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Ethiopia: Trip Summary

General

Ethiopia is not a country of big game safaris and wildlife (for that you must go to Kenya or Tanzania) – instead it’s a country of unbelievable sceneries, fantastic monuments (that rival Egypt!), and an amazing culture and people. The Ethiopians were never colonized, and they’ve managed to exist for hundreds of years as a country with a national identity and with their cultural practices, still largely intact.

Costs
Accommodation
Food and Drink
Transport
Souvenirs
Safety & Security
People
Photographs

Costs

The currency in Ethiopia is called the “Birr”. About 8.3 birrs make a US dollar.
Ethiopia is one of the cheapest African destinations. Most costs were about 3 to 5 times cheaper than Kenya (and Kenya is an expensive country).

Accommodation

Hotels are available to satisfy all price ranges:
I did a fair bit of research with the taxi driver’s help in Bahir Dar – I guess costs are kind of similar throughout Ethiopia. I’ve categorized the hotels on cost:

· $1-$2 a day: most of these look unimaginably depraved (read: brothels. Floozies not included.). Avoid them – unless of course you’ve a fetish for this kind of stuff.
· $10 a day: decent hotels with hot showers (very important!), a few fleas are guaranteed – but nothing that a sturdy sleeping bag and bug spray cannot take care of.
· $20 and upward: Satellite TV, wall-to-wall carpets and lap-dancers (ok, that last bit wasn’t true).

In Bahir Dar I stayed in the Hotel Ghion (75 birr/day after a bit of bargaining). It was a bit old and tacky – but most of the fittings worked, and the service wasn’t bad. The location is fantastic – bang on the shores of Lake Tana and there weren’t any mosquitoes despite the rainy season. The manager is a very helpful and talkative character.

On my way back , I stayed overnight in Addis Ababa in a hotel called “the Taitu” – built by the dowager empress Queen Taitu back in 1905, again a bit run down (166 birr/day, no bargaining allowed!) – But, it was the oldest hotel in Addis, so I didn’t mind paying a bit extra – nice architecture (modeled on a traditional Ethiopian church), very atmospheric, wooden floors, high ceilings and most fittings have the ‘30s look (I was tempted to nick the door knob).

Food & Drink

As long as you like Ethiopian food, you wont have a problem.
I enjoyed most of my meals (except for Kitfo!) :

Typical Ethiopian dishes are made of either chicken/goat meat/beef served in watt (spicy sauce) or alicha (mild sauce). Kitfo (steak tar-tar) is also widely available as a delicacy.
Spaghettis and pastas are available in most restaurants (probably the Italian influence)
Vegetarians should not have much of a problem – many hotels serve only vegetarian food on Wednesdays and Fridays (called fasting food), the vegetarian dishes are also available on other days. Lentil curry (dal), beans curry, cabbage in berbera sauce (cabbage actually tastes good?!), and of course pasta pomodoro.
Various sandwiches/steaks/cakes and pastries
In a pretty decent restaurant these dishes go for about 5 – 10 birr, and the portions are HUGE (enough for 2 to 3 people).

Most of the spices and the njera bread are rather pungent. Everything in Ethiopia carries this smell of spices and fermented bread: the hotels, the currency notes, the buses, buildings – everything. Long after I left Ethiopia, my fingers and clothes still carried a lingering smell of berbera sauce.

If you are a drunkard – Ethiopia is as close to heaven, as it gets.
Beer is unbelievably cheap! Hotels charge anywhere between 2birr and 5birr for bottled beers – draft beer is available for about 1.5 birr (cheaper than coke!!!). Some of the common brands are: meta, bedele (look for the cute colobus monkey on the label), dashend, st.george. Most of them are malt beers, and a few are brewed out of corn starch.

The arack (apparently spirit distilled from millet) served in some places is pretty rank – drink it only if you don’t have a flight to catch the next morning. The traditional honey-wine called “Tej” isn’t bad (though a bit strong).

