Arrived safely in Bahir Dar

Well, I've made it safely to Bahir Dar, but sleeplessly enough that
this isn't going to be a work of literary genius.

My anxieties began at Heathrow. The flight out (EgyptAir if anyone's
wondering which airline not to fly with) was delayed by three hours
because the airplane burst a tire. I thought that would make me miss
my connecting flight in Cairo, but they held up the flight for me and
the handful of other passengers from London. I'd call this an act of
extreme generosity but I think it's more likely that EgyptAir didn't
want to have to spring on hotel rooms in Cairo for all of us. Which is
fair, since I kind of wanted to get to Addis Ababa myself. The catch
was that our delayed departure from Cairo meant we were getting into
Addis Ababa late, and that meant I risked missing my bus on to Bahir
Dar. Fortunately, Ethiopia isn't Germany, and the bus left half an
hour late and I managed to be on board by a whisker. But, as you can
imagine, it was hard to feel relaxed until I was sitting on that bus.

Gosh, first impressions. This place brings back all sorts of odd
memories, especially of India and Nepal, which I suppose is the
closest I've come to Ethiopia in geographical terms. I'd forgotten how
Indian towns and cities are built of corrugated metal sheeting, and
the same is true here. I've also had the same experience of
culture-shock-but-not-really as I remember having had on first
arriving Calcutta. On one hand, everything is exotic and overwhelming
and I feel tremendously self-conscious, sticking out like an extremely
affluent white thumb. But on the other hand, this is all pretty much
what I was expecting, and so I'm not really thrown by it in any big
way.

What I am thrown by is the exhaustion. I managed to sneak about an
hour's sleep on the flight to Addis. Fortunately, arriving in this
massive city and needing to find my way about had me wired enough that
I was alert, and for the first couple hours of the bus drive out I was
likewise wide awake because it was the first moment that I could
simply relax and be astonished at the fact that I was in Ethiopia.
Later on in the bus ride I was nodding through a half sleep, where
every time we hit a bump in the road I'd start with the thought of,
"oh, the plane's landed," look out the window and experience a brief
moment of panic that we're not on an airport runway, and then remember
where I was.

There are all sorts of things that I assume I'll get around to at some
point in my life--read Paradise Lost, see the Amazon, have
children--and there are enough of these things that I also know that I
won't actually be able to do all of them. The only thing that makes
this bearable is not knowing which ones I won't do. But hey, I've now
been to Africa. Not so hard to do, you might say, but I could have
given this month over to reading Paradise Lost with much less
expenditure of money and effort.

The trip to Bahir Dar took about ten hours, with occasional breaks for
food and restrooms and to be stared at by locals. The landscape is
astonishing. The high point was the descent into the Blue Nile Gorge,
more than a kilometre deep, and then winding back up the hill on the
other side. The temperature was noticeably hotter in the gorge than it
was on either side at the top. So there's another box ticked: I've
seen the Nile. Although it was a rather disappointing sight, all told,
just a slow brown trickle, maybe as wide as the Thames is in Oxford. I
suppose it's the dry season. And also apparently a lot of the water
upstream is diverted into hydroelectric projects.

And now I've made it to the shore of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue
Nile. I've found myself a remarkably nice hotel, which is a bit above
the budget I'd set myself, but at $15, I'm hardly breaking the bank,
and I need a bit of pampering. And it seems like value for money: a
nice big room with en suite toilet and shower, and beautiful grounds
lined with shady trees and pretty flowers, all overlooking Ethiopia's
largest lake. The main thing to do here is to see the various
monasteries along the shore of the lake and on islands on the lake.
One of the downsides to being a solo traveller (the other, I'm quickly
realizing, is that I get more attention from people who want my money
in various semi-scamlike ways) is that things like boat outings cost
more. But fortunately I've managed to join forces with four women who
are on holiday from various forms of aid work in Rwanda, so we're
splitting the cost for tomorrow's outing. And, to tell you the truth,
it was a bit of a relief at the end of my first day in Africa to
connect to people who've lived in Africa for several years.

One other first impression: Ethiopians (or at least Amharic
Ethiopians--the country's very ethnically diverse) are incredibly
beautiful people. I'm sure most of you know what I mean anyway, but
it's one thing to see the occasional Ethiopian in a city like Toronto,
and it's another to see a whole country full of them. Obviously, all
ethnic groups have their share of ugliness, but the Ethiopians do come
out quite well on the whole, with their rich skin tone, delicate bone
structure, soft eyes, etc. It occurred to me that I was similarly
struck by the Sikkimese and Gurung people in the Himalayas. I wonder
if there's some correlation between living at high altitudes and
beauty. If Tolstoy and Lermontov are to be believed, the Caucasus
Mountains are also full of beautiful people.

If I must generalize, at least it's about something superficial, right?

Favourite sign of the day: "seedy yogurt." No thank you, I'd much
prefer the upstanding yogurt.