The tail end of Sudan and the hills (!) of Ethiopia!

JLC: Finally I have dragged myself away from the macchiatos and fruit smoothies to write a long overdue blog! I should have brought a laptop with me, then I could sit in the coffee shop and type. But enough excuses. We have ridden just over 1500 km since Khartoum. Much like cycling from Pretoria to Cape Town just with alot more elevation and varied scenery. And it was tough! Crikey we have been cruising since Cairo but as soon as we left Khartoum we realised we were in for a hard ride.

It took forever to get out of Khartoum and the road was bad and packed with trucks and busses intent on going as fast as possible and as close to the verge as they could. This meant that we ended up dropping off onto the rough all the time, which was not good for cracked rims! Our first night after 140km was spent in some lovely rondavels that we came across next to the road. We asked the owner if we could sleep there and he gave us a rondavel all to ourselves. After that we hit the desert road that headed east and cut through the headwind. This made cycling very difficult. It was also roasting hot, which made for slow going. We pretty much survived on fuul (mashed fava beans), bread and coca cola or pepsi. After two long and painful days on this road we hit the “agricultural centre’ of Gederef and headed south for 10 km before camping in an old quarry. Compared to the desert up north the south was quite populated and we found it difficult to find camp sites out of view of people hence the quarry was a good choice although we did have a herd of cows tramping along the edge at 6am.

We were 150km from the Ethiopian border at this point so we left super early, plugged in our ipods, put our heads down and slogged it out. The going was tough due to a bad road and the heat. The vegetation was changing however. It was becoming more African. Desert had given way to bushveld and we were in good spirits. We got to the border at 4pm. If you could call it a border that is. It was a bit ramshackle and you had to have a fixer to show you to the different border offices: security, where they checked your travel permit and alien registration; immigration, where they stamped you out; and customs, where they checked our bags for dodgy things that threaten Sudan. Our names were written in three very worn books and a total of three pages were taken up in our passports before we were allowed to cross the bridge into Ethiopia. Our fixer merely walked across the bridge. The Ethiopian side was different. Immigration actually had computers. They also had web cams and fingerprint scanners. We were not too comfortable that the Ethiopian Government now has scans of our passports, our photos and our fingerprints! Once in Ethiopia we needed to exchange some Sudanese pounds. Again our fixer got involved and we got ripped off big time. There were no other options though so we just accepted it and hoped that one day the slimey character would slip and fall off a bridge or something.

After this we decided we were not staying in the border down and decided to head a further 35km up the road to Shehedi where we got to experience small town/village hotels and the national dish Injera. The hotels are not like the ones you get in Europe. They are a simple rooms usually hired out by the hour and come with a big box of condoms. Most owners are surprised when you want to rent the room for the night. Showers (or a bucket of water) and toilets (hole in the ground) are communal and generally in a very poor state. The bedding tends to vary as well. To try and distance ourselves from the bed bugs we would sleep on top of the bedding on our camping mats and in our sleeping bags. We still got bed bug bites! I suppose you can’t complain though as the rooms cost around GBP2! We would rather have camped but the country side is so populated you would struggle to find a place to set up camp unnoticed.

Now Injera…. It’s the national dish and basically a large pancake made with a local cereal called tiff that is mixed with water and allowed to rise in the sun. It’s spongy in texture and quite sour. It usually comes with a dollop of stew on top or if it’s a fasting day some vegetables. I have had it in London before and enjoyed it and we also enjoyed our first serving in Ethiopia but as we continued up to the highlands we were forced to eat Injera for all our meals and quickly got very sick of it! Now its not an option and we learnt that debbo means bread so we tend to ask for that!

From Shehedi the road goes up and up and up and up. You go from around 600m up to 2400m over 150km and spend much of this time in your easiest gears going at a very slow average speed. We struggled to hit 100km a day at this point although frequent coffee stops (Ethiopia is the home of coffee after all) kept us going.

One of the first major towns we hit was Gonder, which is described as formally being the Camelot of Ethiopia. It’s very far from this now and would be best described as a rundown town in a dust bowl. We stupidly decided to book into a pension (cheap hotel) near the Piazza area. Our hotel room was terrible and cost a fortune compared to other places we had stayed in but we put this down to being in the ‘major’town. There were two night clubs downstairs and prostitutes everywhere. We barricaded our door as they carious people came knocking and tried to get some sleep with the help of earplugs. Tip of the day: choose your hotel based on its proximity to a nightclub/bar.

