Up here the road was muddy; pot-holed and littered with puddles. We picked our way carefully and I was beginning to think about a campsite. It wasn’t raining yet but it would be soon and I wanted to have my tent up before everything got soaked. We found a clearing a little way off the road that was sheltered by eucalyptus.
Ewan got his tent up before me. I know it’s unheard of, especially on this trip, but I was confused about where to camp and faffed about trying to find the right spot. I wanted to make sure if it rained I wouldn’t get washed away. I avoided the slopes and channels and finally pitched the tent under the trees, but by the time it was up Ewan was all but settled.
There were three children at first – in this country you’re never very far from them – three girls wearing long dresses, one with blue flat-heeled city shoes, incongruous out here. The other two were in bare feet and all wore shawls round their heads. They were quiet initially but as time wore on and Ewan’s jokes got worse, they grew steadily bolder.
One little thing with a gap in her teeth was the cheekiest by far. We nicknamed her Ruby, because in a funny way she reminded Ewan of Ruby Wax. They had been on a Comic Relief trip to South America together a few years back. We gave them water and they loved the plastic bottles. We passed out the empties we were carrying. The three became four, the four five, and six, then seven and so on. I noticed that each one who arrived was a little older, a little bigger than their predecessor. They crowded around us so closely I was worried someone would get burned by the primus stove I used to heat water. It was raining and I’d set it up on the rack of my bike. We heard the first rumble of thunder and I knew we were in for another downpour; two wet nights in a row, it was so strange after the heat of Sudan.
The children were fascinated by the camera; they kept running right up to the lens and blowing raspberries on the backs of their hands. Eventually a man appeared, tall and elegant. He was the father of some of them, certainly, and he ushered them off home.
Only now did we think about food and we ate boil-in-the-bag, standing by the bikes, head torches on as the clouds rolled in. More thunder, the first spots of rain. Claudio was bemoaning our lunch. ‘We should do better than cake in future,’ he said, ‘really. If you want I shall act as guinea pig with the local restaurants. I’ll go in and eat; half an hour later, if I’m not green, you can join me.’
EWAN: It rained all night but was clear again in the morning. Up at dawn we wandered across the hill and a field of rocks where cattle were grazing and sheep skipped out of our way. We wanted to see where the kids lived and came across a sort of village, or cluster of huts anyway. These were pole-walled; the gaps filled with wattle and daub and the roofs thatched. We saw little Ruby first and she was all giggles and laughter. Her family invited us in for breakfast. There were two women, who we guessed were Ruby’s mother and grandmother, and a guy in a blue jacket, wellies and a scarf. He was the head man, the chief; and we recognised him from the night before. He sat down on a canvas bench, ushering Charley and me to take a seat while the older woman ground some kind of root on a smooth stone. There was a little fire going, the circular room dark, though with the door open and the windows there was enough light to make out a zigzag pattern on the walls and hand prints made by the children. Shelves had been cut and held various pots. Charley pointed out beams in the roof, blackened from a thousand fires.
The root smelled of ginger, and once it was mashed the older woman (who kept smiling and laughing) added it to water she was heating in an ancient black kettle. Ruby came in with a chipped basin and some water and we washed our hands. Her father set down a plate of sour bread together with a spicy garlic paste, that we found out later was berbere, and indicated for us to dig in.
All the time we were eating a cow stood at the window, dogs barked outside and every now and again a cock crowed. It was very peaceful; the family so gracious and generous. We’d arrived unannounced and they just opened their home.
Every now and then we’d hear a cracking sound from outside, almost like gunfire. Earlier we’d seen a lad herding goats, whirling a great whip around his head and snapping it over their backs. We ate the bread and talked to our hosts as best we could, trying to explain to the older woman that we’d come on motorbikes and they were parked down the hill. Another younger man with fine features came in. He took some bread, dipped it and sat down. He was pretty cool, nonchalant in our presence, a woollen Rasta-style hat on his head.
The tea was superb, the old lady served us in tall glasses and with the bread and spicy paste it was a good breakfast. A family in Ethiopia: this was why we were here, to meet the people, see how they lived and share a meal with them.
CHARLEY: The paste blew my mouth off and I almost spilled the basin of water. The people were lovely, though, and their home beautiful. They had newspaper cuttings on the walls and religious pictures, icons: this was predominantly a Christian country with only about 30 per cent of the people Muslim, and they tended to live more to the east, nearer Eritrea and the Afar Depression.
The little walkways between the huts and the enclosures for animals were puddle-strewn and daubed with animal dung. The kids were barefoot, their feet and legs streaked with filth and one or two had gummy eyes, like conjunctivitis, only it looked much worse. These were very poor but very proud, very hospitable people. We could hear the boy cracking his whip again, it really did snap at the air like a gunshot. We said goodbye, slipped the father some money for our food and went back to the bikes.
When we got there we found Claudio’s jacket was gone. Ewan and I had been wearing ours but he’d left his draped over the tank bag and someone had stolen it. It put a bit of a damper on what had been a special morning.
We rode on, climbing higher and closing on the Simien National Park. I passed an old man driving a really skinny horse and a little further on I was behind Ewan when we came to a bunch of kids. They waved at first as they always do, but then they bent for stones.
‘Oi!’ I yelled. ‘Oi!’ I lifted a finger, looking back sharply. We weren’t hit but we had been warned, our first stone throwing moment, the little bastards. We rode ever higher and the air was getting thinner. We were in open upland, the clouds so low we rode right into them.
