I spent the early evening of New Year’s Eve in the 270° Rooftop bar in Nairobi, watching the sunset, having some wonderful food and drinks…especially the 270° Special G&T with kiwi fruit and cucumber, in the photograph below.
Today, the first day of 2026 I’m preparing to leave Nairobi to head north to Ethiopia…a country I’ve wanted to visit for so long.
The Feature Image, above is the Nairobi night skyline taken from the 270° Rooftop bar last night.
I left The Library well in time for my bus trip with Abyssinian Luxury Coach company to Moyale because the traffic in Eastleigh is awful. The coach was packed as it set off on time at 7pm. Along the way we dropped off and gained a few passengers to the point where there was not enough seats, leaving three guys to sleep on the floor for much of the 13 hour journey to the Kenyan border with Ethiopia. It was a beautifully warm morning and immediately began a swift process and a few tips involving two motorbikes and a tuk tuk to exchange money on the black market, sweep through immigration, book a hotel for the night, buy a coach ticket for the trip to Addis Ababa, organise a local SIM card and have a fabulous meal complete with Ethiopian beers and Nottingham Forest on TV, and rounded off with an early night to bed.
An Ethiopian Adventure on a Bus
I set my alarm for 2:30am to be ready for a 3am departure from outside the hotel. However, the guy who sold me the bus ticket called me at 2am. So I arrived at the scene of chaos at 2:30am to be greeted by three identical buses with no obvious signage and hoards of people. Someone guided me to the second bus, and I began to queue to load my backpack into the luggage hold. By the original departure time of 3am I, and many others, was still in the slow moving queue. I then realised that every piece of luggage was being opened and checked by security guys!
There was so much baggage I was certain that some people were moving house, but slowly everything was in its place…including me, and we set off. Any optimism I was relying on soon evaporated when our bus, along with four others, stopped at a barrier. We were herded off and told to stand in line for ID checks and frisking. The luggage on the buses was rechecked by more security guys. As we waited in the dark, my seating companion, Tizita, guided me through this mayhem and bought me a glass of hot tea and a local doughnut. In passing the hot tea some was spilt and unknown to me on a child under walking age who was crawling around the crowd of adult legs! The mother picked up the child, glared at me and walked off! Eventually we reboarded the bus and left the outskirts of Moyale at around 5am…two hours late!
During that day we had to stop at three more barriers, evacuate the bus, stand in lines for ID checks and frisking, while security guys checked more luggage. At one of the checks I was pulled out of one line into another while the security guy said, “That’s the female line”.
I also decided to take some photographs of a scene around the barrier which attracted someone’s attention which eventually attracted the attention of a guy with a machine gun. Eventually surrounded by a half dozen guys asking me what I was doing. With the help of a passenger on my bus who spoke good English I explained I was just a tourist taking holiday snaps, and not photographing a “military establishment”. The guy with the machine gun smiled and I fist-bumped my way out of that escapade!
As well as the four full blown inspections we were stopped about ten times by police for our driver to show the correct documentation.
Then to complete a memorable day my seating companion, 31 year old, 5’10” and attractive Ethiopian, Tizita wanted to marry me so she could get a UK passport to live in England with her nine year old son….and me.
The Ethio Telecom data package lasted just one day which left me without data as I arrived in Addis Ababa. With some help I found a taxi who proceeded to rip me off, as city taxi drivers do. But, at last I arrived at The Red Vervet hostel at 9pm…19 hours after my early morning call to begin this adventure.
Then just one more surprise…a traveller, Julie who I met in The Library hostel in Nairobi was in the same dormitory as me!
The End
After a great night’s sleep I decided to chill out for the day…I paid for a month’s unlimited data, contacted a travel guide to organise local trips and finished reading Remote People by Evelyn Waugh.
A combination of being travel weary and Christmas festivities “forced” me to enjoy some lazy days in the Mad Vervet hostel….but I did visit 3.2 million year old Lucy at the National Museum of Ethiopia.
While most of the world uses the Gregorian calendar, Ethiopia (and Eritrea) uses the Julian calendar in which Christmas falls on 7th January and the New Year is celebrated on 11th September.
I began planning excursions which started with a tour of the Danakil Depression, an inhospitable but beautiful area in the Afar Triangle over three days and two nights sleeping under the stars. The first night was cold and windy, and began early to climb Erta Ale volcano to witness the sunrise. The second night was very warm and with another early start to watch the sunrise and have breakfast on the lakeside salt flats. Our third day took us to the spectacular and colourful Dallol hydrothermal field followed by the nearby salt mountains.
I then stayed overnight in a hotel in Makele to be ready for a two hour drive to the Tigray region, and the Abune Yemata Gou church in a cave high in a mountain. The church was constructed in the sixth century to be closer to God and to be difficult for attackers to find.
Two Israeli backpackers enthused about their visit to the church and the demanding climb up the cliff when we stayed in the same Nairobi hostel dormitory. They were right! The climb up to the church was strenuous and demanded close help from the guides…but the church and views were both spectacular. It is truly a wondrous and unique place. The church is still regularly used, and I can only wonder how a congregation climbs the cliff for a baptism!
Never have I paid so many tips in one day, and never were they more deserved.
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