Africa 2026

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”. The photograph below is some southern Ethiopian scenery which is very much like the northern Kenyan scenery.

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, below

The second night was very warm and with another early start to watch the sunrise, below and have breakfast on the lakeside salt flats.

Our third day took us to the spectacular and colourful Dallol hydrothermal field, below 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. The photograph below shows me part way through the climb.

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!

The trip back to Makele airport was fun because my guide asked if his sister and some friends could join me along the way, so the hire minibus (and driver) was full with locals enjoying a free ride to Makele….it was party time as the driver blasted out Ethiopian music, below.

The return flight was delayed, but I’m now back in The Mad Vervet hostel after a truly spectacular few days of Ethiopian sightseeing. I want to see more, but in the meantime it’s Epiphany this weekend, or Timket in Ethiopian, which is the country’s biggest celebration.

I also had a growing concern about a “boil or growth” on a finger so I went to the Lancet Specialised hospital. After checking in at Reception I was asked to wait outside Room 101! The doctor believed it was the larvae of a soldier fly buried into my skin! After cleaning and anaesthetisation the doctor carefully squeezed out the larvae! The wound was dressed and I was prescribed antibiotics for seven days, and I must return to check the wound and dressing in a few days time. Knowing that a soldier fly larvae was germinating under my skin was like something out of a sci-fi movie…but the hospital service was awesome

While taking the antibiotics I stayed in and around Mad Vervet hostel I generally felt tired and a side effect of the antibiotics was a severe dose of dysentery. So I did manage to do some early morning post-dysentery yoga, and I read a lot and I updated all my social media stuff on Facebook & Instagram, and this blog.

It also gave me some thinking time about the best plan for completing my Cape Town to Cairo trip. Originally, I planned to miss Sudan because of its ongoing civil war, and I would visit Djibouti & Eritrea instead and finally fly to Cairo from Eritrea. Then sometime later I decided to add Somaliland into that plan. However, a combination of not wanting to travel away from Addis Ababa while medical recovery mode and “discovering” that Sudan was opening up to tourism of the Red Sea side of the country, led me to eliminate Somaliland, Djibouti & Eritrea and instead adding Sudan to my “vague plan”. While I can’t travel overland through Sudan I can complete an unbroken line of countries from Cape Town to Cairo.

So, I have extended my Ethiopian visa and booked a short tour of Sudan starting in Port Sudan. I needed additional time because of the time it will take to receive my Sudanese visa, which itself will allow me to see more of Ethiopia.

It’s now 2nd February, and I’ve finished my fourth book of 2026….In Ethiopia with a Mule by Dervla Murphy. Near the end of her hiking trip she visits Lalibela, which happens to be my next trip.

 I’m also creating a “vague plan” for a tour of Egypt to finish my trip of Africa. I have a flight booked from Cairo to Heathrow, London on 16th April….but that’s still a long way away!

For the first time ever (I think) I went to a Techno Music Fest which was at the Botanical Gardens on Entoto Mountain on the outskirts of Addis Ababa. Many of the Mad Vervet guests and staff went for a great afternoon & early evening of music and socialising…and a little dancing on my part! The image below is Addis Ababa taken from the Entoto Mountains.

Eventually, I was on my way to Lalibela, a small town named after King Lalibela who initiated the development of eleven churches hewn from volcanic rock over a period of twenty-three years between the 12c & 13c. Lalibela visited Jerusalem and began his long term plan in incredible detail. The most famous of the churches is the monolithic Church of St George, seen below, which is normally the church seen in travel advertisements for Lalibela.

I visited four of the churches, including St George’s with local guide, Mengstu, on the first afternoon and the following morning we had an early start to visit the others, and included the holy day of one church, and chanting associated with the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church. In the afternoon we hiked up Ashaten Mary to enjoy the view of Lalibela and its surrounding area. The following day I left The Blue Nile Guest House to be taken to the airport for a short 30 minute flight to Gondar, which will be the start of a hiking and camping trip to the Simien Mountains, formed millions of years ago during intense volcanic activity.

On my arrival in Gondar I was picked up by a tuk-tuk driver and my guide, Stephen for a tour around the main historical sites, starting with the  Fasilides’ Bath, which continues to be used on 19th January every year for Timkat, the epiphany

celebrations….perhaps Ethiopia’s greatest annual celebration. Thousands of pilgrims arrive in Gondar to bathe in the waters surrounding the castle.

