looking for authentic experiences (and cheap food). But in Ethiopia, I wanted the perfect injera – indeed, I had built up the entire experience in my head – and in this rare instance, perfect didn’t equate with authentic.

In Addis Ababa, I dragged Bruno halfway across the city to eat at a “traditional” Ethiopian restaurant (read: touristy). I even called ahead to make sure the live traditional music was going to be playing. We were greeted to perfect traditional décor – the low hour-glass table and local art on the walls that I’d imagined were all there. Surely tonight I would eat my way to Ethiopian injera heaven.

Then, the “live,” “traditional” music began. A guy stepped up to a synthesizer, pressed a few buttons, and a tinny melody began a twenty minute loop. We ordered a drink. I asked for tej, local honey wine, in honor of our perfect evening. But the waiter refused to serve it to us. “Too strong for you,” he declared.

Instead he gave us beer. There are several varieties of Ethiopian beer, none very good, but it’s important to drink something fizzy with injera. The fermentation process makes injera difficult to digest, but bubbles from a drink – be it soda, beer, or Ambo, a delicious natural mineral water that I became more than slightly addicted to – make the digestion process less, well, noisy and uncomfortable.

I love ambo water.

No tej? No problem!

As we sipped our beers, the “musician” returned to his synth to play a few half-hearted solos over the lopped melody. Our food came – it had the variety I was looking for, but all but the shiro were served cold. A man came up to a microphone and began to sing in a high-pitched whine. He sort of sounded like he was dying. I’d heard Ethiopian music was unique and good. This was certainly unique, but it was definitely not good.

It looked as though we’d have to keep looking for our perfect injera after our mini-holiday to Djibouti.

Check out the size of that chili!

“Traditional” Ethiopian music. O.M.G.

Injera is unique to Ethiopia (and Eritrea). That’s because its key ingredient, teff, grows naturally nowhere else in the world but on the highlands of the Horn of Africa.

We were driving through Ethiopia’s highlands now. Everywhere we turned, field of golden teff blew gently in the cool high-altitude breeze. It was beautiful. And it made me hungry.

The best teff grows in the highlands of Ethiopia, and the Amharic people are very proud of their growing abilities.

Driving through fields of teff, the main ingredient in injera.

There might be a reason I was becoming so obsessed with injera – my body knew a healthy meal when it got one. Gram for gram, teff has more fiber, calcium, iron, and protein than any other grain. It contains natural yeast, which is why it’s so easy to make injera – you only need to add water to teff, let it ferment and rise (naturally) over the course of a few days, then spoon it like crêpe batter onto an injera stove or a clay plate placed over fire.

The process might be easy, but getting the texture just right – in other words, soft and spongy – is no easy feat. Fermenting it just the right amount of time, so that it’s sour but not too sour, is even harder. Tearing a piece off with your right hand only, using your “injera-spoon“ to grab the desired wat from the common platter (making sure to politely leave some for the other eaters), and placing it in your mouth without getting red berbere spice all over your top, is the most challenging of all.

But it’s a feat I’m proud to say I accomplished. Over and over again. Obsessively. Like a true Ethiopian. (Ok, not quite like an Ethiopian – they eat injera three times a day!)

This injera in Gondar was crispy on the edges.

A different presentation style.

Eating injera obsessively proved to be a good tactic for finding the perfect injera – after twenty-odd injera meals, I finally found it. All over Lalibela.

Lalibela is the most touristy place in Ethiopia that we visited. Tourists mean tourist restaurants. And tourist restaurants mean baiyaina tu. During the week we spent in Lalibela, we ate baiyaina tu six times. The seventh time, we ate at home because all the vegetables I’d bought at the market were going bad. But believe me, I thought about injera the entire time.

“Injera again?”  Good thing Bruno likes injera almost as much as me!

I finally found the perfect injera! (Served with delicious ambasha bread on the side).

Oh my goodness, I don’t think I’ve EVER eaten this much!

Ok, so the injera meals we ate in Lalibela weren’t the perfect experience I’d pictured before coming into the country. Sometimes there was local art on the walls, and only once was there traditional Ethiopian music. But the surroundings of the restaurant had come to mean less and less to me during my search for the perfect injera. (I was in Ethiopia after all, so the environment in which I was eating my food couldn’t be better, really.) What came to matter more was that I was connecting with the food I was eating – I had driven through the fields where teff first grew, I had learned how it was prepared, I had bought my very own berbere spice, I had experienced firsthand what injera meant to the local people, and I’d learned to order vegetarian food in any restaurant, in any town, in the local language.

Ethiopian art in the Ethnological Museum in Addis.

All the tools needed for making injera.

