Crossing into Kenya

How best to get between Kenya and Ethiopia is a subject of constant debate amongst overlanders.  The traditional route has been via Moyale and Marsabit in north eastern Kenya.  The main advantage is that it’s a proper border, an actual road and is pretty direct.  The disadvantages include a horrendous corrugated road surface and bandits – potentially needing to take an armed escort isn’t exactly a draw.  The other option is to continue south from Omo alongside Lake Turkana (world’s largest desert lake and more shoreline than Kenya’s coast).  The route seems to be safer and while it’s often tracks rather than roads they don’t quite have the bone jarring qualities of a heavily corrugated highway.  Disadvantages include no fuel for nearly 1,000 miles and your mother reading the Wikipedia entry.  “Nile crocodiles are found in great abundance on the flats. The rocky shores are home to scorpions and carpet vipers.”  Still, off-road seemed preferable to bandits, and James wanted to feel rugged, so Turkana it was.  We joined up with a couple of other cars (South African/English and Dutch) as if we got stuck or broke down or ran out of fuel, some back up was going to be pretty essential.  This was demonstrated nicely on the first day when a muddy riverbank separated our wheel arch from the rest of the car and it ended up on Karen and Marcello’s car roof for the rest of the journey.

Ready to go

Grrrr - James feels manly

These guys are pretty nuts trying to do it on a bike - but good beard

 We got stamped out of Omorate in Ethiopia and then headed for the border – stopping at what were definitely the most naked checkpoints we’ve come across so far.  

Not your standard passport control

The road was just a track, winding through the bush and past the odd tiny village, but we were really lucky with the weather and didn’t end up in any mud traps or difficult river crossings.  Apart from the lost wheel arch we were all intact as we rolled out of Ethiopia...

Last Ethiopian flag

...and into Kenya.  At least the GPS told us it was Kenya – we’d have had no idea otherwise!

It's the border into Kenya - you'll have to trust us

There wasn’t really any noticeable difference between the two countries so far north, as I think the tribes are pretty much the same.  We made a quick stop to register with some jolly policemen and one handcuffed miscreant in the small town of Illeret and then made for the lake.

It didn’t really seem to be living up to its ‘Jade Sea’ nickname that evening, being a very clear shade of blue, but we found a lovely spot to camp and the only visitors we had were lots of birds and some of the local kids and fishermen – no crocodiles or vipers.  We all had a good stare at each other and admired the cars (them) and the feathered headdresses (us).  I think they were Daasanach people because of the hairstyle that some of the guys had (lots of little curls making a hairband shape) but not sure.  The Daasanach live right up in the north of Turkana but have lost a lot of land and suffered badly from droughts.  Things are only likely to get worse if the Ethiopian government starts using the Omo River that feeds the lake to irrigate the growing sugar cane plantations in the south east of the country.  According to some guys we met there is a risk the lake could be pretty much drained in 20 years.

Lake Turkana is famous for:

1. Being very big
2. Being green
3. Being windy
4. Being incredibly remote
5. Cool tribes
6. Being one of the contenders for the cradle of humanity – it’s where Richard Leakey (of anti-poaching / Kenya Wildlife Service fame) found a 2 million year old skull

Can’t really vouch for number 6 but in the the three days it took us to drive down in through Sibiloi National Park the first 5 were very much in evidence.

Really not much around!

Amazing bush camps

Mainly camels for company

And our first zebras

Definitely jade coloured...

...but seriously, would you live here?  The wind gets up to 60 kph on a regular basis.  This is an El Molo tribe fisherman's hunt - there's only about 250 of them left as it turns out eating mainly fish and crocodiles isn't really a balanced diet.

On the plus side, the wind means that there is huge potential for wind power.  Near South Horr we met a couple of guys in the middle of setting up a wind farm - apparently it would be the biggest in sub-Saharan Africa.  http://ltwp.co.ke/

Finally, after our days in the wilderness and some tough driving over lava fields we reached Loyangalani – our first real Kenyan town.  The area around is dominated by Turkana people.  The women wear hundreds of beaded necklaces and the men wear blood red cloaks and funky hats.  Quite a few of them came over to where we were camping to say hello and have a look at our cars but chats were pretty limited given we had zero Turkana and they had zero English.

