One of the many joys of our overlanding trip through northern Ethiopia was seeing the landscapes and catching glimpses of ordinary lives through the windows of our truck. The ever-changing scenery was a constant delight.
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Rural Scenes
As we left Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s bustling capital city, on the first morning, the busy streets and signs of new development soon gave way to more rural vistas. We began to see people in traditional dress, rather than the western attire favoured by the residents of Addis. Both men and women were wearing eye-catching colourful blankets known as gabis. The area seemed relatively prosperous with healthy-looking crops and animals.
Lush Bahir Dar
Apart from the town of Debre Markos, where we had an overnight stop, these rural landscapes continued until we reached Bahir Dar. Here, we saw many more flowers and trees, especially palm trees. Due to how close it is to Lake Tana, the area was less dusty, greener and lusher. This was particularly noticeable when we drove to visit the Blue Nile Falls. There were lots of crops being grown and people seemed to have their own small vegetable patches, too.
As we drove from Bahir Dar to Lalibela, we noticed that people’s dress began to change. The headgear was fancier, but the colours of the clothes were more subdued. The houses changed, too. Up to this point, we had seen square and rectangular dwellings, but now most of the houses were round. We also saw more two-storey buildings.
Road Building
Later on in the journey, as we climbed higher, the landscape became much drier and dustier. There were hundreds of people walking along the verges, often with their animals – cows, goats and donkeys. Ethiopians walk everywhere – personal car ownership is very rare.
Throughout our Ethiopian journey, we were struck by how much road construction is going on. Chinese businesses fund these projects. We saw many Chinese engineers living and working in the areas we drove through. They live in purpose-built camps, usually in the middle of nowhere. There’s no doubt that these huge earthworks are scarring the natural landscape. Many times, the route of the new road passes directly through existing settlements and houses in the way are demolished. Local residents live in a permanent building site, with all the disruption that goes with it. I hope they are being adequately compensated for the inconvenience, and, more so, for the devastation of losing their homes. I don’t know because nobody could answer my questions about this!
Cooler Temperatures
From Lalibela to Alamatta, we climbed to an altitude of over 3000m. We found ourselves in the middle of low clouds. The temperature dropped considerably. The roundhouses were once again replaced by square ones, but this time more of them had individual gardens. As we drove into a Muslim area, we saw covered women, mosques and brightly-painted houses with Islamic patterns. From these dizzying heights, we descended again and, once more, we saw a much drier landscape and, for the first time in Ethiopia, camels – lots of them!
Spectacular Scenery of Northern Ethiopia
The next day, we drove on to Mekele. The landscape remained arid, but the scenery was spectacular with lots of mountain peaks. We continued to see hundreds of camels. From Mekele, we climbed higher to Wukro, driving along hair-raising roads. The colour we saw from the window of the truck was predominantly orange. The earth, the buildings and the rock were all orange. Wukro itself sits on a rocky plateau which is very flat and very dry.
From there, we journeyed on to Aksum. The land was still very dry and we began to see lots of cacti. Some of these were huge and structural. Others were smaller and covered in lots of brightly coloured flowers. The Muslim towns and villages we drove through were characterised by lots of flat-roofed painted houses and elaborate mosques. The scenery was spectacular with sheer, sparsely wooded cliff faces and deep ravines. As we approached the town of Aksum, we saw that farmers have tried to tame these cliffs. They have carved steps out of the rocky mountainsides and planted vegetables. They all looked incredibly dry!
Simien Mountains
The day we left Aksum, we had a long driving day to Debark, the gateway to the Simien Mountains National Park. It took us 11 hours to cover 270km! At the start of the journey, we drove through a large area used for growing tej. This is the cereal used for making injera, the ubiquitous Ethiopian staple. We then climbed higher still and stopped several times to photograph the stunning mountain scenery. We all marvelled at the incredible feat of engineering required to lay a tarmac road through this unforgiving landscape. At one point, the road dropped steeply down to a shallow river. We crossed this before ascending again to the dizzy heights of the mountaintops. Our breath was quite literally taken away by our first sights of the peaks located within the national park. The final 45km of the day’s drive was on dirt roads. The dust meant that we were all ready for a shower by the time we arrived at our hotel in Debark.
The dry dusty conditions continued the next morning as we made our way into the park itself. Once we entered the park, though, we were blown away by the most dramatic and spectacular scenery of the entire trip. Jagged mountain peaks flanked deep valleys and high altitude plains where only grasses, junipers and giant lobelias grow. The days in the park gave countless photo opportunities, none of which did justice to the sheer scale and majesty of the reality we were seeing. It was simply stunning!!
After several days of this sensory overload, however, we were quite relieved to find ourselves once again on a tarmac surface. We finished our tour of northern Ethiopia driving through a comparatively mundane landscape.
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