And best of all, I’d eaten injera with my hands (food just tastes better with your fingers!), from the same bowl as my beloved. Together, we’d chowed down (fast, so the other wouldn’t get all the yummy wat), burped our delight, and listened to one another’s stomachs growl late into the night.

That, I learned, is the perfect injera experience.

Sharing injera with a loved-one is truly the perfect way to eat it!

The Ethiopians knew this a long time ago, but it took me a while to figure it out.

We didn’t want to be in Djibouti City. It was hot and humid, overcrowded, and had no real accommodation for campers. Thankfully, our first time in town, Bertrand, the French vet running the Decan Animal Refuge, had taken pity on us and let us sleep in his parking lot just outside of town. We’d felt fortunate to fall asleep to the chesty roar of the lion and the responding whoop of the hyena sleeping just next to our vehicle.

The outskirts of Djibouti City.

Our car parked next to the hyena pen.

Visiting the Decan Animal Refuge, something that every visitor to Djibouti should do.

Now, we headed back to the refuge that had become more than just a soothing place to sleep – it had become a refuge for us as well, and we’d become honorary members of the Decan family. The refuge is full of passionate volunteers – kind French military men and wives, young French ecologists getting field experience, and even a woman from Somaliland working against poaching in her home country.

According to Naju, Somaliland is the transit point for animals captured in the entire region before being shipped abroad. I didn’t know that baby cheetahs, for example, are captured all over the Horn of Africa to be sent to Asia and the Middle East and purchased as pets. The Somali government is working against the trafficking of wild animals, and Naju had recently come to Decan Refuge with five, very traumatized baby cheetahs. We’d even gotten to see them.

One of the traumatized baby cheetahs that Naju is nursing back to health.

A retired French military man-cum Decan volunteer taking care of the baby lion, birthed by the two adult lions in captivity.

But on our return to Decan, we were grieving over our second failed whale shark snorkelling trip. And that’s when our new friends offered to have us join their boat trip to nearby Moucha Island the next day. A sort of cancelation prize, you could say. We took them up on the offer – me feeling it was fate throwing us this bone – and had an enjoyable day walking along the beach, swimming in the warm waters, visiting the mangroves, and especially getting to know this lovely group of likeminded people.

Arriving at Moucha Island by boat.

A boat ride to Moucha Island is a good cancellation prize in lieu of whale shark snorkelling.

Picnic time with the lovely Decan volunteers!

Walking in the mangrove forest on Moucha Island.

It was on the boat ride back to the mainland that Mohamed, one of the French militarymen/Decan volunteers, told us he was going whale shark snorkelling the very next day and would we like to join him? The answer was an unhesitating yes! Finally, this was the opportunity we’d been looking for! We were going to see whale sharks! I knew we’d been meant to go to Moucha Island that day!

The next morning, as we drove to the fishing pier, the clouds were thick and dark. The six of us settled onto the boat, but just as the motor roared to life, the coast guard told us we’d have to wait out the oncoming storm at the pier. We waited, laughing nervously. But the storm didn’t pass. It drenched us, mocking us, daring us to go out onto the sea anyway. Eventually, we gave up and decided to reschedule for the next day.

I.AM.SOAKED.

Back at shore, we learned that we’d experienced the storm of the decade. Expats that had been living in Djibouti for years marvelled at the amount of water the skies had released that morning. As the rain continued well into the afternoon – a sheer rarity in such a rain-starved country – we concluded that the roads would be too wet to head back to Decan. So we hid from the rain at the Sheridan Hotel, taking advantage of a rare wifi connection. We checked our very full inboxes and began replying to long-awaited emails.

My phone rang. Mohamed. Checked the forecast. Rain for the next few days. Snorkel trip postponed indefinitely.

And that’s when it became clear to us. That for some reason, we weren’t meant to snorkel with whale sharks. At least not on this trip.

It was time to leave Djibouti. I checked a few last emails, and then I googled “whale sharks,” to say goodbye, I guess. In the pictures, their bodies were covered in whitish specks. Their dorsal fins were more rounded than regular sharks.

And that’s when it clicked. The sharks we’d seen on our anniversary. They’d been whale sharks. Juvenile whale sharks feeding on the plankton and krill that were plentiful in the Bay of Goubet at that time of year.

So we had seen whale sharks on our anniversary, after all! We hadn’t swam with them, but we’d had a private up-close encounter that had lasted several special hours. It had been the highlight of the trip, even before I’d known they were whale sharks!

They were whale sharks after all!

We drove out of Djibouti City toward Ethiopia, our hearts full. Full of whale sharks, of course, but full of so much else that we hadn’t hoped to get from Djibouti. Full of mountain treks and salt lakes, of stunning landscapes and rescued cheetahs, full of snorkelling, special wildlife, and new friends. And full of newfound love for a fingernail of a country that packs a handful of a punch!