The coffee is great (and cheap too!) – I ended up drinking upto 10 - 12 cups a day, courtesy of various "invitations" and coffee ceremonies. Especially lucky, are fans of macchiato and espresso (me! me!) – the coffee is ideally suited for these types of coffee.

Bottled water is widely available – the most common is the sparkling mineral water in a glass bottle –“Ambo” (2.5birr/bottle), kinda similar to the Italian “Pellegrino”.

Transport

Whatever you do, don’t go during the rainy season – that’s when the roads get washed away and the flights get cancelled, or you’ll get sent to places you did not want to go to (like me!).
Most of the tourist sites are well connected by air – Ethiopian airlines, the sole domestic carrier.
One-way tickets from Addis to a domestic destination go for anywhere between $50-$90 depending upon the distance. The good thing about it is, you can book the tickets from your country of origin – allows you to plan in advance.

Buses are very cheap and uncomfortable (50-150 birr range) – sometimes it can take 3 to 4 days to reach your destination! Apparently, it is possible to rent a 4wd with a driver, it works out much cheaper than a plane. It might be a good idea to use a combination of all three: use a plane for the farthest destination and take a bus / 4wd thereon to visit the other sites which are a day or two away.

Within Addis Ababa there are many options available – the minibuses go everywhere for about 1 to 1.5 birr. Taxis are fairly cheap. Expect to be charged between 10 – 25birr depending upon the distance and the time.

Within Bahir Dar, I walked or rented a cycle (2 birr/hour).

Souvenirs

Ethiopia is a great country to buy cheap and good souvenirs. I bought one very big framed leather painting of the “Kebra Negast” (the book of the glory of kings) – done in a 16th century “cartoon-strip” style miniature painting, and a couple of smaller ones with various other knick knacks – all for about 100birr (after a bit of bargaining).
I wanted to buy a lot more, but didn’t have enough hands to carry all of it.

You can get beautifully illustrated bibles done on parchment and leather, traditional Ethiopian baskets, borana water buckets (made out of giraffe skin – highly illegal!!!), tribal carvings (lip plugs, fetish dolls etc.), and a variety of shields and drums.
Ethiopia also specializes in a variety of gold and silver jewelry.
Most souvenirs are about 3-4 times cheaper than equivalent ones in Kenya.

Safety and Security

Ethiopia gets pretty high marks from me on these aspects.
I was shocked to see rows upon rows of jewelry shops openly displaying gold and silver ornaments – and not a steel bar or security guard in sight.

I walked around the main city center in Addis at pretty late hours into the night without any problems. Though if you ask Ethiopians in Addis they will tell you “very bad – we have pickpockets and purse snatchers!!!” – crimes of this nature weren’t really worrying (because I carry money in my shoes).

Violent crimes and muggings involving knives and guns seem to be unheard of. And people don’t know what car-jacking means.
Even the mercato in Addis, which people told me was full of thieves didn’t pose any problems (barring a few “bumps”).

People

Forget the poor image – Ethiopia is indeed very different from anything you might have imagined. Ethiopia has been traditionally wary of foriegners(partly due to centuries of isolation). But, all that is changing, very fast.

I found people in Ethiopia to be temperamental, but very friendly and welcoming (and not the over-friendliness that makes me feel touristy and suspicious!!) You will find most people going out of their way to help you, or guide you if you are lost. People like talking to foreigners – they try practicing their English on you. For a change I even met policemen who were polite and helpful (and didn’t expect backhanders!). In one restaurant I forgot to collect the change, the waitress chased me for like a kilometer to return the change! I lost track of the number of times people invited me to coffee and beer.

Go there!!!

Photographs

I am a bad photographer. I was one of those 10 suckers on the planet, who bought an APS camera (remember? “Advanced Processing System” – the technology that was supposed to put digital cameras out of business) It put me of cameras forever (I still use a really tiny kodak though :) ) .
Here a collection of stolen pictures, which show the best of the many sights in Ethiopia (note: I haven't been to many of the places mentioned) -- I swiped these from various websites(my apologies to them):

below: the stelle in Axum