Ethiopia (2): Heading North

The rain in Ethiopia stays mostly on the plain.  Or the mountain.  Or the city.

A week is a long time in Addis Ababa.   Twice a day, the city is saturated with rain (very this season) but otherwise is sprinkled with comparatively few tourist attractions.  This is no Paris, London, Tokyo or Sydney.  Established in1886, quite recent really, the 'New Flower' (as her name translates) seems to lack the many distinct districts - areas of contrasting history or character - that make a Buenos Aires and those other capital cities so enchanting.  And if you've seen one part, you've seen most of Addis: the bland part, that is.  Or at least, this is what I tell myself, to make me feel better about neglecting to look harder for the city's soul.

To be fair, Lucy lives here.  Lucy is the name of the 3.2 million year old skeletal remains discovered in Ethiopia in 1974, thus putting the country in a position near the bottom of the evolutionary ladder - the bottom rungs being the oldest and most prestigious, for once.  Lucy was, perhaps, a missing step in the increasingly upright progression from ape to hominid to human, and thence back down to estate agent.

I pass Lucy's home, in the National Museum, on the way to and from and to and from the Egyptian Embassy.  I'm cheered by my success in obtaining another necessary visa to help me travel further north, but disappointed to not find time to ape the behaviour of fresh-faced tourists and actually visit the most noteworthy girl in town.  I could have read about her from where you're sitting now.  My disappointment is growing.

I also fail to register other museums and monuments that I may have passed, as this would puncture the illusion I've started to spin.  Addis' bloody history, for example, was there to be visited:

Yekatit 12 Monument

Rising dramatically from Siddist Kilo is this moving monument to the thousands of innocent Ethiopians killed by the Italians as retribution for the attempt on Viceroy Graziani’s life on 19 February 1937. Graphic depictions of the three-day massacre are captured in bronze and envelop the lower half of the marble obelisk.

Another, towering monument - the Derg Monument - reminds those who visit about the sad chapter of Communist rule over Ethiopia, between 1974 and 1991.  The socialist experiment finally fell apart, but not before an estimated 100,000 political opponents had been killed and thousands had fled abroad, in 1977.  Hundreds of thousands also died in the famine that followed the 1984-5 drought, with the government's mismanagement of disaster relief programmes blamed for exacerbating the situation.  Pressed for time, or ignoring any distraction, I don't visit this monument either, of course.

Between rain storms Ethiopia has some exceptionally lovely scenery - photos are inadequate I'm afraid!

Although I diligently read the rest of the Lonely Planet guide, the city and it's historical place within the country remains on the page.  Neither I nor any of the other travellers venture out to visit the huge sprawling Merkato (market), wander the Piazza or sample the nightlife - even when a national festival shuts shops and sends the people into the streets and parks to celebrate.  Clearly, we're all a bit jaded by our time on the road.  Gone is the boundless enthusiasm to immerse in local culture.  We'd rather sit at plastic tables and order another Fanta.

Just good friends.  My bank has a lot to learn about relationships.

I spend the week trying to push along my application for a replacement Carnet de Passage.  I occupy a table in the Sheraton's expensive business centre for whole days, on the 'phone or emailing, rather than experiencing the real city.  My disappointment is hard to convey to the call centre staff, who probably assume (with some justification) that I'm on a long 'jolly' and won't suffer much from the computer says 'no' syndrome.

My bank tells me, eventually and after lots of follow up calls and requests for reliable information, that I need to send an additional set of documents to them, and that in any event nothing will happen until next week as someone's on holiday.  That this takes them (or should that be 'me'?) a week to communicate is unfortunate.  The Customer Solutions team hasn't been much of a solution, the Guarantee Team are guaranteed only to wind me up with their lack of energy, and my Relationship Manager is the one on holiday - thereby sending our new relationship into counselling before it has properly begun.

As the on-hold music plays, I research more about the route(s) north.  Many overlanders arrive at Wim's Holland House and are set to travel south.  Swapping notes of what to see (or not see), where and when to visit, and which fixers are worth engaging makes for good evening conversation.  I clean my bike, and tried to repair any damage or tighten any screws shaken loose on the road to and since Moyale - it's therapeutic, you see, to work on my bike.

By Saturday we are all keen to escape the city and see more countryside.  Some of the crowd (including Daan and Mirjam) are going to head northwest, to Bahir Dar and Lake Tana.  I'm set on the northeast fork of the road, which will take me up to the stone churches of Lalibela, via Desse.   (More on those next time.)  Our point of rendezvous should be Gondar, or the nearby Simien Mountains National Park.  This way, everyone gets to see what they are most interested in.

-----------------------------------------

Pastel patchwork on the high plateau

Not knowing what the northwestern route holds, I nevertheless feel I have made the right choice, by not going left.  The road across the high Guassa Plateau is superb, and the bright green pasture lands are... well, delightful.  