Thank you, Djibouti, for showing us your whale sharks and so much else. And thank you, again, to those of you whose wedding gifts made this unforgettable 12-day first anniversary trip possible. We love you!

Hamadryas baboons, endemic to the Horn of Africa.

Beautiful landscapes.

Leaving Djibouti. Goda Mountains, palmerais, and a bit of salt, all thrown into a single landscape!

Celebrating

Wait a minute, I think I’m getting ahead of myself here. I better back up a bit.

Everyone travels for different reasons, and for Bruno, it has always been for animals. An encounter with an Ethiopian wolf or the chance to come up close to gorillas in the forests of central Africa will lead to lengthy detours on 4×4 roads. The opportunity to work in chimpanzee rehabilitation or to spot a white oryx in the desert of Saudi Arabia is what drives Bruno forth – literally – year after year.

It was whale shark season in Djibouti. From November until January, these largest of fish (up to 12 meters long!) journey into Djibouti’s Gulf of Tadjoura to feed on plankton and schools of krill. And, since whale sharks are docile, tolerant creatures, it is possible to get up close to them. Djibouti is one of the most reliable places in the world to snorkel with whale sharks.

This is what inspired Bruno to take a 600km detour east, on a terrible road in the middle of waterless rocky mountains.

The fact that Djibouti would be a new country for him – the first in several years – inspired me to name the entire trip a first wedding anniversary celebration. Thanks to wedding gifts from Louise, Lisa and David, Linda and Nevon, and Nancy and Paul, we would spend our anniversary in this tiny nation (the most expensive in all of Africa) and we would see search for its whale sharks!

First views of Djibouti.

On the way to Djibouti City.

When we arrived in Djibouti City, a hot and sticky port city with more foreign military bases, crows, and qat (chat) stalls than I’d ever seen in one place, we realized that snorkelling with whale sharks wasn’t going to be as easy as we’d thought. Sure, we could pay the ridiculous fee to sit on a boat with forty other people and be escorted into the water for our close-up encounter like objects on a factory line. But we didn’t envision our experience like that.

We would have to find another way.

Crows in Djibouti City.

Qat for sale at these roadside stalls. The leaves are under a blanket, but the pictures on the side advertise the prices and sizes available.

We left Djibouti City a few days later armed with a local SIM card and a few phone numbers for locals guys who could organize more personal boat trips on small boats. While we organized our snorkelling trip from afar, we’d take advantage of other things Djibouti had to offer. And there were many.

First up was the beach. The sticky heat of Djibouti had us daydreaming about diving into turquoise waters. We didn’t even know the snorkelling was going to be so good. But in Tadjoura, a small town on the northern coast of the gulf, and in Raissali, further east, we received the pleasant surprise of nearby coral reefs. For five days, we did little else but swim amid angelfish and trigger fish, bannerfish and parrotfish. I followed a blue spotted stingray and Bruno bounced a prickly puffer fish in his hands. I almost got my finger bitten off by a too-curious barracuda, and Bruno latched onto the carapace of a swimming green turtle. The warm waters and colourful fish reminded me of falling in love with snorkelling in the Red Sea off Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula three years earlier.

Tadjoura town – a mix of Islam and Afar nomad.

A view of our secluded campsite at Raissali Beach.

Getting ready to snorkel! Woohoo!!!

Bruno doing what he does best, haha!

It’s almost our first wedding anniversary!

During this time, we’d managed to secure two spots on a tiny boat going out to visit the whale sharks on the actual day of our anniversary. We’d be joining a small group of people, which meant that not only would the price be more reasonable, but we’d have a more private encounter than we would on a huge commercial boat. We were stoked to celebrate our anniversary day itself with the whale sharks!

Unfortunately, two days before the outing, we received word that the group had cancelled. We could reschedule for two days later, however, and join a group of Italians going out. We were slightly disappointed not to get to snorkel with whale sharks on our actual anniversary, but decided to continue taking advantage of Djibouti’s varied landscapes in the meantime.

And so we headed to the mountains. In a country almost entirely surrounded by water, it’s strange to experience the water shortages and inhospitable aridity that are an everyday reality for Djiboutians. The Goda Mountains, Djibouti’s only slice of green, are a relief from the heat and scorched landscapes elsewhere. Dittilou, where we camped and hiked, was no tropical rainforest, but it was pleasant to hike up to the few palm tree oases, or palmeraies, that are the life source for the Afar nomads inhabiting this region.

Approaching the Goda Mountains from the coast.

Conquering the Goda Mountains near Dittilou!

Approaching an abandoned Afar camp. The Afar people are semi-nomadic, traveling between different established camps throughout the year.

