Bahirdar & Blue Nile Gorge

Itinerary Day 03: Bahir Dar and Blue Nile Gorge

In the morning, drive to Bahirdar through the Great Blue Nile Gorge with a stopover at different small towns like Dejen, Chancho and Goha Tsion.

The Blue Nile Gorge is a majestic and enormous river gorge which has a magnificent, alluring physical feature and natural beauty. It is referred by many as “the Grand Canyon of Ethiopia” It’s one of the most captivating gorges in Africa.

 Journal:
We are up at 6:00. The objective is to get packed, have breakfast and be out of the hotel and on the road by 7:30 to beat the morning drive time traffic. For the rest of the trip our driver will be Alex and our guide is Yohanes. We ran into his last tour clients while checking out in the morning. They were waving at him as he pulled up to pick us up. A couple of Brits... or maybe Aussies.

“Was Yohanis your guide?” I ask.
“Yes”
“He'll be guiding us for our tour.” 
“You are lucky .” she said.

Encouraging. The driver Alex was also specifically requested and recommended to us by Sigrid's on-line Travel-Adviser travel buddy Carol, who did a similar tour a couple years ago, and has been enormously helpful with our planning. When I say "our planning", of course I mean "Sigrid's planning."

Today's Route

We got out of the hotel on time, but we needed to get some cash for the road trip. Four stops and three broken ATM's later, we have the cash but are stuck in traffic. A city of five million with mostly bad roads. You do the math.

This was a driving day. Most on this tour fly from Addis to Bahir Dar. We're driving because we want the car for the Semian Mountain part of the trip.

 We'll be spending a lot of time in the '09 Toyota Land Cruiser with Alex and Yohanes for the next two weeks. Might as well get used to it.Truth be told, there is no better way to get a sense of a country than a long road trip.

Blue Nile River & Bridge

 Over nine hours of elapsed time to get to the Kuriftu Lodge, with only a few brief stops to take pictures of the scenery, lunch and a “coffee ceremony” about half way.

It wasn't the worst road we've ever been on. That would be Nepal 2010. But it was bad enough.  We passed three rolled trucks along the route. The difference is that in Nepal, the rolled trucks were at the botton of a 1,000 foot ravine.

 A day of navigating bad roads, cresting over mountain passes and cutbacks, crossing rivers, passing buses and mule drawn carts, dodging and weaving between herds of cattle, sheep, goats, landslides, and throngs of kids in bright uniforms walking to and from schools.

We arrive at Kurifu Lodge at dusk. The rooms and lodge are a fantasy in wood and stone. The long drive exhausted us, so after dinner and drinks we retire to our room and watch Lake Tana from our veranda. It was worth it.

Internet is theoretically available at the pool and lobby, but it wasn't working for me. Pics and posts will be late from here on out.

Editiors Note: I intend to pre-load and schedule automated blog posts with our daily itinerary for our Ethiopian adventure. For those interested, this may be an easy way to follow along. Since we will not have internet access for most of the trip, my hope is this will make it easier to add some pics and journal commentary if and when we run across an internet connection. If there are no pics or commentary, you'll just have to wait until we get back. We'll see how it goes.

Touring Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa - 5 million people at 8,000 feet

With our Addis guide Biayow

 Itinerary Day 02: Full day in Addis Ababa

Today, you will have a full day city tour of Addis Ababa which include: National Museum, Ethnographic Museum, Selassie cathedral and Entoto Hills.

The Ethnographic Museum is very different to the National Museum, but equally absorbing, this museum exhibit, a varied array of artifacts and daily objects related to most ethnic groups in Ethiopia. We will continue our morning city tour with Merkato, the largest open-air market in Africa, other part of the city including Piassa and Churchill Avenue to make souvenirs shopping.

The National Museum. The National Museum of Ethiopia: This is one of the best museums in quality and diversity of the exhibits. Archeological exhibits include the 3.5 million-year-old fossil of Lucy (or Dinkinesh – ‘thou art wonderful’- in the native language), a hominoid woman of the specious of Australopithecus Afarensis. The discovery of Lucy’s fossil in 1974 forced a complete rethink of human genealogy, providing that our ancestors were walking 2.5 million years earlier than had been supposed. The National Museum also contains many wonderful artifacts dating back to pre-Axumite civilization. 

Journal:  The day went pretty much as advertised in the itinerary, although Sigird may have managed to squeeze in a couple of additional destination.  A long interesting day, and we'll need to get up in a few hours to start an even longer day of driving North tomorrow. Don't have the time or energy to sort these pics and provide a little commentary. I'm just going to upload a few pics now and call it a day. Hopefullly I'll get back to this soon and add a bit more color.