Next was a trip to the Debre Birhan Selassie church, which is the only church remaining after the devastating attack by Sudanese Mahdist dervishes on Gondar in the 1880’s….legend says that the church was saved by bees! The fabulous interior painting can be seen below.

The final, and most spectacular, site was the recently refurbished Fasil Ghebbi Royal Enclosure, which includes castles, churches and libraries and has been influenced by Portuguese, Indian and Ottoman styles.

Gondar remained the capital city of Ethiopia until about 1855, and it is easy to understand why Gondar was known “The Camelot of Africa”. Today it is the gateway to the Simien Mountains where I will spend two days hiking and one night camping. 
I was joined by Faladkaras, a Greek restaurant owner and intrepid hiker…his restaurant in Crete closes during the winter which allows him time to travel. Once the restaurant opens for the six month tourist season it remains open every day.

We arrived in the Simien Mountains National Park around midday complete with a driver, cook, hiking guide and armed scout for two tourists! Our first afternoon of hiking was tough…four hours of up hill and down dale, all above 3,000m in warm sunshine. But the mountains, created 25 – 40 million years ago by intense volcanic activity, and later magnified by the development of the Great Rift Valley.

We were able to watch the sunset and then have dinner at the campsite, but at 3,300m it was very chilly as the stars came out…so by 8pm we went to bed in our ready set up tents. Certainly, I was feeling weary from the hiking and I soon fell asleep.

The following day we were up before sunrise, and with a breakfast of pancakes & honey and Ethiopian coffee, we were on our way at 7:30am. The driver & cook remained behind to clear the campsite and move the van to our meeting point.

This second day was only two hours of hiking, and with my legs feeling surprisingly fresh, it was an enjoyable hike with my favourite early morning sunshine. Besides the immense landscape, the Simien Mountains are home to the extremely social and endemic Gelada, or Bleeding Heart, baboons, seen below.

I had a lazy day in Gondar, and then headed out on an early morning bus to Azezo, a bus terminal close to Gondar. I was transferred to another minibus heading to Bahir Dar. The bus left the terminal loaded with 24 adults, two babies and all sorts of luggage on the roof…one bag of which fell off after a couple of miles. It was an exhilarating trip that cost less than £4 for a five hour, 170km journey! I walked to the Lake Avenue Hotel in Bahir Dar which has a lovely view of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile, below.

The following day a driver and guide picked me up at the hotel to take me for an “African Massage”, an extremely bumpy road on our way to see the Blue Nile Falls. We picked up a National Park guide, took a ferry across the Blue Nile and walked some more to the falls, below.

As it’s the dry season the falls are reduced to this single drop, whereas in the rainy season the falls are 10x the width now, and I wouldn’t be able to stand where I was taking this photograph.

There’s a slight change in our program with the boat trip on the lake moved to tomorrow morning instead of this afternoon. So I shared a lunch of Lake Tilapia and Shuroh with guide, Tam and then chilled in the later afternoon.

Early next day we took a slow boat to a couple of monasteries…one of which was the Kibran St Gabriel monks monastery on an island inhabited only by the monks themselves, below…

Once again, it was the paintings inside the monastery that were a joy to behold…

Then we went across to the east coast of Lake Tana to the point where the Blue Nile begins its journey to Khartoum in Sudan to join the White Nile, and then onwards through Sudan to Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea. There are also some hippos that bask in this area of Lake Tana.

This trip is now nearing its end, and despite my morning flight being cancelled, I was soon on the evening flight back to Addis Ababa.

I brought back some marvellous memories and a flu bug which knocked me down for a few days. But during that time I needed to make a decision about visas…my second Ethiopian visa was close to its 30 day end and a third (and final) extension would only be for 10 days. Would I receive my Sudan visa within the time of that extension? It was too close to call so I decided to fly to Somaliland which would allow me to re-enter Ethiopia on a new 30 day visa, which would be more than enough wait for the Sudanese visa.

Tomorrow, I fly to Hargeisa, the capital city of Somaliland with my visa and an Airbnb booking, and while I’m there we drift into March 2026!

Everyone, from the immigration guy, the airport telecoms guy, the taxi driver and the hotel reception were both friendly and helpful. I hadn’t realised that Somaliland is a strictly “dry” country, and neither had I realised that during Ramadan everything remains closed until 4pm!

The coastline of the Horn of Africa, including Eritrea, Djibouti, Somaliland and Somalia, has a chequered history which continues today. Somaliland declared independence in 1991, but its independence is not recognised by the UN…an organisation I detest, but this status was recently challenged by Israel which now formally recognises the Republic of Somaliland.