We saw more birds than people on our trek.

It was here that we began November 28^th, the day of our first wedding anniversary. We woke up to a fresh misty mountain morning, and enjoyed the feeling of draping our shoulders in light sweaters and cupping hot beverages with our breakfast. We drove steeply down the mountain on a handmade rocky track that passed through oueds, dried river beds. I’d never bumped along so much and been so convinced that we were able to stumble off the cliff or get another flat tire. But, when we reached the ocean and its salty breeze and palm trees again, and I finally breathed a sigh of relief, I recognized that the bumpy mountain road had been a fun adventure, and the second success of the day.

The third success came soon after, as we drove along the coastal highway. The scenery here was just plain spectacular. The road followed along cliffs and mountains made of black volcanic rock, which made the turquoise water sparkle even more invitingly. Volcanic islands appeared in the water. A few trees grew out of the black rubble. Afar nomads walked their camels over the searing heat of the black rock. A few soemmerring’s gazelles traipsed up the loose ground.

Oh man, was THAT a rocky road down the mountain!

Devil’s Islands, volcanoes in the Bay of Goubet.

Afar nomads, their camels, and volcanic rock.

Soemmerring’s gazelles, endemic to the region.

We decided to take our lunch at la plage de l’ardouko, one of the many campements touristiques in this part of the country. We’d been worried about accommodation in Djibouti, but these “tourist camps” saved us. They were run by locals, who were very happy to welcome our camper van for the night for a modest fee. Water may have been an issue – once we were given only 10 litres, for our showers, drinking water, dish-washing, and toilet-flushing – but the camps were always located in idyllic settings – Raissali was on an isolated rock beach, Dittilou was in the middle of the mountains near a palm oasis, and this camp was on a volcanic peninsula in the Bay of Goubet with turquoise water all around.

Oh yeah, and there were sharks in the water! As we munched on our anniversary lunch, we were treated to the dance of three shark fins in the water. For hours, we watched them feed on schools of golden fish sparkling on the water’s clear surface. Their dorsal fins were slightly rounded with whitish specks, and they were long – at least 4 meters – but Bruno and I don’t know enough able sea creatures to have been able to know what kind of shark they were. Were they dangerous? Could we swim with them? It was impossible for us to determine. All we had were the words of the locals. Requins. Dangereux.

A shark, but what kind??

Me, watching the sharks feed. Happy for hours!

We saw green turtles too!

When the mid-day heat started to fizzle away, we hopped back into the car and drove through the black and turquoise scenery to Lac Assal. This salty crater lake is a scorching 155m below sea level, making it the lowest point on the African continent. Its edges are the same turquoise as the ocean bay we’d just come from, and we suspected that at one time, the ocean had extended further inland, all the way to this lake. As the water in the lake evaporated, the lake became saltier and saltier, until salt began to deposit along its edges and a beach made of salt 60 meters deep formed along one side.

The Afar nomads, whom we’d seen in the Goda Mountains, in the arid deserts, and along the rocky coast, have longed mined this lake for its salt. They cut off giant rectangular blocks, load their camels, and journey to Ethiopia to trade the salt for other goods. In the past, they received actual gold in exchange for their salt, and legend has it that they were actually mining white gold.

After driving along the salt beach – a little freaky, since I didn’t yet know that the salt was 60 meters deep! – I decided to swim in the water. Bruno had told me about the experience of “swimming” in the Dead Sea and I wanted to experience it for myself. Lac Assal isn’t as salty as the Dead Sea, but I was still easily able to “sit” in the water, feeling that particular lightness that Bruno had described. It was cool!

Our first close-up view of Lac Assal. Wow.

Checking out the salt beach. It actually hurts your feet!

An Afar nomad and his camels, coming to pick up salt.

Driving on the salt beach! Thankfully it’s 60 meters deep!

Swimming – or should I say floating – in the salt water of Lac Assal.

As the sun set, we headed back to the beach, parked our vehicle on the rocky peninsula and toasted to another year of successful marriage. It had certainly been a special day, despite the lack of whale sharks.

The next morning, we drove to Djibouti City to prepare for our much-anticipated snorkelling trip the next day. As fate would have it, the moment we arrived in the capital, we received word that, yet again, our trip had been cancelled.

Would we ever get to see whale sharks in Djibouti?

You’ll have to wait until the second part of this story to find out!

In fact, I’m in the fourth holiest Muslim city in the world, an ancient center of Islamic scholarship, and the town with the densest concentration of mosques in the world. It figures one of the ninety of them would serve as my wake-up call.

The call of the muezzin seems to pull me toward him, toward the high walls of this mysterious, ancient town. Toward this newly-proclaimed Unesco World Heritage site. The number one recommendation from the Lonely Planet Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Somaliland guide book.