Turkana ladies (thanks to Flores-Jan for the photo)

We said goodbye to the Jade Sea there and headed inland.  The countryside suddenly became much wetter and more green as we headed towards South Horr, into Samburu country.

Actual rain and clouds and mountains!

The Samburu women still wear loads of necklaces but low on their shoulders instead of on their necks.

The men's headgear was amazing, but we don't have any very good photos I'm afraid.  These guys were out cattle herding and came to have some lunch with us.  Because they're working they have all their braids up in a brown hairnet, but the young men in town had hairbands with feathers on and huge silver jangly headresses.

The final stretch took us east to the main North/South road (the one we’d avoided further north).  Our first 20km on it were probably the worst of the whole journey as the surface was so bad, and we were so glad we hadn’t taken it all the way.  But then – bliss – absolutely perfect tar with lines and even metal barriers.  And then – even better – our first elephants right by the roadside!

Our final campsite in Isiolo made a pretty surreal end to such a wild journey.  It’s just at the start of the fertile central highlands and pretty much felt like we’d arrived in England.  Not quite what we were expecting, having spent most of the day driving past herds of camels!

950km after the last fuel station - we finally made it

Tribe Time

We had pretty high expectations going into Ethiopia, as various friends had been there and raved about it, but throughout all of our trip we really weren’t disappointed.  As we headed south from Addis, every drive continued to be absolutely stunning – which was fortunate as we had quite a long distance to cover to get down to the Kenyan border.

Our first leg was following the Rift Valley down to Arba Minch.  The roads were the usual challenge of livestock and child dodging, but the landscape really changed from highlands, to savannah, up into rainforested hills and then down into the classic red soil African valleys.

Rift Valley south of Addis

Forest and red soil

 

Arba Minch itself is in a pretty amazing location.  We stayed at a campsite overlooking ‘The Bridge of God’, a thin strip of land between two Rift Valley lakes.  Not sure if it’s obvious from the photo, but the two lakes are totally different colours as the northern one has a reddish tinge from the mineral rich mountains that feed it.

It really is pretty red in real life

We shared our campsite with a lot of Ethiopian Christmas revellers and three fairly friendly warthogs.

Definitely not nervous

Heading up into the mountains we visited the villages of the Dorze, highlanders famous for weaving.  We had a really fun day seeing how they build their huts (very tall but shrinking over the years as the termites gradually eat them) and learning how to make the local bread (fake banana plant buried in the ground and left to ferment for several weeks – fairly ‘interesting’ taste).

Bread fermented underground - nicer than it sounds

The last area of Ethiopia we visited was the Omo Valley, which is famous for its distinctive tribes, partly due to Don McCullin’s photos of them. 

http://contact.photoshelter.com/gallery/Don-McCullin-In-Africa-Book/G0000fyBUOGk32ik/C0000czlAAq16AeA

The remoteness of the area has preserved a lot of local traditions and distinctive dress - although the all pervasive football shirt was definitely being incorporated into a lot of the traditional outfits!  Some customs sounded pretty entertaining (running along the backs of bulls before you’re allowed to get married), some less so (whipping your female relatives), but we put on our cultural relativity hats and headed off.

We’d heard the experience of travelling the area could be a bit weird and ‘human zoo’ because of all the tourism, and while that was definitely the case in some places it really wasn’t in others. 

We drove into the valley past the usual stunning landscapes and stopped in a town called Key Afer as it was market day the next day.  Having spent most of the evening playing with the kids from our campsite, we ended up with several tiny (and very serious) tour guides for our visit. 

First stop was the livestock market.  It’s just getting warmed up, in these photos but the guys rocking mini skirts, headbands and utility vests are from the Banna tribe, who we think are probably the coolest.

The main market was for fruit and veg (although the electronics stall was attracting the most attention).  In the market and on all the road approaching it were masses of people from different tribes – more Banna, Ari in grass skirts, Hamer ladies with ochre coloured hair and calabashes on their heads – it really was like walking into a different world.

Next day however, we came up against some of the grimmer impacts of tourism in the valley.  We had driven into the Mago National Park and camped for the night right in the forest.  The local elephants stayed away, but we had visits from Colobus monkeys and a troop of baboons.

