Day 128

Sleeping location: Unknown hotel, Birkuta, Ethiopia
Distance (km today/total): 96 / 10000
Estimated climb (m today/total): 800 / 63500
Apparent likelihood of wild camping in Ethiopia: 0%

Day in three words: I am China

In the morning we became the major exhibit in a human zoo. Two of the hotel cleaning girls looked in on us through the window for about 5 minutes, whilst I did my morning admin in naught but a pink towel. After they got bored we packed up and left Himora eastwards along a very long straight road. There was a slight headwind and we were climbing gradually so we pootled along at 15kph for most of the morning. On this stretch we were introduced to the apparently ubiquitous “town not on the map”, which occurred every 15km or so. These were surprisingly big for places that didn’t exist, and of course had hordes of excitable children to shout at us. The two favourites are “farenji”, which means foreigner, and “China” which apparently means us. I have read that this is as a result of Chinese workers helping to build a lot of the roads here; these are the only non-black people the local kids have seen, so they assume everyone white is a “China”. My favourite response to being called either farenji or China is to look hurt and say the other one back at them, which they usually find quite funny. 

As the day went on we moved through increasingly interesting landscapes. The flat grassland turned into rolling hills and we began to see more trees, including the first baobabs of the trip #Africacliches. It was pretty peaceful in between towns, but there were still people out and about everywhere, mostly looking after groups of goats, sheep, cows or camels. At lunchtime we stopped for food and drink at a quiet cafe with lots of resident animals. The lady here was very nice to us and helped us understand how things like drinking vs washing water work here. Late afternoon we stopped for some more drinks at a very unquiet cafe, where we very quickly attracted a crowd of about 30 children. They just sat there watching us in a surprisingly non invasive way. Attention from kids is becoming a bit of a thing here, it must be so upsetting for them to realise that we’re actually quite boring and just cycle, sit, eat and drink. 

Straight after this was the most memorable cycling since probably Jordan. We rounded a corner to an amazing view of distant peaks and a fun wiggly descent. From this point onwards the views were constantly great, with expansive grassland and distant rocky mountains in every direction. There was still a lot of livestock about, including one donkey that made some very strange donkey noises when I stopped near it and briefly looked like it was going to charge at me. 

As sunset neared we found a quiet spot amongst scrub and watched the sun set. We thought we were hidden but someone seemed to spot us from the distant road, then just stayed there. He flagged down a car, which then drove away but left a second man by the side of the road, before itself returning. We weren’t sure what was going on but it seemed to have something to do with us. Nobody came over so eventually we put the tent up, to escape the mozzies and to see if this would demonstrate that we weren’t poachers or something. But soon some lights and voices came from the other (non-road) direction, which it transpired belonged to 2 inquisitive men with rifles. I shouted “farenji” which seemed to de-agitate them, but then more and more armed men appeared out of the bushes until there were about 8 of them. They weren’t angry or aggressive at all, but they were insistent (mostly through miming*) that we couldn’t sleep there, and had to go 5km to a nearby town. So we packed up and cycled, mostly uphill, until we got to the town. The men had started off alongside us but apparently got bored and zoomed off, so we arrived in the town on our own with no idea what we were meant to do. Immediately the standard crowd formed and it was all very bewildering, but a couple of guys were helpful and showed us to the town’s hotel. It was very basic, just a few small rooms around a dirt courtyard with shared toilet and shower, but it was also cheap and provided us with food and a bit of privacy. 

When we arrived in the town I was on 9999km, but by the time we’d pushed the bikes through the crowd to the hotel it had reached the magic figure of 10000. It’s very upsetting that my one and only transition to five figures occurred when I wasn’t even riding the sodding bike.

*One guy made some alarming chomping gestures to demonstrate that the area wasn't safe. After some research I think he was referencing hyenas, which can very rarely pose a threat to humans, although mostly only sick or injured ones. The chances of one storming a tent containing two healthy adults is remote, although it would be a dead cool story, assuming I could kick it away with my giant thighs.