We slop on our sunscreen, throw water into our backpack, and are off.

Soon, we arrive at the main gate of Harar Jugol, the old walled town. There are six gates around the three-kilometer perimeter of wall, and this is the only one wide enough for cars to enter. I shuffle through the gate with a few vehicles, down the main road for a minute, then down a random alleyway, where the honking cars cannot follow.

This is our plan this morning: to wander aimlessly among the cobbled alleyways of Harar, to get a feel for the place. There are few sites, per se – the house-cum-museum of Arthur Rimbaud, the honeymoon home of Emperor Haile Selassie, the shrines and mosques scattered around. The real charm is in the ability to get lost in the streets while remaining in the safety of its walls.

I suppose that’s how the inhabitants of Harar felt about their walls, too.

The whitewashed alleyways of Old Harar.

Bruno, an alley, and a doorway.

In fact, those walls, built and rebuilt in a centuries-old collage of rock, failed to protect the Harari people from the violence that always surrounded this city. Within those walls, Harari leaders were murdered in stealthy coups; jihads and raids were organized against the Ethiopian Christian Empire; foreigners invaded and conquered; and the chopped-off heads of enemy emperors were paraded victoriously on stakes.

The walls stand still, four meters tall, but their crumbling, uneven patchwork speak of the toll it took to protect what they contained within.

The walls surrounding Harar’s Old Town.

Wandering the alleyways with the locals.

Down the alleys, between the whitewashed walls and the craggy, uneven paths are people. Boys playing with paper-and-pen pinwheels, soccer balls woven together with string, tin can unicycles. Old women, covered in white headscarves, navigating the rugged path with the aid of wooden walking sticks. Inside heavy wooden doors left open are generous stone courtyards. Women wearing bright loose sheeti dresses over dangling petticoats wash clothing or cook over blackened charcoal, protected from the sun and the men wandering the streets, and free to gossip and giggle.

An old Harari women, as wrinkly as the walls behind.

We come to another gate. This one is much more majestic, with flourishings of Islamic script and gold trim. Around the gate is a large market. Baguettes of bread are sold in mass quantities next to a dozen different varieties of chilis. Dried lentils, injira pancakes, and thick beige twigs used for “brushing” one’s teeth are sold next to the more mundane fruit and vegetables. And everywhere is chat, that green leafy mild intoxicant that is legal in Ethiopia, and chewed by almost all. I turn around and look more closely. Chat leaves are scattered everywhere on the ground. Women sit at stalls packaging the stems into various sized bags. Men walk through the alleys holding their chat bundles, some already chewing. And on the corners of every street are men – young and old – sitting or lying on the brick munching lazily on chat, dazed expressions on their faces.

My favorite gate, and its surrounding market.

A woman roasting grain for sale at the market.

We’d already had a few encounters with the intimate relationship between Ethiopian men and chat during our three weeks here. A guy asking us to pay for our accommodation upfront so he could go to the market and spend it on a hefty wad of it; a discussion with a police officer about his peaceful Saturday afternoons, just he and his bulging cheeks; a struggle – later – to find a garage where someone who was not bleary-eyed and green-toothed could repair our busted tire; and worst of all, a terrible encounter with a belligerent Ethiopian, who shouted “F*$% you!” and “Go back to your country” at us for no other reason than that aggression-inducing chat come-down.

As we continue our stroll through Harar, and notice more and more men scattered on the ground and less and less of them up and doing something, we are forced to conclude that the Ethiopian government’s tolerance of this appetite-suppressant and stimulant is doing more harm than good to its society.

Explorer Sir Richard Burton claimed that Harar was the birthplace of the chat plant. Maybe that’s why we’d encountered so many aggressive Ethiopians since we’d arrived here.

An informal chat market.

A woman carrying chat on her head. Women sell, men eat (generally).

We come to a dead-end. Another gate, this one with a golden-hued rock double arch. Between the arches is a door leading, surely, to an old guard post. My mind floats to the past, to a time when this city was defended against foreign invasion. I am easily able to imagine the soldiers standing watch behind the heavy wooden double doors.

Unfortunately, I am less able to imagine what life was like throughout the centuries in the rest of the town. Now, electric poles follow the course of the four hundred or so alleyways, feeding satellite televisions through tangled lines. Tinny music blares from cell phones. Makeshift tin-walled homes are erected between the old walls, courtyards, and alleyways. Plastic litters the ground. The town reeks of human excrement.

And anyway, it’s hard to concentrate on transporting oneself back in time when all the kids we meet are yelling “farenjo [foreigner], photo!” at every turn.

Another ancient gate of Harar.