Road to the park

 

Some visitors

We decided to visit some of the villages of the Mursi in the park – famous for the lip plates that a lot of the women wear.  It was a pretty depressing experience though, as the guides from the nearest big town (Jinja) just seem to bus tourists out and stick them in front of the locals to take photos, with zero effort to translate or create any exchange between the visitors and the villagers.  Everyone just stands there demanding money and a lot of the guys seemed to be high/drunk.  Probably a great case study of how it can all go wrong, but left us feeling pretty sad.

Cool photo but generally feeling a lot of tourist guilt!

We definitely preferred just driving across the region and meeting everybody in the towns or on the roads – that really was unforgettable and it was amazing to see so many places that were 

just totally alien to anything we were used to.

Ari (I think) women on the way to market

Mursi mum

Mago National Park in the rain

Hitting the Highlands

It was a minor miracle, when travel weary after a hard 5 days crossing Sudan, we rolled into a small hostel in the mountain town of Gondar to found that Ali had managed to meet us there. So vague and unconfirmed were our plans, I had had my doubts, but on his own adventure via Addis, Ali had checked into our trip for a couple of weeks, and thankfully bought Christmas with him, in the shape of a stocking, and Cadbury's Celebrations. They never tasted so sweet!

We saw in Christmas day, in a traditional Ethiopian nightclub, where the locals show off their trademark shoulder dancing, which often includes a dance off between two same sex parties, with everyone winning in the end (see video for example)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLhRxspdMi8

Dancing has been a theme of our trip around Ethiopia. As we've moved through the different provinces, each has produced a new dance from the local children, which they use to impress you enough to give them a dollar or two (special mention to the group of kids near Arba Minch doing headstands whilst completely naked). Unfortunately, this sort of behaviour keeps the kids out of school, so its important not to reward their endeavours.

After a tour of Gondar's hilltop castle, we hit the road with the aim of spending Christmas at Tim and Kim's place on Lake Turkana. There a warm welcome, many of our friends from the road, and an amazing Christmas dinner awaited us. Tim's goat BBQ was tastier than you could ever imagine!

The video I wish I could put here is of one of the dogs at Tim and Kim's running straight at Ali's legs and sending him flying, but you'll have to use your imagination for that one!

It was from there that we headed north into the Simien Mountains for 2 days of trekking. For me this was one of the bits of the trip I'd looked forward to the most when planning at home.

Most of Ethiopia is at altitude, but instead of the mountains rising up from the plains, the plains are at the top, where everyone lives, and the height is made stark by plunging gulleys and valleys which drop for thousands of meters and make for some incredible scenery.

They did not disappoint. I will never forget turning the first corner into the park and feeling goosebumps as the valley dropped away in front of us and the craggy rocks created a stunning backdrop to our drive. Truly epic.

Ali getting involved in time for some trekking

At the 4,000m altitude the car started producing some weird white smoke because it wasn't getting oxygen, it was also very cold!

Nice views

Baboons all over the place!

. 

The other highlight of our northern circuit was a visit to Lalibela, Ethiopia's answer to Jerusalem  where a former emperor carved 11 churches into solid rock. (Ethiopia is big on religious sights, also claiming to house the original ark of the covenant)

Ethiopia has its own brand of orthodox Christianity, and its own calendar to fit. On the 6th Jan 2013, it was celebrating Christmas 2005, and when we visited on New Years Eve, the pilgrims were flocking to the site pre-Christmas having walked for days or even weeks to get there (and they smelt like it!)

Churches carved into the rock

One of the real highlights of the trip to Lalibela though was the road. An off road gravel track along a mountainside very hairy to drive, but with incredible views both sides. This driving does tend to make the car very dirty though, so we stopped to get the car washed in the river in Bahrir Dar. Those guys have some real skills with a bucket!

Reversing into the river ready for our car wash

From there, it was on to Addis, where Ali would say goodbye, and we would descend into the admin vortex that seems to take over whenever we reach a big capital city. The car got a full service, and some extra insurance, and now we're off to start our trip on the wild route through western Ethiopia and into Kenya. We did however managed to spare the time in Addis to visit Bob Geldof's favourite Italian restaurant, called Castelli's. The fresh pasta is highly recommended!

South along the Nile

We finished our Western Desert tour with a final leg into Luxor, followed by a rather lacklustre police escort who gave up after about half an hour.  The days of proper police escorts around Egypt seem to be over, fortunately.  Suddenly emerging out of the desert to find so many trees, flowers and farmland gives you a real sense of how the Nile transforms the land here – and how dependent most of Egypt is upon it.