It was also in Gonder that I noticed that my petrol stove’s fuel bottle and pump had been stolen out of my pannier bag by kids who hassled us on one of the uphills. I was furious. It meant that we could not cook for ourselves unless of course we resorted to a fire or we found a local alternative which was unlikely. And now for my rant…Which would be echoed by all cyclists who have cycled through Ethiopia. The kids in Ethiopia are in a different league. Nowhere else have we experienced this sort of irritation before. Ethiopia itself is a fantastic country blessed with stunning scenery and very friendly and welcoming people. Unfortunately this is tainted by those members of the population between the ages of 5 and 14 which if you consider the demographics makes up a hefty percentage of the population. As soon as these kids see you coming they sprint to the side of the road and then with their hand’s held out start shouting “Farangi Farangi Farangi, Money Money Money, YOU YOU YOU” and then they start chasing you. We try and placate them by saying hello and waving but as soon as they realise you are not going to give them anything, the shouting becomes more high pitched and more often than not they start throwing stones at you as you go past. To make matters worse the parents do nothing about this. If you stop the kids scatter and we have done this a few times but as soon as you get on your bike the stones come again. This happens everywhere. The most you can ride is a few kilometers before it happens again. It can be one child or a pack of them. It’s the same. We have debated the cause of this. Personally I don’t think its tourists because frankly there are not many and touring cyclists are even fewer. There is, however, a very large percentage of NGO’s in Ethiopia that are experts at the “handout”. US AID, World Vision, they are all here and so are there massive land cruisers. The only vehicles in Ethiopia it seems are buses, mini bus taxis and land cruisers most of which have an NGO or UN sticker on the side. Due to decades (OK I’m not sure of the exact figure) of aid, the kids in these villages now associated a white face with a handout and cyclists are an easy target although we have heard of overlands and motorcyclists having rocks thrown at them. What this means for the future of the country is worrying to say the least but it seems that once the kids become 16 or older it stops although we had some ladies shout at us who were definitely in their 20s! We just had to accept that this was part of Ethiopia and try and ignore not. Easy at times but when you are sweating up a hill, 10 kids shouting at you does very little to help your anger management.

In Gonder, I decided I wanted my stove back so the next day we headed back to the spot we thought we had been robbed with a hand drawn picture of the fuel bottle. We approached a group of teenagers with the picture and after much gesturing one of the guys clicked and with promise of a reward returned the bottle. I nearly wrung his neck but had keep in mind that it was not him that stole it. It was probably his younger brother.

With the fuel bottle safely inside the main pannier we headed to Bahir Dar. This took us two days of cycling during which we had a few major climbs and got a few glimpses of Lake Tana. Ethiopians refer to Bahir Dar as their French Riviera and we have to admit it was very nice. We had planned to stay here a few days to wait for our new rims to arrive from the UK so checked into a hotel and dived into pizzas, burgers and pasta and the local restaurants. Loads of the local beer, St George, was also consumed. We also took a bus along a really bad road to see the Blue Nile Falls which were fantastic.

Our rims, together with some bike spares and luxuries such as a chocolate, sweets, toilet paper and new phone for mark, arrived after much arguing over import tax (50%!) and we spent a good while rebuilding our new wheels. Luckily the spokes SJS Cycles in the UK sent were the perfect fit and after 3 or 4 hours we had super tough rear wheels. Not bad for first time wheelbuilders. We should have gone for these rims in the UK rather than Mavic French rims. It would have saved us GBP400! Lesson learnt! Tip to future touring cyclists. Do not buy Mavic rims. They cannot handle it. Go for Rigida.