I can’t help but compare this day’s visit to one not so long ago – to the ancient towns and villages of France. The maze of alleyways, the paths of uneven square bricks, the charming wooden doors hiding shaded courtyards, the homes looking down narrowly overhead. Yet, despite the similar design features, the two experiences couldn’t be more different. In Europe, I had snapped photos hungrily and wandered through the twists and turns of the towns undisturbed except for an occasional innocent bonjour. Here, it’s not just the children chasing after me. Men, between chews of chat offer to be our guide. Women, hunched over themselves, beg for our birr [Ethiopian currency]. Even the greetings of salam are tainted with ulterior motive.

A door in Harar’s old town that brings me back to France’s ancient villages.

Looking into a courtyard (not one of the most interesting ones, but I didn’t want to start snapping photos of people inside their courtyards!)

For Bruno, the experience that morning of walking through Hara is sad. He’d visited Harar fourteen years before and vividly remembers walking happily in its alleywayss. Today, he is dismayed by this now-World Heritage site that is crumbling before his very eyes. That Arthur Rimbault’s house is a pile of rubble and that the rooftop line of the town is littered with tin roofs. That the alleyways smell of urine and feces, and that the once-proud Harari people – who’d been living within these walls since as early as the 7^th century – now seem to be happy to exist in a garbage dump. That rather than weaving fabric and baskets, rather than binding books and studying the Koran – all things the Hararis are famous for – the Harari people are chewing chat.

After a couple hours of wandering, Bruno asks that we wander home.

Wandering the alleyways home.

In the parking lot of our hotel, we consult the guide book and plan our next move, to Dire Dawa, the gateway to Djibouti. Dire Dawa is the second-largest town in Ethiopia by population, but it was only created a hundred years ago, with the building of the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway. The railway should have passed through Harar, but it would have meant an expensive detour south. Dire Dawa, or New Harar was thus born, and Harar Jugol has been on the decline ever since.

I convince Bruno to head back into the labyrinthine old town later that afternoon. In the fading afternoon light, I realize that, despite the smells, garbage, and filth, there is something to these streets. I don’t need to visit a traditional Harari home to feel it. I don’t need to witness the town’s hyenas being fed their nightly ritual of meat-on-a-stick (surely a tourist trap). And I don’t need a local guide to unfold for me the history and culture of the town.

To feel the pulse of these Harari streets, I just need to wander through the alleyways and get as lost as I possibly can, all the while knowing that I will always be able to find my way home.

How did things get this way? How did I get to this moment, here and now? Why on earth am I showing a photo of an elephant to a random villager?

***

The day had started out well enough. We’d had a peaceful sleep among the oryx and gazelles of Awash National Park. We’d awoken to the sound of the sprinkling waterfall nearby and the friendly chirps of the birds. And we’d breakfasted amid families of vervet monkeys and baboons. Awash National Park hadn’t been the safari of our lifetime, but we’d been at peace in its arid, prickly heat.

Having breakfast with the baboons and vervet monkeys of Awash National Park.

Oryx at Awash.

Awash Falls.

Later that morning, we’d driven past herds of camels up into cool green hills. The villages had overflowed with the most vivid of clothing, and even though we’d been stared at and cat-called as though we were aliens, we’d felt happily stimulated. We were driving east, toward exotic Djibouti, and we were making excellent time.

By the time we’d reached Harar, the only large town with accommodation possibilities, we’d driven 350km, a new record for us. We knew that a mere 30km further was the Babille Elephant Sanctuary, offering camping and the possibility of seeing a rare sub-species of forest elephant – yet another of Ethiopia’s endemic animals.

It was no wonder that we forewent Harar’s sub-par hotels for the possibility of more bush camping.

An oasis for camels. A beautiful morning drive image.

A mountain man.

***

Bruno’s GPS point is wrong. I have no map, but a small paragraph in my guide book states that we may have overshot our distance. A local in Babille town confirms this thought. We head back and begin looking again for the sign-posted turnoff. To not avail.

We have a photo of an elephant in our Mammals of Africa book. We begin to show it to locals as our non-Amharic way of asking where the sanctuary is. The consensus is that it’s down a dirt road and past a hill. That corresponds to my guide book and a possible point on Bruno’s GPS.

So we go for it. It’s 4:30pm, 80 minutes before sunset.

And that, my friends, is our mistake. Lured by a sleep amid elephants rather than between walls, we make an amateurish decision. We drive down the un-signposted dirt road into nameless fields and villages. We drive, and drive, and drive. The actual distance is only 14km, according to the GPS, but it is 5:30pm when we finally conclude that either we are on the wrong road or no such elephant sanctuary exists.