I've caught the end of the rains, so everything is very bright and clean: cattle-herding children stand out sharply amongst the flowering meadows, whilst misty mountains form a distant purple backdrop.  This is as pretty, in its way, as riding through the Alps.

Towards Debre Berhan the road thickens like a lorry-driver's arteries; lined with the rich debris of laden donkeys, carts and camels.  Crowds of people busily making their way along the road - to the town, certainly, but where exactly I'm not sure.  When the flow reverses direction, when the white robed tribesmen and women walk facing me, I realise that whatever it was, I've missed it.  

So, I double back and chase the crowd up bumpty muddy side roads.  All roads - or all donkeys at least - are leading to the thronging Saturday market, so I just go with the flow of the crowd.  Blending in, on the giant BMW? Hardly.

When the watcher becomes the watch-ee it's time to go back out on the highway!

 I spend a welcome break from riding, just watching the hurly burly of the place.  Shy kids gravitate closer to where I'm standing, but won't meet my eye.  An older chap, in his twenties, comes forward to practice his English.  We chat a bit and he even tries to teach me some of the local dialect.  It's a good point - I really ought to have learnt a little by now, but I'm shamefully ignorant.  (Besides, it's bloody hard!)   By now, a crowd is gathered around my bike, and the magic of quietly watching the goings on has dissipated.  I say a lengthy farewell and head off;  picking my way carefully between the horse-drawn taxicabs, the distracted donkeys and the many, many people.

Damn, I must have just missed Jesus...

I'm descending off the sunny plateau, down a wonderfully winding asphalt helta skelta - the Mezezo Escarpment, the map says.  I says it should be a draw for any touring biker or driver: the sweeping views down over the cultivated slopes and plains are more dramatic than a Broadway hit's last show.

I'm making such good progress, despite stops for photos, donkeys and fuel that I press on through Desse.  In truth I'm just enjoying the riding so much I really don't want it to end yet.  The light starts to soften, ever so gently, and the low sun gives the landscape an evening glow.  One last pause for filming, and then I spot a likely-looking village motel.  It's spartan, and the shower is icy cold, but the location is convenient - a car load of friendly Americans pulls in too, and as their local guide has brought them here I figure this is a vote of confidence in the place.

I sleep well, until woken by the sound of a singer and her pianist coming through the window - I mean, the music was coming through the window, not the singer and the pianist.  After breakfast I investigate, and soon and I'm recording carefully one of their tracks for my current movie: local music like this is good to find, and their melody captures as much about Ethiopia as any of my film footage.  It's a lovely song.  I'm sorry to decline their invitation to visit their church and see a full performance.  Even though I tend to flinch away from religion, if I had time to ride back to Desse, the offer would have been tempting.

The sublime riding doesn't let up:  I spend the morning cruising along smooth country roads, watching meadows ebb and flow away to my left.  There's no point rushing, because every kilometer or so a few hands are herding cattle along the road.  The sharp horns of the cows are tremendous - a point or two that wouldn't be lost on my bike, if I lost my concentration - yet it is the milling mix of sheep and goats that I have to really focus on.  They wander in all directions, and too frequently a young animal gets skittish as my motorcycle approaches..

By mid-morning the reliable GPS map is telling me to take a sharp right, at Dilbe, and the clever little computer takes me on a tour of the backcountry.  I'm loving the quiet gravel road and over the next 40 miles find myself as happy as I've ever been on this trip - which is saying something. 

Try not to take the point.

This off-road section has just enough technical bits to keep me on my toes, or rather my foot-pegs.  As always, my big GS handles such hurdles with the muscular ease of Colin Jackson, smoothly laying down huge power without any apparent effort.  Young lads nod and clap as another steep climb-out from a riverbed is disbatched with a rich surge of torque.

The breathtaking scenery continues; around each bend in the escarpment another picture postcard view.  From small villages, or from a few well tended huts, children spill out - waving and watching.  Faces from all ages are present in this rural setting - lined and weathered; sweat shined and healthy; or modestly hidden behind a veil.  It's the cute-as-pie grins of the little girls that wins the prize, however - often peering up from underneath a back-breaking bundle of wood that's being carried manfully up the hill to the family huts.  Child labour?  Alive and well out here; but then, so are the children it seems.

Finally, pursued by threatening rain clouds, I tumble out onto an asphalt main road.  This is the road from the little field airport that serves Lalibela, and the single lane winds up onto the escarpment-proper to the town.  I whizz up the last five miles, shaking my head at the continuing feast of vistas.  I only need to find a cheap hotel before the clouds burst and this will have been a perfect day.
My time in Addis may have been shallow, but the depth of experience I've had in the north of Ethiopia has already made up for it.  The fat drops of rain can still be counted as I unload my overnight holdall and clunk noisily into my room.   

Don't hang about lad, or the rain'll  get you...