The Somaliland War of Independence continued through the 1980’s and included the indiscriminate bombing of Hargeisa and the slaughter of about 50,000 people, mostly civilians….a war waged by the Somalian military junta led by dictator, Siad Barre. The bombing destroyed 90% of Hargeisa, but one building remained totally untouched…the Oriental Hotel, shown below, which is now the oldest, continuously used building in Hargeisa. The nearby War Memorial is a Somali Airforce Mig-17, which crashed during a bombing raid.

The War Memorial, below…

Hargeisa is a relatively young and unassuming capital city born out of the rubble of a civil war. For me, it’s been a lazy time of yoga and reading interspersed with a walk into the city centre to visit the few tourist sites and to buy some food and snacks. But my lazy days soon came to an end, and I was on my way back to the airport for the short flight back to Addis Ababa. The highlight of the return flight was a sunset above the clouds, seen below.

It was so quick & easy to get my third Ethiopian visa on arrival at Bole International Airport, and it was US$40 cheaper than my second extension.
The Red Vervet hostel remains pleasantly the same with some new faces.

I have been in contact with Sudan Tours, and can now just wait for my visa, or not, as the case may be. I do have a time constraint, and I have some options to reduce my time spent in Sudan, if required….but, I need to be in Cairo by 24th March.

I have just finished reading, Moon Tiger written by Penelope Lively who was born in Cairo, and based on the love affair between Claudia and Tom in Egypt during World War II. Since flying to South Africa last October 2025, I have read fifteen books linked to Africa, and one paperback book bought in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The list can be viewed in the Posts, Books 2025 and Books 2026 of this blog.

Today is International Day of Awesomeness, and sadly, Day Ten of the US-Israeli-Iran war which continues to blight the Middle East region and the world at large.

I have just finished reading A Vain and Indecent Woman by Colin Falconer. Falconer has been on my Authors to Read list for a long time, and he didn’t disappoint! I am now reading The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, one of my favourite authors.

This afternoon a guy in my dormitory was pickpocketed in the street, and lost US$1000! A lesson to all of us while visiting capital cities, and especially in poor countries.

I now seriously doubt that I will be visiting Sudan anytime soon, so in the next couple of days I will book a flight to Cairo, and say goodbye to Ethiopia. If my Sudan visa application is accepted while I’m in Egypt I will consider flying back to Port Sudan in April rather than return immediately to London. This will add a week or so onto my whole trip but…..who cares!

The photograph above is of a painting in the Mad Vervet hostel, my home for many weeks while using Addis Ababa as a base for travelling Ethiopia.

The price of flying and the uncertainty of flights being cancelled has increased since war in Iran and the resulting instability in the Middle East countries. So I was pleased to find a well priced direct flight from Addis Ababa to Cairo, especially as the trip from hostel to hostel went well, albeit arriving at the Dahab hostel in Cairo at 3am. After a short but sound sleep in my new surroundings I spent a few hours completing the booking of a desert camping trip, a Nile river cruise and a Cairo-Giza trip to begin my Egypt adventure, and irrespective of whether I visit Sudan or not, I have completed my Cape Town to Cairo trip which began in South Africa five months ago involving eleven countries.

Yoga friend, Tracey, arrived in Cairo from the UK, and we started with a Uber driver scam…he wanted cash instead of payment through the app! But the Grand Egyptian Museum and the Pyramids of Giza were a fabulous start to our Egypt adventure…even though there was heavy rain on and off throughout the day. The photograph below is a view of a pyramid from inside the museum.

The trip to the Black and White Deserts was also fabulous…even though we were scammed again! There were four other travellers on the desert tour who had booked the two day & one night camping in the desert option. I had booked the three day & two nights trip expecting two whole days in the desert. But our extra day was to be spent “doing our own thing”. So we returned to Cairo with the others, and eventually accepted a refund. The photograph below is the Black Desert which was created 180 million years ago after volcanic eruptions.

Using the Dahab hostel in Cairo as a base we used our spare days between trips to visit the Khan el Khalili souk, the historic Al Moez Street, sunset watching in Al-Azhar park, and Garbage City…an awesome region of Cairo with an estimated population of 120,000 where collected waste is recycled by a cooperative of family-based mini-industries. During these few days I was reading Egyptian Myth by Geraldine Pinch.