The only elephant we saw on this day was the one from our Mammals of Africa guide…

By this point, we’ve been driving almost 11 hours and almost 400km. Bruno is exhausted and disappointed and stressed by all the children running after our car and latching onto the back end. And that’s why he doesn’t see the pink-painted box in the middle of the path. That’s why he drives over it.

And that’s why the nail the size of a middle finger jutting out from the side of the box punctures our tire.

With the hissing sound of our collapsing tire, our morale deflates. Already, an entire village of excited Ethiopians are crowding around our vehicle, leaving us barely enough space to check the tire and do the required work. I try to help Bruno – I hold the flashlight in the setting sun, get him water, and help tighten the wheel-screw-thingies. But who am I kidding – I know zilch about car mechanics.

Bruno repairing our blown tire two days after “the incident”. (I didn’t take any photos when we actually punctured the tire because we were both way too stressed to look at the situation as humorous…)

So instead, I analyze the crowd. Everyone is smiling and laughing, staring at our misfortune as though we are Teddy Afro – the most popular contemporary musician in Ethiopia – come to do a free, impromptu concert. We are the most exciting thing they’ve seen in weeks. They are the worst thing we’ve experienced in months.

Eventually, despite trembling fingers, Bruno gets the tire changed and we are again off. It is pitch black and now we have to drive another dusty, bumpy 12km to the main road without – god forbid – getting another flat.

Eventually, we reach Harar, find the single hotel that will accept our vehicle in the parking lot, have a rushed dinner and a sponge bath inside the car, and throw ourselves into bed.

And as I lay in bed with the light off, listening to the dance party happening not far from our window, I laugh to myself. In two-and-a-half years of traveling overland with Bruno, we’ve never had a flat. We’ve never driven 425km in a single day. Never been on the road for twelve hours straight. Never arrived after dark to our accommodation. And never fallen into bed quite this shattered.

I’m lucky this is only my first time experiencing this kind of day, I decide.  I’m pretty lucky in general, actually.

And with that, I close my eyes and fall fast asleep.

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.

The amazing town of Shashamene.

The rasta I saw.

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.

Horse-rider in the highlands of Ethiopia.

The golden fields and conical huts of Bale.

Locals going to market on their horses and donkeys.

Bale boys messing about on donkeys.

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.

Headquarters of Bale Mountain National Park, near Dinsho.

It’s cold up here at 4377m!

Even the ducks are cold!

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.

Check out those plants!

The clouds are rolling in.

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.

The stunningly handsome Ethiopian wolf.

Getting good at spotting the wolves far off in the stark landscape.

Bruno photographing the Ethiopian wolf. He’s excited, totally in his element.

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.

It’s probably easier to catch one of these molerats in your jaw that on camera!

Trying to dig in a molerat hole. Not successful.

Resting contentedly after pouncing on and scarfing down a molerat.

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.

Mountain nyalas.

Bale monkey.

Watching the monkeys.

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.

The main village inside the national park…

Horses and cows graze inside the national park…

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.

My first serval cat!

I didn’t want to start my Ethiopia blog entries on a negative note. I reflected, for over a week, on how I could weave my Ethiopian experiences thus far into an upbeat entry. I even contemplated fast-forwarding the narrative of my time here and leaving this blog entry for later on.

But then I realized that sharing the challenges I’ve faced in Ethiopia right from the start is the honest way of portraying my experience here. Perhaps it will help warn and prepare future travelers to Ethiopia. And maybe – just maybe – if I share my challenges now, throwing them out into the blog-iverse, I will be able to let them go.

It all started at the border. We’d made good time on the Marsabit-Moyale road and decided to cross into Ethiopia that afternoon. Our Lonely Planet guide had described a certain lodge on the Ethiopian side of the border as the “best on either side.”

When I saw the toilet I would be expected to use that night, my first thought was, “This is the best in town?” My second thought was that there was no way I’d be doing my morning business in there. And my third thought was that Ethiopia was going to be tough.

I won’t disturb the gentle sensibilities of my readers by describing the appearance or smell of that evening’s toilet. I will simply say that, though this was the worst of the bunch so far, that toilet was a sort of symbol representing the general standard of cleanliness of Ethiopia and its establishments.

Entering Ethiopia. Looks promising, no?

I had to learn very quickly to lower my campsite standards. I can’t even really say “campsite,” for a campsite is a rarity in Ethiopia. Most of the time, we’ve slept in the parking lot of hotels and lodges, and been given permission to use the staff toilets and showers. (Once again, I will not describe those.) And so, now, a good place to stay is a piece of grass far-ish from the road with a clean-enough toilet and a bit of cold running water for a shower. Forget internet, forget hot water or sinks for washing dishes. Forget bathrooms decorated Afro-chic. Forget large shaded campsites with individual electrical plugs.

