Sat 08.12.12: Before Addis Ababa was founded around 100 years ago (Addis meaning ‘New’ and Ababa meaning ‘Flower’), the capital of what we now call Ethiopia had a tendency to move around a lot, much in the manner of the baddie’s castle in Krull. In fact, from around 1270 to 1636, the capital was wherever the king rested his weary head, much to the chagrin of the hapless locals who would have to stump up the readies to look after him and his extensive court should he turn up unannounced on a otherwise unremarkable Thursday afternoon. Then in 1636 Emperor Fasiladas decided to break with the old ways an established Gonder as the new permanent capital of Ethiopia. The two hundred years that followed were ones of great architectural, culture and artistic endeavour, while also being a time of Machiavellian plotting, court conspiracies and some rather…

Fri 07.12.12: And? Okay. Here’s what happened. Arrived at the Sudanese Embassy at 10.30am, a little early, but I figured it could do no harm. Was told to sit. So I sat. And waited. By 12.30pm they wanted to close for lunch. Told me to come back at 2.30pm. I met Tadesse’s mate Tsegaye for lunch and we returned to the embassy at 2.30 sharp to sit and wait. Tsegaye left after the first half an hour. I didn’t blame him. I remained, sitting and waiting. As the minutes ebbed away, so did my belief that I would make it home for Christmas Then, at 5pm, the embassy closed for the weekend. There was a commotion behind the desk. I was called up and handed a new application form. The lady sitting at the desk in the waiting room filled it out for me. Religion? ‘Christian’…

Thu 06.12.12: Day 7 of my epic journey home from Juba began incredibly well. I called the Egyptian embassy and the nice lady told me that they were going to let me collect my passport with the visa in it this morning rather than this afternoon. I didn’t have to be told twice. Jumping in a taxi, by 10am I was triumphantly marching out of the Egyptian embassy, passport in hand. Even if the Sudan embassy decided to drag its heels and not give me my transit visa until tomorrow afternoon, I’d still easily hit my target of crossing from Wadi Halfa to Aswan in Egypt on Wednesday morning. So it was with a sense of triumph that I arrived at the Sudanese embassy. I know now that that sense of triumph was greatly premature. After all, This Is Africa. After filling out the required forms…

Wed 05.12.12: Ethiopia is a remarkable place, not least because it was the only African country not to suffer the indignity of colonisation, and not only for its immensely strong cultural identity: a country which boasts not only its own unique alphabet, but also its own unique was of telling the time (“three in the morning” means “three hours after the sun rises”). It, like Kenya and Tanzania, has pretty good shot at being the birthplace of modern humans. The discovery in the early 70s of ‘Lucy’, for a long time regarded as the so-called ‘missing link’ between apes and mankind, in the Afar Valley cemented Ethiopia as the physical anthropology, primatology, archaeology, linguistics, embryology and genetics Mecca for anybody with the slightest interest in evolutionary biology. Any dimwits who honestly believe the world to be 6,000 years old, look away now: Lucy (or, to give…

Tue 04.12.12: I got a phone call at 4am – it was Isit? calling to tell me that the bus was waiting outside. Crikey: when he said 4am I didn’t think he actually meant 4am. I grabbed my things, dropped the key at the front desk and then spent a good ten minutes trying to suss out how to escape this damn hotel – the front exits were locked (good job there wasn’t a fire eh?). Eventually I exited through a back door and hopped on the minibus. We drove around Awasa for a bit picking up passengers and when we were full, we hit the road. The downside of having decent roads in an African country is that the crashes become more spectacular and infinitely more deadly. The first death of the morning was a hyena, splayed out in the middle of the road, a…

Mon 03.12.12: Yet another early start and by 6am we were hurling north towards Addis Ababa on a brand spanking new commuter bus, travelling along Ethiopia’s impressively smooth asphalt roads. The last time I did this run I was crammed into a minibus with Matt the Lonely Planet guy while he continued his quest to find the only bottle of Diet Coke in Ethiopia (it’s Ethiopia Matt, who do you think is going to be on a diet?), this time was somewhat more comfortable. With nothing left to read, the guy next to me speaking no English and the crappy battery on my laptop only lasting an hour or so, I spent most of the day playing a game of shutty-window with the guy behind me (every time I opened the window, he’d shut it) and observing the beautiful Ethiopian countryside. Miles away from the images…