Wheels built it was off to Addis Ababa which was 565 km away. We thought we could do it in four days but it ended up being four and half. The whole of each day was spent on the bike and involved crawling up hill after hill after hill. Maybe I should not be calling them hills because all of these climbs were far bigger than anything in the Surrey Hills. Mountains is better. Our longest day was 142km and we were finished after this. Every other day was just over 100km and getting off the bike at the end of the day was something we both enjoyed immensely. Bodies and legs were so tired and we went to bed wondering if we would be able to ride the next day. Inevitably our pace slowed as we got closer to Addis and none more so after the biggest obstacle of the trip so far, the Blue Nile Gorge. We had done 70km in the morning before we hit the town of Degen, which is on the lip of the Gorge. From there you descend 20km and 1200m on a really bad road, which may as well be dirt to a bridge over the Blue Nile. The heat at the bottom was a massive shock. Temperatures in the highlands rarely exceed 30 degrees but down here it was like a furnace. My watch registered 38 degree with no wind. From there it was a 22 km climb out of the Gorge with a height gain of 1300m. The road is tar luckily although there are some dirt sections and it winds its way up the gorge forever. We had read reports that it would take at least 4 hours. We are proud to say we did it in 2 hours 50 minutes but I have never felt so wrecked when we got to the top. We had both hit the wall big time and it would have been a lot worse if we had not come across a lady selling coke halfway and the Tesco marshmallows Jo and slipped into our new rim package. We found a hotel at the top of the hill and quickly hit a few shops (read shack) to buy some food. We could not afford eating at a “restaurant” as we had struggled to withdrawal money in Bahir Dar and thus had to survive on GBP30 between the two of us for 4.5 days. This was easy if you stayed in the cheapest brothels, sorry I mean hotels, and cooked for yourself. We were able to have an awesome pasta with tomatoes, onions, garlic, peppers and even some goat/sheep meat bought from a man with a carcass hanging in his shack for less than GBP1.

From this point it was 1.5 days of riding to Addis and it hurt. We stupidly expected it to be flat or at least downhill. It was not and each day had a series of massive climbs as well as an uncountable number of smaller ones to hurt us and play with our sense of humour. I always remember Hano Otto (Adventure Race organizer in SA) saying you must bring your sense of humour with you. We did not lose ours but we came close. On this section we hit our highest altitude, which was just over 3000m. It’s like cycling on the top of the Drakensberg.

Our last day was only 80km but it felt like 200. By 1pm we were in Addis. One final climb had us on a ridge overlooking the chaos. I don’t like cycling into African cities. They are generally chaotic but cycling into Addis was not too bad. Our target was the Piazza area and we got there quite quickly with the help of a rusty Lonely Planet map. We decided to stay at the famous Taitu Hotel, which is the oldest hotel in Addis (1896 or something). The main building is really impressive but we stayed in one of the other building which was really run down. The building is a mixture of wood and stone and I wondered whether the wood would hold our weight! It’s not quite the Hilton but the bathrooms are okay and its quite reasonable so we have enjoyed staying here. It also has wifi which has allowed calls to Isobella and Jo as wells as parents and a naughty brother in the UK. So good to be in contact with loved ones again. Magic!

We love Addis. We have gorged ourselves on pizzas, burgers, coffee, cakes and the most amazing fruit drinks you have ever seen. The fruit drink I love has banana, mango, avodcado, papaya and orange in it and you have to eat it with a spoon. Your 5 fruit a day in one glass for less than 50p. Makes you wonder how they can charge so much for an Innocent smoothie in the UK! We have spent two days here going to and chatting to the friendly guys at the Kenyan embassy, relaxing, eating and other than a few frustrating hours with Natwest to reverse some fraudulent transactions on my account we have enjoyed ourselves. We even took in some culture and went to the Ethnological Museum which we both agree is leagues ahead of the Egyptian Museum. We also spent hours walking the streets of Addis looking for supplies as well as Christmas cards…. We could not find any but an alternative is on the way!

With the legs rested we intend to head off tomorrow. Our route heads south towards the Omo Valley and Lake Turkana. Turkana is sometimes called the Jade Sea and the photos are truly amazing. Google it! It’s going to be hot though and the roads are dirt. There are also reports of warring tribes! Can’t wait! We are not sure where we are going to spending Christmas as yet. It depends on how hard the riding is but we hope it will be somewhere nice and not in a brothel. Some of the southern lakes come to mind.

We hope to find an internet café somewhere along our route but if worst comes to the worst you may hear from us in Kampala! Cell phone communication will improve once we leave Ethiopia. The Government is in charge of telecommunications here and it shows…. Until then, and as per the Italian influence, Ciao Ciao!