Just give me a place that’s not a parking lot on the side of the highway with a squat toilet from hell and I’ll be happy. I’ll even stay two nights.

And so, Bruno and I have found ourselves on the road a lot, in perpetual search of a comfortable night’s sleep. Admittedly, the roads have improved since Bruno was last here (in 2000). Tar does make the driving easier. But in Ethiopia, more than in any other country, animals pose a serious hazard to vehicles. I have never seen so many cows, donkeys, and goats on the side of the road. It seems the Ethiopian government tarred the roads, in fact, for the livestock of the country, rather than the vehicles. At least that’s what the locals think – they spread their beasts of burden along the entire width of the road, and merely make last-ditch, half-hearted attempts to move them when our vehicle appears on the horizon. Most of the time, it’s the front tip of Totoyaya that pushes the animals to the roadside.

Ethiopian traffic jam!

The main mode of transportation on the roads of Ethiopia.

The roads in Ethiopia are not usually this pock-marked.

Because we’re driving so much more than usual – once six days in a row, a new record by far – we are much more tired than usual. And so, we are finding it difficult to deal with the Ethiopian people, themselves.

Our first day driving in Southern Ethiopia, we saw a child perform a jig on the side of the road. I laughed. Bruno honked the horn. A few kilometers later, another few children danced as we passed by. Someone did the splits. Another did a hand stand. By the time we reached Konso, we were being bombarded by cartwheels and booty-shakes, followed inevitably by car-chases and upturned palms.

We discovered that the children in this region had learned to perform for vehicles full of farenji, or foreigners (read: white tourists). They dance for money or pens, of course, but they also dance for empty water bottles. Stuffing the empty bottles with a bread made of maize, the children ferment the concoction until it’s a filling, alcoholic porridge-like beverage. Sounds healthy.

This is a dance? It looks like he’s posessed…

One of the few Ethiopian children NOT to dance or throw rocks our way.

“At least they’re not throwing rocks at us,” I commented to Bruno as we drove to Arba Minch. I’d heard from many sources that children in Ethiopia are known to throw rocks at passing farenji vehicles. They’d shattered windows and even injured people. When Bruno came to Ethiopia on his motorbike, he had bruises all over his arms from the rocks.

But I guess I spoke too soon. Because a few days later, as we drove north out of Arba Minch, the stones began to be hurled our way. They haven’t been large – so far – but having a rock thrown at oneself by a local person in a country where we are a guest is a horrifying, demeaning feeling.

Being spat on is even more demeaning. And that is exactly what happened in Arba Minch’s local market. I was shopping for produce, trying to bargain with ladies who spoke no English. (This was before I decided to learn a bit of Amharic, the local language, which is incredibly difficult. Can you believe their word for “thank you” has six syllables?) We were acquiring quite a crowd, which I’d already become used to in Ethiopia, so I took little notice of the fact that the children were signalling that we give them some of our purchases. When I turned to leave the market, they yelled at us, and one spit at our feet.

I was beginning to dislike the children of Ethiopia.

And unfortunately, in Dorze, a hilltop village north of Arba Minch, it wasn’t just the children harassing us. The adults, too, held out their hands, bellowed “You! You! You!” at us, and jumped in front of our vehicle to force us to pull into their shop. This was a far cry from the relaxed, positive cultural experience the Lonely Planet had described. It was so bad, in fact, that we decided to turn around and head back down the hill. We would only see the famous beehive woven huts of Dorze village from the car window.

On the way up the hill to Dorze.

The beehive-shaped huts of Dorze.

Don’t get me wrong. Ethiopia hasn’t all been bad. There have been pleasant surprises, too. The countryside is beautifully lush and fertile, verdant hills and Rift Valley lakes around every twist in the road. I can actually buy fruit and vegetables, contrary to how things were a decade ago and to what I’d been expecting. The villages are filled with unique sights – traditional coffee stands, women with strange center-parted braids, families riding aboard donkey-drawn carriages. We’ve found two “campsites” where we were actually able to stay more than a night (Swayne’s Hotel in Arba Minch, and Karkaro Beach Cottages at Lake Langano). And some of the children we’ve met have approached us first to shake our hands or practice English before asking us for a gift.

The stunning view of Nechisar National Park from Swayne’s Hotel.

Lake Langano, and our campsite, Karkaro Beach Cottages.

All the women sporting interesting center-braided hairdos.

And for every challenge we face, I tell myself, there will be a like reward. We are, after all, in a country like no other in Africa. A country with an absolutely unique history, religion, written script, music, calendar, and food. A country with vast rewards to offer those who have the perseverance to look past its challenges.

It’s just that, whenever I arrive at a new “campsite” and look at the toilet, I wonder if I have the patience to try.