Hyper-travel with Hardie #4: The Horn of Africa and the Caucasus...

 

Welcome to the fourth installment of my Hypertravel with Hardie series, in which I’m showing pictures of my trips for the last twenty years. We’ve already covered southernmost South America, the Caribbean, and Southeast Europe. Now we’ll go to the Caucasus region, including Turkey, and the Horn of Africa, including Ethiopia. This trip goes against the idea that a coherent trip would consist of one continuous region, in that the Cuacasus and the Horn of Africa aren’t really connected. But in the modern jet age of hab-and-spoke travel and inexpensive airlines, that’s very possible. In fact, the original trip also consisted of the Scandinavian region, but I’ve saved that for later, in order to maintain some regional continuity. So, we’ll only cover two nearby regions for this trip. Are you ready? Let’s go! I’ve had the Ethiopian visa for a while, thinking i might branch off from my previous southeast Europe trip to use it, but that didn/t happen, so now it’s time. First stop will be Ethiopia, with a brief stopover in London from LA. i’mstaying with some NGO friends in Addis Ababa, so a bit out of the way and on the outskirts of town, so we do some touristy stuff, the best of which are the culture shows for drinks and dinner, which seem to have made an impact on the local tourist scene. Oliver Mtukudzi is also giving a concert on the weekend, so I’ll stay for that before heading for the border. Because Somalia is the big question mark for this trip, so I’ll deal with that first, specifically a visa to the rump upstart Somaliland, with capital at Hargeisa, accessible by land from Ethiopia and imminently more peaceful that Mogadishu, so I’ll get my visa for there in the meantime. It’s no problem. And the concert with ‘Tuku’ is good, sprawling over the pavement and inviting all to dance. The but to the border should be so welcoming. I’ll make stops at Dire Dawa and Harar, but the terminal at the Italian Merkato At 0500 is shambolic. Some of these people look like they’ve been sleeping on the bus all night, but that’s okay, as long as I don’t get robbed. I’ll get pick-pocketed at least once in Ethiopia, so my fears are well-founded. Merkato is notorious. Things get better out on the open road, though, especially when the large trucks take the turn to Djibouti, while we continue on to Dire Dawa. At some point the bus stops and people buy qat, but not me, not yet. Dire Dawa is not so different from Addis, Christian and full of parties, but Harar only an hour away is totally different, Muslim and prohibitive, semi-narcotic qat only, to stay awake for prayers, uh huh. The big deal for tourists there are the hyena feedings, but the big deal for me is the trail of Rimbaud, the French poet who put Ethiopia on his map when he retired from poetry at the age of twenty-something. They remember him, too. From there it’s all downhill to Jijiga and the border to Somaliland. The border looks like it’s been scratched into the sand willy-nilly. The city of Hargeisa is not bad, though, better than Mogadishu, I’m sure, with wifi, just a taxi from the border with a Muslim inmy lap. But there’s nothing special there, so I book a flight to Djibouti and cross my fingers. It’s a real Russian plane with real Russian pilots and crew, flying low over the sand, with notihhing much better to do. Adn Djibouti is no better, just more French and more expensive, and quite rude to boot, especially if you make the grave mistake of snapping a picture, no matter of what. It’s all prohibited. So I don’t stay long, but bite the bullet and catch a flight back to Addis, rather than sweat two or more days on the slow bus uphill. That gives me time to explore the rest of Ethiopia, which is much preferable to these lowland desert dregs. Classic Ethiopia is in the hills, where it’s cool and the atmosphere is Biblical, shepherds with rods and staffs and robes to conceal themselves. The only problem is the bus system, and i found the solution to that–Selam bus. Back in Addis Ababa I get my own place and a real live modern city, complete with uptown, downtown, and miles of walkable roads between the two. I won’t waste a lot of time right now, though, since it’s a well-worn travel truth that you do the hard miles first, since there will always be chill time on the rebound. So, I catch the bus for Gonder, which will allow me a stopover at Bahir Dar on Lake Tana on the return leg. Glorious Lalibela doesn’t look far as the crow flies on that map, either, but i’ve learned not to trust random crows. This upgrade Selam bus doesn’t leave from the Merkato, either, so that’s good, even though it’ll get me in to Gonder after dark, VERY dark, since there’s rolling brown-outs in Ethiopia, too, almost like a Communist knee-jerk reaction, along with illegal blogs and feral dogs. The espresso makes up for the minor inconveniences, I guess. The check-in guy assures me that the lights will come on at 10 pm, just like Harar, but I’m not impressed, since i don’t sleep with the lights on, thoiugh i guess some do. It’s probably a security thing. The ‘royal enclosure’ that defines Gonder is nice, though, and the people are fine, when they don’t pick my pockets, so I;m digging the Biblical scenes with Joseph and his technicolor dreamcoat, and I even find a rare picture of Mohammad on a village church’s wall. Did you know that Ethiopia is the oldest form of Christianity in the world? They and Armenia, or is it Georgia? Their alphabets are all similar. Muhammad came later, but he’s remembered. I backtrak to Bahir Dar, and the move feels good . Lalibela will have to wait. The big deal there are monasteries dotting the lake, but not so scenic. So, I go down the road to see the falls of the Blue Nile., and that’s cool. The drive back to Addis is much better than the drive out simply because the air is so much cleaner now, so almost like a different trip. And Addis almost feels like home now, so I go to my favorite coffee shop and chill. When someone tries to pickpocket me from behind, I shake their hand in perfect