We're in Thailand, and the
livin's easy...except Day caught something during our eight hour layover in
Mumbai (a last treat from India) and has it ripping out both ends for the first time on our trip (score to date: me twice; Dylan once in Nepal; Day once. Now you know.)
Northern Ethiopia to Bangkok in under 36 hours. Less time than it would have taken us just to get back to
Addis by bus from up North. But we lamed out (wizened up?) and bought a local flight to connect with our international one from
Addis. The flea infestation was what did it: over 100 bites along my waistline alone. Apparently I'm yummy.
So I'm sipping a real Slurpee from an actual real fucking 7-11 (not a knock-off called '7-10', or '
Sleven=
Elevn' or something.) and feeling hopelessly slow and stupid compared to the speed of this broadband connection; the shiny new computer keeps looking at me and going "Holy shit you need to
upgrade something, man." And I'm like "Be quiet asshole, I feed wild hyenas from my mouth."
The tourists have me all culture-shocked. More
muzungo's (but we're not called that here, are we?) on a single street than we saw in almost four months in Africa. No
AK's. No goats. Did I mention the money in Ethiopia reeks of goat? My new religion bans goats. The Muslims got it all wrong; I would much rather frolic in the muck with a posse of fat, squealing swine than smell goat all day. Stinking, cloven-
hooved creepy little bastards.
I've also decided that, in keeping with the pseudo-
hippy vibe of this place, I'm too fucking lazy to write much about Ethiopia at the moment. So I'll post photos and add captions as my current attention span permits. What's really on my mind is this: who invented the dreadlock? Was it the Indian sadhus whose tradition goes back over three thousand years , or ancient African sorcerers and medicine men? And further: what's up with this (predominantly Israeli) adaptation wherein one shaves one's head but leaves a single, terribly lonesome little
dreadlock hanging out the back like a rat-tail? Is that some kind of sign of post-military service penance...like you have to leave one shameful little
dreadlock for every Palestinian teenager you've skinned? Just curious.
I'm waiting for the virus scan to finish before I plug in my memory card. If I don't, I risk contracting some horrible virus that will wipe out eleven months of travel, like what Costco did when we tried to have them develop our Cuba photos: "What do you mean they've
vanished!? I'm not paying you to
lose all my photos, I'm paying you to develop them!" But they were, like personal hygiene on a
pseudo-hippy, gone.
I'm happy I worry more about digital viruses than physical ones...
Ok here we go. Starting with our four-day 85km
Simien Mountain trek and moving chronologically backwards to the first town on the Northern Historical Circuit,
Bahar Dar.
Baboons in the
Simien Mountains. If you've seen the nature series 'Planet Earth' you've seen these baboons. They nest on the face of the escarpment at night and come out daily to forage.
There are many ways to trek in the
Simiens, the most popular being the all-inclusive 'hire someone else to carry and cook for you'. We went cheap, carried our own shit and cooked our own food, but a scout (the dude with the AK) is mandatory and we hired a guide to help with translation. The guy with the horse is a local tagging along.
The escarpment. The first natural sight in Africa that wasn't underwhelming compared to what I've seen back home.
Waterfall. Not bad.
Fields of the local grain
tef grow right up to the edge of the precipice.
Lovely local village along the way. Surprisingly, this is a Muslim village in a predominantly Orthodox Christian region. The idiotic Ethiopian Park Service has decided to relocate the villagers within the park. Their reason for this, of course, is 'environmental preservation'...which is ridiculous, because the village above is more than five centuries old, pastoral, and totally sustainable in the original sense of the word.
Relocation in a resource-scarce region inevitably leads to hardship and conflict among villagers. And who do you think is
really creating the largest environmental impact currently? Could it be the 20-plus person tourist groups with their teams of donkeys, porters, guides and SUV support along the road to carry such essentials as deck chairs, wine, portable showers, etc? And what could
really be motivating the parks service to relocate entire villages? Could it be the fat (and soon to be much fatter, as in on par with Kenya) entry fees charged to foreigners?
The idea of 'untouched wilderness' in the Western sense doesn't exist in Africa, or anywhere else outside North America I've travelled. There are agrarian communities everywhere, and almost all land is populated, even if sparsely as in Northern Kenya and Ethiopia. Relocation occurs when local bureaucracies like the park service get it in their heads that 'empty wilderness' is the sort of outdoor experience Westerners expect.
Lovely trekking.
Day at about 4000m in the highlands.
Us.
Our scout with his gun. He waved it around to scare away the begging children. I'm serious.
View.
Giant
lobelias.
