Ethiopia - Bahir Dar, Gondar and Axum - Northern Historical Circuit

Alright, so due to poor planning all flights in and out of Lalibela were booked up for this week, so we’ll be taking a separate trip there at the end of November. However, in the past four days, we certainly covered a lot of northern Ethiopia!

Our whirlwind adventure first took us into Bahir Dar, the city on the southern banks of Lake Tana. Lake Tana is one of the biggest lakes in Africa and takes 8-9 hours to cross by ferry boat. It is also home to over 37 monasteries. Of those 37, only 3 are open to women (because we can’t keep secrets, we were told!), so we visited two of them, Debra Mariam and the women’s island nunnery. And against all our instilled instincts not to touch ancient artefacts, before we knew what was happening, a 900 year old sheepskin bible was plunked into our laps for our exploration. It was written in Geez, the oldest language in Ethiopia which is almost Aramaic and which neither of us can read, but thankfully it was illustrated so we could guess whether we were looking at Luke or Mark’s gospel. I held a 900 year old book! And was mostly terrified I would damage it the whole time.



We later played the musical stone slabs at Debra Mariam and learned about Ethiopian Orthodox religious practices and saints, such as the man totally covered in hair who communed with animals or Pantaleon who stood for 48 years leaning on his prayer stick. Lake Tana is also the source of the Blue Nile river and home to pelicans, lammergeyer eagles, hippos, crocodiles and local men trying to find a fereng (foreign) wife for their sons.

We also road-tripped to Tis Abay, the Blue Nile Falls. It had been a bit of a dilemma deciding whether or not to go since there are two hydro plants that divert much of the water turning the falls into a wee trickle down a hill, but our guides Haile and Nebu assured us that one of the plants was broken, so the falls would be in reasonable awesomeness that day.



After a very quiet stroll through the savannah countryside for about twenty minutes, we very suddenly heard the gushing of the water and the field fell away from us on the right side, revealing a steep cliff escarpment and very impressive waterflow pouring over the side along the Blue Nile River. The excessive spray off the falls earned it the name of Tis Abay (Water that Smokes).



And it was awesome! Not as big as Niagara, but certainly the surrounding scenery beats out the tacky casinos and arcades that adorn Niagara Falls.

Our next stop was Gondar, one of the important military strongholds of the country over the centuries. The highlight of Gondar is the Royal Enclosure, a compound of the castles of four generations of Ethiopia’s kings and queens on 1 square km of land. Mehron and I greatly enjoyed re-enacting sword and staff fights around the grounds as our tour guide looked on, completely unimpressed with our immaturity. Whatever. We had a good time. One cool fact about these kings and queens was that they kept personal prides of Abyssinian lions as companions. Kind of shows up the First Dog in the White House a bit. LIONS.



While in town, we also breezed by the Debra Birhane Selassie Church, the Sistine Chapel of Ethiopia, where the ceiling is completely painted with angels by one artist monk way back in the day. When we wrapped that up, we stopped by Sofa Juice for refreshment and thereby consumed the greatest juice on the planet, mango-guava-lime. YUM.

And then it was 12:30pm and we were kind of done with Gondar, so we hooked ourselves up with a half day trip to the Simien Mountains to Kosoye, a lookout once visited by Queen Elizabeth II in her horseback riding days. Well worth the hour long drive on very bumpy dusty road with a soundtrack of Shania and Snoop Dogg to see the fabulous views and spot baboons rustling in the valley below!



On the way back, we stopped in at the former Falasha village (diaspora of Ethiopian Jews who were repatriated to Israel during Mengistu’s regime) where we checked out a very cool local coop project of handicrafts and attended a proper coffee ceremony with fresh roasted coffee and popcorn. Whenever I ask why popcorn is served with the coffee ceremony, I get the same answer: Tradition.



On our way out of Gondar at 5am (all the domestic flights go early and have tight security requiring us to arrive at least 2 hours before the flights), we saw a number of odd things. In the pitch blackness, there was some excellent stargazing. But better was the people watching... we saw three men practicing kick boxing on the highway. And then we saw mobs of ghosts emerging from the misty woods as dawn began to break... all the locals were on their way to church, completely wrapped in the traditional white blankets called gabis, creating a very eerie effect as they moved through the trees with no lights.

Axum was our last port of call and we were there for two reasons: 1) to see the re-Erection (Ethiopia’s wording, not mine) of the Stele returned from Rome at the millennium and 2) to see the Ark of the Covenant. When we arrived to the Yeha Hotel, and saw the entire town from the restaurant’s hilltop view, we realized we might have a lot of spare time on our hands. So after a power nap, we walked down the hill to the main stelae field. We were told it was a field of over 75 stelae commemorating the deaths of the great kings and nobles of Axum. What we saw was 7 stelae in a yard. So we opted to look at them from outside the gate instead of paying the entry fee to stand on the other side of the fence.





Sadly the same thing happened when we investigated the compound housing the Ark of the Covenant. You pay an entrance fee to stand outside the same buildings you can stand outside next to the gate, since of course, women aren’t allowed inside. In the case of Axum, they haven’t let women into the churches since the 10th century, when one lady ruined it for all the rest of us. The Falasha Queen Yodit burned most of ancient Axum to the ground, and they’ve held it against the female sex ever since.

To be fair though, men aren’t allowed to the see the Ark, the Holy of Holies, either... only the high priests are allowed inside and the guardian outside descends from the same family who has guarded the Ark for generations. So we admired the building housing the Ark from outside the gate as well.

The real highlight of Axum was the high level of interaction with the locals. Mehron really got into the swing of bargaining, talking a shopkeeper down in price for twenty minutes for some amber necklaces. And on our walk through town, a gaggle of schoolgirls swarmed us eager to practice their English and show us their school and tell us about Axum and they were completely adorable and charming.

Also, I’m going to Egypt on Tuesday for two weeks. Surprise!