Into the Wilds of Tigrai

We are back in the land of wifi, (though we've been out of the wilderness for a couple days, we still had no internet in the town of Adirgat, so I am now posting from Toronto....) and are ready to share our extraordinary experience in the mountains of Tigrai! These missives were written while on the trail, so I will feed them to you one at a time.

To catch you up: Last Saturday, the rest of the SCOPE group headed to Addis Ababa and then on to Seattle; Mike, Dawn and I boarded a plane for Axum, in the far north of the country, from where we embarked on our six day trek.

I have to say that aside from the 48-hour mosquito barrage in Addis at the very beginning of this trip, the last 3 weeks have been remarkably devoid of what Mike and I have historically termed ‘just another Africa travel adventure.’ Well, today the ‘adventure’ finally reared its head. At the airport, Dawn found that her ticket—with which she has had trouble all along despite it having been ‘fixed’ multiple times—was still messed up. Forty-five minutes later and seconds before we were to board, she finally snagged a boarding pass. But—no surprise, I suppose—upon arrival in Axum, her duffel bag with all of her trekking clothes was nowhere to be found. Turns out, her duffel had apparently not been tagged with the rest of our bags to Axum and so it is flying around Ethiopia on its own and no one knows where it is. Hmmm….

Dawn was remarkably calm and collected about the whole thing. A report was filed, I made several calls, our driver was recruited to talk to someone else with our trekking outfit and, who knows? Fortunately, she was wearing one day’s worth of hiking clothes and her hiking shoes and between her ‘going home clothes’ and some extra warm things I had, we patched together a workable trekking kit. We are definitely operating as if that bag is gone for good.

We headed out of Axum with our driver, Haile, and just before we stopped for lunch we passed two camels walking down the road loaded with prickly pear cactus—apparently the locals burn the needles off and feed the pulp to the oxen; a third camel was ‘parked’ outside our little lunch restaurant. I have never seen camels walking down the street before or sitting on the sidewalk, so suffice it to say I was pretty jazzed.

A three hour drive from Axum—during which we inadvertently joined a very large and boisterous parade through the town of Bizet—brought us to our start point where we met our guide, Mulat, and our donkey and donkey man, Ebrahim. Donkey was loaded, water was purchased, and we set off from a tiny village into a vast sandstone expanse that looks remarkably like the desert southwest of Utah and Arizona.

Mountains, mesas, spires, cliffs, plateaus—all red and yellow rock with massive gray volcanic basalt intrusions. The region of Tigrai is just as rugged as Amahara, but there is clearly more water here and in some areas they have even dug irrigation canals. It is much greener here, the cattle and goats look much healthier and the population in general does not seem to be quite as desperately impoverished as the areas around Gondar. Homes are built of stone blocks and most have earthen roofs.

We walked an up and down pathways between immense century plants—the plants themselves, minus the spires just sprouting up and preparing to bloom, were taller than me; paths were lined with blooming prickly pear cactus ten feet tall, their bases as big around as tree trunks. Most of the hillsides, despite the earth that seems composed mostly of sandstone and basalt chunks, are terraced and cultivated, awaiting the rainy season. We were actually rained on this afternoon and as I write this, thunder booms from the black clouds to the northeast while a rainbow glitters in the southwest sky.

Our guide, Mulat, is part owner of the Ethiopian outfit, Tesfa Tours, a community cooperative, socially sustainable, tour company. We will stay in guesthouses along the way that were built by local villagers and will be fed locally grown food prepared by women from the surrounding rural households. Fifty-five percent of the revenue from the tours is returned to a bank account collectively held by the community members involved. A very cool set up.

Tonight we are staying in a guesthouse perched on a flat plateau on the edge of a 1500-foot, sheer sandstone cliff, with views out to the western horizon punctuated by towers not unlike Monument Valley. The entire area with its collection of far flung villages is called Erar; below us are scattered homes and tilled plots delineated by short rock walls and terraces. And, of course, the ubiquitous Orthodox churches (in Tigrai, the churches are square, not round as they are in Amhara.)

The guesthouse itself is built of sandstone blocks and has four bedrooms and we will eat at a small table in the bedroom of our guide. There is no electricity or running water, so conditions are fairly primitive, although our bed feels pretty darn comfortable and is out-fitted with sheets, blanket and pillows—there are no barking dogs, honking horns or mosquitos up here, so we are all three hopeful for a peaceful night sleep at 9,000 feet elevation. But first, dinner—lentil soup and spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce prepared over three small charcoal burners in the small, agave-dotted, courtyard.

Photos: Camels on the road out of Axum; taking cover from the rain; village of our starting point; on the trail; camel at lunch; priests in the parade at Bizet; our first trusty donkey; Tigrai sandstone x2; guesthouse on the cliff ; rain on the cliffs; guesthouse tea.