Then came a two day trip to Alexandria taking a return Go Bus from Cairo and staying one night in Ithaka Mansheya hostel on the waterfront. It was good to see the Mediterranean Sea once again! Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great in 331 BC, was home to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the lighthouse. Sadly, the lighthouse collapsed after damage from three earthquakes. However, some of the original stones were recovered and used in construction of Qaitbay Citadel, a 15th century defensive fortress, which was built on the site of the lighthouse….seen in the photograph below.

 

We visited the modern 2002 inaugurated Bibliotheca, St Marks Cathedral, the Ali el Hendy coffeehouse originally founded in 1882, the Pasha monument dedicated to the founder of modern Egypt, the Cap d’or bar founded in 1908 and very loosely connected to the 1958 movie Ice Cold in Alex and where I did drink an ice cold Egyptian Sakara Gold beer. Then all of a sudden we were back on a Go Bus returning to Cairo.

It’s now April Fool’s Day and we have two full days in Cairo before heading down to Aswan on an overnight train to begin a Nile river cruise.

The new “Upper Egypt” train station in Cairo is an awesome building and in complete contrast to the 1950’s trains that passed through. Because of ticketing issues we had separate sleeper trains that departed (and arrived) twenty minutes apart. The journey to Aswan was about twelve hours and we soon found ourselves on our cruise boat, Apititlan, our home for the next three nights.

During the next few days we visited Abu Simbel, Kom Ombu, the Temple of Horus at Edfu and the Valley of Kings, the Temple of Hatshepsut, Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple, all at Luxor with our excellent Egyptian guide, Nellie. A Nile river cruise was a “must do” and it was an awesome few days visiting some or Egypt’s best known historical sites in style…..

Abu Simbel….

Kom Ombu….

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Temple of Horus….

Karnak….

….and a balloon ride over Luxor.

Our return to Cairo was on a long distance, long day coach for a very quick turnaround at the Dahab Hostel before leaving Cairo on another long distance, but overnight, bus to the town, Dahab. Along the way there was a military style security stop where I misunderstood the protocol and nearly left my main backpack behind…whoops!

Dahab, which had been recommended to me by my eldest son, Alec, was a complete contrast to the manic harassment of Cairo, Alexandria & Luxor. Dahab is a laid back and almost hippie-like beach town facing Saudi Arabia across the Gulf of Aqaba. This will be our base for five days of peace and quiet, to include a sunrise hike up Mount Sinai and some Red Sea diving or snorkelling.

Jimmy’s Hotel …in the photograph below, was the perfect base for enjoying Dahab…a beachfront cafe, swimming pool, easy walking distance around the town and ideal trip support. I still had some problems with my right foot so I postponed the hike up Mt Sinai by one day and chose to snorkel instead of scuba diving.

I was picked up at 10:30pm to arrive at the start of the Mt Sinai hike at 1:30am. It was a beautiful night for a chilly and tough hike beginning at an altitude of 1500m and completed about 3 hours later at the summit of Mt Sinai, at 2285 m.

There’s a mosque at the summit, and together with about fifty other tired hikers and a beautiful sunrise the atmosphere was special. The sunrise below…

Slowly, we walked carefully back down the mountain with the warm sunshine completely changing the views we enjoyed.
As I had been awake for over 24 hours AND hiked up Mt Sinai I slept for a few hours back at Jimmy’s.

The snorkelling trip was a pleasant day spent north of Dahab watching kitesurfing, in the photograph below, in the Blue Lagoon, lunching on the beach and snorkelling in the Red Sea…and a long nap for the mountain hiker!

The following, and final day, in Dahab was a lazy start and an 8 hour minibus trip back to Cairo…with a mandatory security check, this time involving a sniffer dog rather than an x-ray machine.

Today is my final day in Cairo, Egypt and Africa. Sadly, Sudan has not been a part of my Cape Town to Cairo trip, and I have messaged Omar to cancel the trip to Port Sudan, irrespective of whether my visa application is accepted or not. However, I have visited eleven countries in six months while scuba diving in South Africa, climbing the sand dunes of Namibia, taking a helicopter rides over Botswana’s Okavango Delta and Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls, drove a night safari in South Luangwa National Park in Zambia, swam in Lake Malawi, enjoyed the Freddie Mercury museum in Zanzibar, took a sunrise hot air balloon ride in Tanzania’s Serengeti, saw in the New Year in Nairobi, Kenya, climbed Ethiopia’s “church in the sky”, recognised Somaliland and cruised the River Nile. Definitely my longest ever single land trip, and probably the most awesome travel experience.

….and then I was on an Egyptair flight to London Heathrow!