Luxor is tomb / temple / tourist central due to the City of the Dead on the West Bank with the Valley of the Kings, Queens, Colossi etc and the temples on the East Bank.  We spent a day enjoying (me) / enduring (James by the end of the day) all of the sights, dodging the tourist tat touts and picking up a cheeky bit of black market diesel.  The standard next stop on the route is to head down to Aswan to get the ferry to Sudan but we decided to make a bit of a detour across the mountains to the Red Sea for some diving at Port Safaga.  A couple of days of relaxing on a boat and diving amongst coral gardens with the odd turtle and shoal of tuna were a good change from desert driving.  Sadly, it did mean that James had to lose his moustache to stop his mask from leaking – he’d been enjoying the compliments from fellow moustachioed Egyptian men.

The road down to Aswan along the Nile is very picturesque – farms, mud villages, clouds of brightly coloured flowers, the odd donkey to dodge.

However, massive queues of tractors and trucks for fuel are also key features.  We never did entirely find out why exactly there were such bad shortages.  The incredibly low, subsidised price (10p per litre!) seems to be something to do with it, with potential explanations including ‘we smuggle it all out to more expensive countries to sell at a margin’, ‘the government is trying to distract people from politics to create shortages’, ‘the political/economic troubles have changed the government’s credit rating so it’s more expensive for them to buy fuel and the subsidy is unsustainable’.  Whatever the reason, most drivers could barely believe what fuel costs in Europe – “how does anybody run a taxi?”.  It seemed to get most people a lot more exercised than the referendum on the constitution, which mainly provoked grunts or sighs.

Driving on the Moon

We left the insane traffic of Cairo behind last Monday morning, and headed out on the Western Desert Road, where we hopped from oasis to oasis, making a long loop around to Luxor. The instructions we were given about the route sounded a bit Lord of the Rings - "go across the Black Desert to the Crystal Mountain and then into the White Desert" - and it was a rather like visiting another planet.  Some of the most stunning scenery of our trip so far and totally deserted most of the time.  I'd describe the White Desert as the most amazing place I’ve been, but never heard of before I got there! The photos we’ve attached below don’t do it the slightest bit of justice.

This was our first chance to try out some off road driving - with mixed success.  In the White and Black deserts the sand is compacted hard (with the odd squidgy bit to keep things interesting), so the Landcrusier could handle it all pretty easily.  We spent a couple of days bashing around in the dunes and discovering some incredible places, seen by very few. It also allowed us to do our first proper night of wild camping (some practise for Sudan), where we just had to pick a spot in the desert and pitch our tent. The silence was like a sound of its own, especially after Cairo (and its 5 am calls to prayer).

Unfortunately all this off roading made us a little over confident, and we managed to get stuck in deep sand the next morning, turning off to take a cool photo. Cue half an hour of digging, and gradually reversing out using our sand ladders. Very impressed with how it all worked in anger though. James and Anna 2 : Sinky Sand 1!

One issue out here through is the fuel shortages (which seem more or less constant) with huge tailbacks of farm trucks waiting overnight sometimes to get some fuel. Thankfully, as tourists we’ve been allowed to skip the queues, but it must be a massive pain for anyone living here.  We were really surprised how kind everyone in the queue has been about letting us in - but I guess we're only filling up a car rather than two tractors and six jerry cans.  Plus, we probably add to the general entertainment of fights and barricades by taxi drivers.

Our first night wild camping in the Western Desert. We just drove 20 mins off the road and picked our spot!

Stunning vistas in the White Desert 

Anna digs us out after some over adventurous off roading. We'd spent much of the previous day off road,  on hard packed sand having loads of fun, but got over confident an got stuck in some soft stuff. Shovels and sand ladders to the ready!

Customs stole my Mars bars...

We thought we had left the byzantines behind in Istanbul, but it turns out they have been re-incarnated in Egypt. Our first week or so in Egypt mainly consisted of mountains of bureaucracy - whether it be the 4 days we waited for our car to clear customs in Damietta, or the pointless 2 hour wait at the British Embassy for a letter telling the Sudanese Embassy that we didn’t need a letter, we’ve suffered from our fair share.

