Gonder, Ethiopia | 20 April, 2007 | $7.39 The cobblestone streets of Gonder were more fun to explore than Bahir Dar and the downtown area had a lively group of teenagers hanging out, eating pizza and drinking expresso. There wasn’t many places in Ethiopia where I could find Western food but this was one of…
Bahir Dar, Ethiopia | 18 April, 2007 | $8.52 The hotel grounds were lovely, with flowers and a lakeside location, but it was run by indifferent staff and had few travelers to talk to. My first room had no hot water and I spent hours trying to change rooms. Looking back, I don’t know why…
Bahir Dar, Ethiopia | 17 April, 2007 | $8.52 Driving after dark in Ethiopia wasn’t allowed since the war. I’m not sure how the private minibus companies got around the restrictions or if public buses were being extra careful. The minibus I arranged to take me to Bahir Dar, in Northwest Ethiopia, arrived at my…
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | 13 April, 2007 | $7.95 After eleven days driving around it was nice to start exploring by foot again. I hadn’t had any time to look around when I first arrived so I visited the museum when Lucy is kept, walked through the market and came down with a horrible case…
Yabello, Ethiopia | 9 April, 2007 | $5.68 Due to our extra day in Turmi driving around dirt tracks for five hours in search of a bull jumpers we had to make up time. We quickly made our way back East toward the main road at the town of Yabello—a nine hour journey. Along the…
Turmi, Ethiopia | 8 April, 2007 | $3.41 Our original plan didn’t include a three night stay in Turmi, we had only stopped in order to catch the traditional market day in Dimeka. Most towns have one day a week where the market sets up and people from different tribes in the surrounding area come…
Turmi, Ethiopia | 7 April, 2007 | $3.41 Turmi wasn’t much of a town. The dusty orange dirt road ran through a few concrete structures, and we stationed ourselves down the road at one of the only hotels in the area. We each had our own cement cell which became oppressively hot with the door…
Jinka, Ethiopia | 5 April, 2007 | $5.68 Jinka is a sizable town in the remote Southwest area of Ethiopia near the borders of Sudan and Kenya. It was also home to a fascinating little museum that’s part of the South Omo Research Center. I enjoyed the chance to walk around town and people watch.…
Arba, Minch | 3 April, 2007 | $5.68 We stuck around Arba Minch for another day to meet up with our travel partner, who took a short flight from Addis Ababa. Driving around Nechisar National Park, I saw my first wild zebra! What a contrast from Tanzania, when zebras were so plentiful that I stopped…
Arba, Minch | 2 April, 2007 | $3.40 During our second day on the road we stopped for gas in a town named Ziway where I first noticed how popular fooseball is in Ethiopia. Kids and young men played on dusty tables on street corners and hung around waiting for a free table. In the…
Wondo Genet, Ethiopia | 1 April, 2007 | $5.68 My rough plan for Ethiopia was to head up North first and then find some people to join me for a trip around the South. I had been worried about timing because rainy season was on the way, which makes navigating many roads in Southern Ethiopia…
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia | 31 March, 2007 | $2.60 (my portion of a 2-bed room) Although I arrived from the airport with two Americans, one left the next day for an interview in the Middle East so we switched to a double room. Before his flight the three of us explored Addis a bit and…
After I skip more than a few days of posting on my “Where I Slept” series I never catch up. For that reason I’m going to skip ahead from where we left off in January and transport us from India to Ethiopia—skipping over Southern India, Jordan and Egypt. Don’t worry, I’ll fill in the blanks…
Aurangabad – Mumbai, India | 8 January, 2007 | $13.33 (hard sleeper train) Indian sleeper trains must be shocking to anyone who hasn’t traveled outside of the U.S. before but I got used to the hard surfaces (and people trying to sit on my legs while I slept) after a few rides. India is a…
Aurangabad, India | 7 January, 2007 | $6.67 The Ellora caves near Aurangabad were much more impressive than the Ajanta caves because of the huge scale of the carvings. In both cases the attractions were crowded with visitors and lacking any serious security. I’m more concerned with the Ajanta cave painting surviving years of curious…
Jaigon, India | 6 January, 2007 | $4.45 I was only looking for a place to stay in-between visiting the Ellora and Ajanta caves and saw little of Jaigon. It doesn’t seem to be a place worth stopping but this hotel room was odd in it’s sterile modernity. More photos of the Ajanta caves can…
Train from Ahmedabad, India | 5 January, 2007 | $5.67 (train ride) I stopped in Ahmedabad specifically to visit a textile museum (and it was worth it) but managed to make some friends along the way. More photos of everyday life in Ahmedabad can be seen in the gallery.
Mt. Abu, India | 2 January, 2007 | $6.67 I woke up early on new year’s day and took a bus into the mountains to Mt. Abu, a vacation spot for locals more than foreign tourists. Before I saw my first temple of 2007 I had fallen off the back of a truck and flat…
Udaipur, India | 31 December, 2006 | $6.67 On the road you run into a lot of towns that have their own “claim to (Western) fame,” often based on a Hollywood movie. Udaipur is very proud of it’s cameo in the 1983 Bond film Octopussy and every hotel in town seems to offer free movie…
Thar Desert, India | 25 December, 2006 | $10 (Camel tour) Slowly waking up on a sand dune while the sun rises in the distance, trying to stay warm under a heavy, smelly camel blanket made for a special Christmas morning. Christmas night was the same as the last—our small group sitting around the fire,…