Our guide and our tent.
Thick-billed raven. We also saw the massive and beautiful
Lammergeyer.
October is the perfect time to visit the
Simiens: after the rainy season, still cool (as in 3-5C at night), and wildflowers in full bloom.
Day
chillin'.
'Red hot poker' flowers.
Fields of
Meskel flowers lower in the valley.
These guys have a shitty job. At higher elevations the villagers cultivate eucalyptus tree plantations. The trees are cut when they're around four inches thick and are carried to the road, where they are driven to construction sights to be used for scaffolding.
Angels on the five hundred year old roof mural in the island monastery of
Ura Kidane Meet in the town of
Bahir Dar.
Byzantine-influenced Ethiopian Orthodox Christian iconography: circular faces; no perspective; what some call '
cartoonish' visuals.
Nun. Look carefully and you'll notice her elaborate neck tattoos.
Woman at prayer in a grove outside the church.
Inside a typical Northern Ethiopian supermarket.
Due to their Semitic history Orthodox Ethiopians have fasting and food restrictions: Wednesday and Friday, no meat. This is the vegetarian fasting platter, one of our favourite dishes and much
preferable to goat.
The ruins in the town of
Gondar, Africa's so-called "
Camelot". Don't know, I've never been to
Camelot, (!) but cool regardless.
Like fresh coffee? You'll like Ethiopia. Coffee drinking is culturally ritualized, like tea is for Muslims. It's a social ceremony that begins with roasting fresh green coffee beans over a clay charcoal burner.
Smells good eh?
Flowers and incense are burned as offerings before the first cup is served.
Monk with centuries-old illustrated Bible.
Nun and little one.
Coptic Christian crosses (called 'short-armed' crosses) are abstracted into a variety of star patterns.
Jolly monk.
Not jolly sinner getting decapitated. The interiors of churches and monateries are entirely painted in murals that act as didactic storyboards for an illiterate population (85% of Ethiopians can't read).
Folks burning in Hell.
Doorway to the sanctum sanctorum, the sacred inner space which only the monks can enter. Inside, every church has a talisman shaped to resemble to Ark of the Covenant. It is the presence of this artefact that makes an Ethiopian church holy for believers.
Mary and Jesus, here white...but in many churches it was common to see a dark-skinned Mary and a little black baby Jesus. Cool.
Wierd clay offerings capped the villagers homes.
A woman waits for theferry to take her town where she will sell her bundles of collected firewood. Deforestation is a
huge problem all over Eastern Africa because most people still cook with charcoal.
Man navigating his papyrus canoe.
Perhaps one of the most phallic older stele in the foreground, with the classic King Ezana's and Rome Stele (so called because the Italians stole it during the Mussolini invasion, only returning it in recent years to the tune of 4 million dollars) in the background.
Mud bell tower (predates the church) of ancient church.
Close up "texture shot" (as Shilo calls them) of the carved out tomb of King Kaleb.
Sunset from the "fancy" hotel in town. Fancy = beer cost double.
Crypts for King Kaleb's family, the Aksumite were thoughtful planners. Notice the cross. circ 6th century. The knowledgeable guard/ticket collector told us that it is local legend that a tunnel connects the tomb to Eritrea and further still to Yemen....challenges and predates the Chunnel, yo!
Stairways into the tomb. Creeeeeppppyyyy!
In 1981 a farmer and two of his buddies stumbled over this: An inscription in three languages, Sabaean (ancient Yemen language), Ge'ez (ancient Ethiopian), and Greek telling the tales of King Ezana's christian military campaigns through Ethiopia and Arabia. The tablet dates from 330-350 AD. Apparently it also contains the curse "the person who should dare to move the tablet will meet an untimely death". Needless to say, its right where they found it, housed in a mud and stick house and a tin roof. The guard was the dandiest Ethiopian I had seen, spiffy 3 piece suit, snazy hat, and a well gesticulated cane...."no ticket, no tablet!"
A unerected and unfinished stele, with the attentive guard in the background.
One of the passage ways into the Tomb of the False Door. The False Door was a common carved feature of the Stele.
Early, smooth carved stele.
The Rome Stele, with the newer St Mary of Zion church (this complex is rumored to hold the original Ark of the Covenant).
Detailed shot of Rome Stele.
again.
As previously mentioned, the False Door of the Rome Stele.
Great Stele.
Me and the Great, but broken stele. It was massive: 33m tall. Though, it was easy enough to see why these giants fell. There "roots" were nothing compared to the height and weight of the carved granite towers.
close up.
Aksum street scene.