Still, it gave us a good opportunity to develop our waiting skills in various seedy, fly filled offices and cafes.  We could have even set up a business if we’d been feeling a bit more entrepreneurial.  Whilst sitting in the cafe at customs in Damietta, we were approached by Yassim, a very enterprising man who wanted to know why two foreigners were waiting in the port (it wasn’t tourist friendly!) and whether he could start any business with us. We were a bit lacking in Turkish business contacts so couldn't really help him, but if you are interested in Egyptian retail opportunities / getting items into Egypt 'no questions', we have his email...

Other highlights of trying to get the car to Egypt included finally getting the car back only to find customs had searched everything in the car, from top to toe and just thrown it back into the car when they were done. Annoying enough, until you find out they’ve half inched a ratchet strap, a pair of sunnies, and worst of all, most of a pack of mini mars bars!  On the more positive side, one of the policemen managed to split his trousers at the crotch whilst hand making us the most amateurish pair of Egyptian numberplates you’ve ever seen – people have been laughing at them all the rest of our travels.

Rather blurry photo of our arrival in Egypt

After a lot of frustration, we were back on the road, the crazy-cars-driving-anywhere-they-like, skimming-through-traffic, driving-in-the-wrong-direction-roads of Egypt.  Since then our trip has been fantastic. We drove down past the Suez canal to see the ships sailing through the desert, before camping within sight of the Pyramids in Cairo.  There, our wonderful hosts, Helal and Sue, arranged for us to pony trek through the desert to approach the pyramids from the quiet far side. They really are just amazing – I was totally prepared to be underwhelmed but you just can’t be unimpressed!. Epic in scale (you can see them from all over the city), and still so striking compared to all of the surrounding buildings, 5,000 years on.

Our guide had a good line in cheesy photos...

That said, there, and at other sites around the city, there really aren’t many tourists.  It felt like we saw the same four Americans, six Japanese and a party of Indians everywhere we went, and that was about it (apart from wildly overexcited Egyptian school trips). They’ve all been scared off by the latest news of protests. As ever, the media is massively overplaying the impact. We drove right up to the barriers at Tahrir square, where the local boys are making blockades to stop the police entering, and didn’t feel unsafe.  We think it’s probably a bit like when we had the riots in London – bad if you’re in the spot where the trouble is, but absolutely fine on the other 99% of streets. The huge tourist industry here just hasn’t been the same since the revolution though and a lot of people seem pretty despondent.  You can see that every hotel or restaurant you walk into is built for about ten times as many people as are actually there.  Everyone here is very forthright with their views on politics and the riots, which surprised us a bit.  When we were in Tunisia last year, people were pretty reserved about anything like that but in Egypt everyone has an opinion on the revolution, Morsi, the protests etc.

Sailing Past Trouble

We have finally landed in Africa, after a 24 hour ferry from Turkey to Egypt. We now face a barrage of administration to get the car through customs, after what was a surprising ferry trip....

If we had done this trip 2 years ago, we would have driven on from here, through Syria, and into Jordan before meeting Africa in Egypt: instead we have had to catch the ferry and sail south passing this, and other, trouble by. If we needed a reminder of the fact it came in the form of the score of Syrian families who met us at the port.  This livened up the ferry trip as we had to be on the alert to stop toddlers from hurling themselves off the dock or under HGVs, but it also gave us a chance to talk to those who had some English (our Arabic being currently limited to hello, thank you and let’s go!)

They are travelling to Egypt to look for work, perhaps with the help of family already there, or some just on the off chance. They say that everyone is catching up with people they know, exchanging stories of where the fighting is worst, and crossing off names of those who have died.  We’ve seen a lot of sign language of planes dropping bombs and houses collapsing.

Amer, a multi-lingual HR director for a large supermarket chain before the trouble has told me how all business has dissolved now. There are no safe parts of the country, the only goods available are imports, and inflation is rife. Worse, banks won’t allow anyone access to their money.

Still, these families have hope. They have enough cash to make this expensive trip, and buy their way across the borders. The thought of the many left behind has made this an incredibly humbling bit of the journey, and made us all the more grateful for the excitement that now lies ahead.

We now sit in Port Damietta, at the gateway to our Africa trip proper. This is where the trip really begins...

The Beast waits for the ferry at Iskenderun