St. George Coptic Cathedral

Editiors Note: I intend to pre-load and schedule automated blog posts with our daily itinerary for our Ethiopian adventure. For those interested, this may be an easy way to follow along. Since we will not have internet access for most of the trip, my hope is this will make it easier to add some pics and journal commentary if and when we run across an internet connection. If there are no pics or commentary, you'll just have to wait until we get back. We'll see how it goes.UPDATED

LHR ==> ADD - Arrive Addis Ababa

First Ethiopian Sunrise at 30,000 feet

Ethiopia Adventure Itinerary: Day 01: Arrive Addis Ababa

Arrive in Addis Ababa (ADD), Ethiopia. Welcome to Ethiopia! Upon arrival at Addis Ababa Bole International Airport, you will be welcomed and assisted by your tour guide and driver for the transfer to your hotel. 

Addis Ababa, founded in 1886 by Menelik II, is situated at 2,500 meters (8000 ft) above sea level. It is the highest capital city in the world, after La Paz and Quito in South America. The city enjoys an excellent climate all year round, with an average temperature of 25C (77F). With multiethnic population of over 5 million, Addis Ababa is a pleasant city with wide avenues of jacarandas, interesting museums, and one of the largest open-air markets in Africa, known as the "Mercato".

Journal:

Malaria abatement regimen continues at Heathrow before takeoff

 We arrive on an Air Ethiopia overnight flight from London to Addis Ababa.

The flight is not long or comfortable enough for any real sleep, so we were pretty much a wreck when we arrived. Some good Ethiopian coffee helps as we arrive shortly after dawn. 

Fortunately, Sigrid planned for our condition, as we have nothing scheduled today but rest and recovery.

Local logistics came off without a hitch. Mostly. Bayoou picked us up at the airport...

...eventually.

Later Des of Grand Holidays Ethiopia dropped by the hotel to offer a traditional welcome of Ethiopian coffee.  Sigrid has been working with Des for months to organize this trip. He has my deepest sympathy.

Coffee is integral to Ethiopian culture. Mine too.

We're off to a good start. 

Editiors Note: I intend to pre-load and schedule automated blog posts with our daily itinerary for our Ethiopian adventure. For those interested, this may be an easy way to follow along. Since we will not have internet access for most of the trip, my hope is this will make it easier to add some pics and journal commentary if and when we run across an internet connection. If there are no pics or commentary, you'll just have to wait until we get back. We'll see how it goes. UPDATED

Thali - North Indian Restaurant in Chelsea

They say the best Indian food in the world is to be found in London and not India. This is our first opportunity since our India tour of 2009 to test that proposition.  As noted in the last post, my now wifi-limited droid found several Indian restaurants in easy walking distance of the hotel.  We decided to forgo the adjoining Bombay Brasserie, which Zagat identified as "overpriced" to stroll a few blocks to a concentration of three Indian restaurants on Old Brompton Road: Star of India, Noor Jahan, and Thali. Of the four, three have been around for decades and have been extensively reviewed on Zagat and elsewhere. Thali Retaurant is relatively new and sparsely reviewed. So that's where we went:

Prawn Balolo

Lamb Gojen Josh

Non Vegetarian Thali

With flavored rice and Kingfisher beer

 Net net. We dined early and were the only ones in the restaurant for most of the dinner. Service was excellent, proprietor was pleasant, food was great.  I wouldn't say it exceeded anything we had in India - we had some pretty great meals in India - but everything was excellent. Thali  definitely earned the MW RECOMMENDED stamp of approval.

I suspect that when you start taking pictures of your food in a lightly trafficked restaurant on a competitive corner, you get more attention than you might otherwise. In particular, we loved the Palak Chat, which we did not order....

Palak Chat

... as they it served to us gratis. It's a signature house appetizer that our server claimed to be unique to Thali. Spinach and other fresh greens are marinated for a day and lightly crisped. I can't really describe it adequately, but it was fantastic and not to be missed. 

 

Note: Writing this from memory, so not sure I got the spelling on all of these dishes correct.

London Landfall

The coolest part of the flight from SFO => LHR: Catching a glimpse of dim but discernible Northern Lights as we cut across Southern Greenland.

 

 Landed at Heathrow around 11:30. All in all, the flight was not bad, we each got 2 - 3 hours sleep.

We're just staying in London one night to break up the long haul to Ethiopia, and feeling pretty good as we checked in at the Millennium Bailey Kensington.  The trick to getting the internal clock on the right timezone is staying awake until after dinner - no naps.

The phone and text functions of my  HTC Evo stopped working as soon as we left the US, but the WIFI  in the hotel ensures it is still a useful helper brain and posting tool. We are thinking Indian food  for dinner and google maps makes it stupid easy. A few keystrokes identifies  five prospective restaurants in easy walking distance.

We just need to hold out a couple more hours.

Sent from my Sprint smartphone.