Alex Little

Fasiladas' Palace

Since we’d missed out on visiting Gondar on our way up to the Simiens, we decided to spend an extra day there on the way back instead. Gondar had a very different feel to Mekelle, much more touristy, many more people trying to ‘help’ by offering to be guides, exchange dollars, international phone calls (for crazily expensive prices).

We stayed at the Circle hotel in the centre of town, which I probably wouldn’t recommend to anyone else as it was incredibly noisy. The power was off, but their generator made a horrendous pounding noise, even from 5 floors up. When the power finally came back on, this menat the local bars and clubs could start up their music on until 3am!

The following day we visited the tourist sites, the Royal Enclosure, a walled part of the old city filled with castles and churches and the Debre Berhan Selassie Church. We decided against getting an official guide (or any guide at all), mainly for fear of being bombarded with dates, names etc that we’d forget almost instantly (esp. after little sleep).

Debre Berhan Selassie Church

In the evening we met up with a few Peace Corps volunteers, one of whom I’ve been in contact with since before I came out to Ethiopia but never met until now. It also gave the opportunity to introduce the new VSO volunteers in Gondar to some of the local ferenjis.

Marcel and Rene had taken the (in hindsight sensible) option of flying back to Addis (then Marcel flew back to Mekelle), whereas Andy and I thought we’d save some money and take the 2-day bus journey instead – which turned out to be more ‘fun’ than originally intended.

Arriving at Gondar bus station at 5:30am we got some of the last seats on the bus to Shire – being on the back seat. We set off just before 6 and took only 3 hours to get to Debark, which (on the map) looks to be about halfway. Unfortunately, it’s no way near halfway time-wise. After Debark the bus takes a fantastically winding route up and down through the mountains, spending most of the journey going around hairpin bends. So, nearly 11 hours after leaving Gondar we arrived in Shire. Shire doesn’t appear to be most welcoming of places, from the direction we approached we saw burnt out tanks, derelict buildings and the UN building surrounded in barbed wire. Further into town it looks slightly more welcoming.

Road through the mountains

We already decided that if we could, we’d get straight on a bus to Axum as we had a free accommodation there, rather than paying for a hotel in Shire. Again we were some of the last people on the bus, so left almost straight away at 5pm. Well, we left the bus station anyway, we stopped at the end of the road to spend nearly an hour waiting in a queue to get diesel, then we were finally on our way.

According to the guide book the bus should only take 90 mins to cover the 60km Shire to Axum. Unfortunately, the road is currently in the process of being resurfaced (or rather surfaced as it was a dirt road), meaning that our route was on a track next to the road. About halfway the suspension broke, so we stopped of a little while for the driver to remove the broken bits from under the bus before continuing.

We finally arrived at Axum bus station just before 9pm, tired, thirsty and hungry – a mere 15 hours on the back seat of buses with little or no suspension, all on gravel roads (or partially off road). But our day wasn’t over yet!

The mobile network in Axum must be one of the worst in Ethiopia, very rarely is it possible to actaully connect, send a text or even top-up with credit. Andy’s phone battery had died, mine was on one bar, we had no idea where Steve lived and we couldn’t contact him. We went to the Remhai hotel to get a drink and food, when eventually Steve managed to get through on my phone – so we had somewhere to stay for the night.

The Shire to Axum leg made the first 11 hours seem a walk in the park, though think I’d rather not repeat any part of that journey again. Needless to say we decided to have a day relaxing in Axum before the 7 hour bus trip back to Mekelle!

Next time, I’ll spend the money on a flight!