time, their face long lost in the crowd. This part of the trip is over. I’ll go back to Istanbul now. ISTANBUL Istanbul is a metropolis by comparison to Addis Ababa, with dozens of hostels and guesthuoses vying for business in Sultanahmet, where the rival mosques of Haga Sophia and the Blue Mosque, vye for tourist dollars, while the beds and breakfasts vye for rooftop views. Oh, sure, Istanbul has a reputation for sleaze bakc in the days of French connections and lethal injections, and you could probably find a sad old streetwalker if you really need that, but mostly it’s buffet breakfasts and AYCE shashlik served up straight from the street, ready to put the shish back in your kebab. You could probably find something Lebanes and blonde, too, without too much trouble, but Midnight Epress is still fresh in my memory, so I think better of all such propositions. There’s some hard travel to do, too, so time waits for no one, and I set out on a big ass bus, complete with hostess and snacks. There;s a ferry across the Black Sea at some point, maybe Samsun, but I forgo it. And Trabzon is the historic Greek limit of influence, so I stop there, thinking to meander, but end up cathcing a connection to Georgia within five minutes. Geogia is totally different, Batumi a seacoast city, for one thing, and good coffee, for another. Their Turkish coffee is much better than Turkey’s, where Nescafe rules supreme. Market stalls line the streets up and down this town. Then I go to Tbilisi, which is different yet again, big city in a small country. Wifi is scarce everywhere, and i have no reservation, so bite the bullet on a pricey place rather than find an internet cafe and start over. The old ways of Lonely planet and blind logic die hard. So, I don’t stay long, instead looking for the bus stop by tha muddy spot, and hoping for the best on the border to Armenia. They all look like Seinfeld’s Uncle Leo, but that’s okay, I can pay, just ge me to yerevan by sundown. So i get the good bus, finally and a free coffee at the countryside inn, and all is right with the world. There’s a hostel waiting for me at Yerevan and some righteous travelers, too, so that is fine, and i try tostudy russian. Because this is still the USSR, by some accounts, and that keeps the cynics at bay and the critics at sea, and lessens the distinctions betweens you and me, so that all three naions here, Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani, can stay away from each other’s throats long enough to draw maps, where otherwise none would exist. So, Nagorno-Karabakh bides its time and Naxchivan hangs nine, and waits for another day to be delivered. The duduk flute makers live onthe outskirts of town, so we do that one day, and get drunk, me on one of my few guided tours in some thirty-five years of travel. i can count them on one hand. And the city is cool, too, with parks full of pop-up restos and bars, so what if the drivers are maniacs and the food is nothing special? That’s why Thai town and Little armenia share space in LA, so i can have good bread with my Thai food. From here there’s no Way to cross into Azerbaijan, unless I want to wait for Nagorno-Karabakh to surrender or return to Georgia and backtrack from there. There’s no direct route to Turkiye either. It sounds too complicated for a trip to the birthplace of the oil industry, so I return to Georgia and take it from there, figuring to go to Cappadocia first and then Cyprus for extra credit. That means Goreme, and the fairy chimneys and hoodoo voodoo haunts, which make it famous, with barkers and colored balloons floating overhead like semaphores over Santa Fe from Albuquerque far below, the whole place looking like bedrock for Flintstones, Wilma and Fred, then Betty and Barney Rubble with Dino the dinosaur for good measure. It’s all good fun until I wake up with my laptop lying on the floor, incapable of holding a charge now without some expert care and maintenance. It’s these dams fluffy beds rejecting everything semi-erect and hardened. That means a return to Istanbul, but not so fast. So I hightail it to Cyprus, with a ferry from Tasucu, chastened but not hastened, not too much anyway. The green line between Nicosia and Lefkosa separates more than North Cyprus from the South. It divides Asia from Europe and Muhammad from Jesus, just like Odysseus crossing the Aegean Sea to fight Trojans who would be Persians as soon as the opportunity presented itself, those two Indo-Euiropean brothers long separated by time and space from the northern steppes. And this is my odyssey, crossing the green line where time stood still in 1974, and the prices stay the same in stores and magazines long shuttered but not silent. But the prices are cheaper on the northern side now, so that’s where I stay, with everything but the girl, laptop begging me for succor, while I prepare another boring supper, last one for the passion of Christ, as I prepare my return to civilization. So I return to Istanbul, as my foot breaks out, with another bout of gout, begging for attention while I navigate the situation of my laptop, the factory’s service center on the other side of town, giving me a guided tour of the city’s broader environs that I could never get from the breakfast buffet of the average guest house in Sultanahmet. Yogurt may be the saving grace, but that can only go so far. So, what’s the verdict on a Turkey, with little genetic relation to its ancestral Turks back in Asia, merely a culture and a religion and a language, where not much else really counts? The Turkish coffee is better in Georgia and the Turkish kilims are better in Bosnia. This is arguably Asia, true, but not much, only sort kinda almost maybe. But if that’s enough to keep Odysseus occupied for a decade, then I guess it’s enough for me. This trip is over. C U in Africa. If you like this content, then don’t forget to like and subscribe. That goes a long way to make me happy and gives me the inspriation to make you happy. In the next episode we’ll return to southern Europe and southern Africa, too. C U there. Thanks for watching.