We came to a herd of cattle and slowed to almost a stop. A kid on a pushbike zipped by us and ploughed on, parting the cattle before him. We rode through another town and saw what looked like a bunch of prisoners; men dressed the same and breaking a pile of massive rocks: I could hear the zing of sledgehammers on stone. There were a number of other guys standing there with these great lengths of wood, like huge rough poles. They looked weird, as if they were on parade or something; three abreast, the poles upright like lances.
We were heading into the Simien Mountains to see the Gelada baboons. We’d both seen them on David Attenborough’s programme Planet Earth, and were looking forward to seeing them for real. We set off again, climbing gently until we came to the entrance of the park. This really was the highlands and some of the most spectacular scenery I’ve ever seen; gently rolling hills and slopes, only you were twelve thousand feet up. The roads got narrower, tighter and twistier – too much on the throttle and the back wheel would slither. You needed a bit of back brake to get round some corners where the mountains shouldered one side and the drop would kill you the other.
Rounding one final bend the baboons crossed the road in front of us. There were tons of them; long haired and totally unafraid of people, they were all across the mountain. Parking up we sat down and watched them.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Ewan said. ‘I mean, you see them on Planet Earth and there they are.’
‘And the view,’ I said. ‘What do you think of the view?’
‘Amazing: the clouds, like smoke over the mountains.’
‘Yeah, bloody smoke machine…’
The view was staggering: mountains that stretched for mile after mile, valleys between them, canyons and gorges green with trees and grey with rock, thousands
of feet below. We wandered right to the edge of one drop, the land falling away at our feet.
‘How about camping down there?’ I said. ‘A ledge or a tree, maybe; you know, strap yourself in and watch the sunset.’
‘Fine,’ Ewan stated. ‘I’ll watch you from up here.’
EWAN: I kept thinking about the children, no shoes, scabs everywhere, running eyes and shit all over their feet. People and animals living all together and no sanitation, no hygiene, God knows what kind of infections they carried.
Claudio’s jacket had been a bummer. I suppose the people here have nothing but even so it’s a riding jacket and he needed it. I tried to focus on the positive – the family’s hospitality, and the national park had been amazing. Some of the roads were pretty terrifying, though, especially on the way down. They were serious hairpins with a drop to nowhere and no barrier: it made the hairs on your arse curl up. We stopped at one place where the fall was just ridiculous and Habtamu, our fixer, told us that when Ethiopia was under communist rule, the governor of the Gonder region used to bring dissidents up here and chuck them over the cliffs.
Gradually we descended, crossing bridges and taking the corners gently. We passed an old tank half buried in red soil, and then we passed what looked like some old military outpost, yellowed stonework and rounded corners; an old fort perhaps.
It was raining now, the cloud so low that visibility was hampered. We made camp and the ground was soaked, our tents still wet from last night. Charley and I mooched around in our waterproofs. Jimmy Simak was filming and he asked me what I thought so far.
‘Ethiopia? Brilliant,’ I said. ‘But rain. The word of the day is rain.’
‘What do you think, Charley?’ Jimmy called.
‘What?’ Charley peeked from under both his hat and his waterproof hood.
‘What do you think of Ethiopia so far?’
He hunched his shoulders as water dripped on his head. ‘Yeah, whatever he said,’ he muttered.
18
The Road at the End of the World
CHARLEY: Axum is in Tigray region and had been the centre of the ancient Axumite Kingdom. It goes way back to the time when the Queen of Sheba was seducing Solomon, or he was seducing her maybe. Either way, it’s said she came from that area. There’s a ruined palace on the outskirts of town that local people believe to be hers though archaeologists claim it was built fifteen hundred years too late. Her bathtub is there, though; a massive square pool with twenty-foot sides where people, kids mostly, go to collect water. You see them on the road all the time, tiny little things carrying huge jerricans, usually tied by a length of rope on their backs. Sometimes the nearest fresh water to where they live is a few miles walk and carrying water is a chore the children help with. It’s one of the reasons some kids never make it to school. That and the firewood – we saw people gathering it all the time, old women bent double under huge bundles wrapped in calico cloth.
I was following Ewan. We’d camped with the others last night and it had finally stopped raining; so far today was dry but the cloud was low and the world looked pretty misty. The road wasn’t too bad. We were coming through the mountains and it was twisty enough to begin with but not severe; baked dirt with a covering of gravel. Apparently the road had been built by the Italians and in places we could see stones almost like cobbles that reminded us of the Appian Way.
We hit a series of tighter bends and Ewan took a corner with the bike pretty keeled over. He asked for the power and the back end stepped out, the wheel sliding sideways. Suddenly it gripped and he was pitched out of the saddle.
He saved it, kept upright and nosed the bike into the grippier stuff, and I think watching gave me more of a fright than it did him. He didn’t say anything; didn’t stop and he didn’t look back. A muttered curse over the radio was all I heard about it.
The villages were much the same here, buildings made of wooden uprights and wattle and daub which I guess was part mud and part animal excrement. The further north we got, however, they started to look a little more affluent (though that’s a relative term in this country). We saw more vehicles, the blue and white buses particularly, crammed to the nines. The drivers kept flashing us, as they’d done throughout Africa; the BMW headlights were permanently on and that seemed to bother them.
Ewan pointed out that although we weren’t the only bikers these people had seen, we were far from a regular occurrence. We’d rumble into villages all suited and booted and some people would look round as if they’d seen a ghost. Kids popped up from all over; not just the villages, but the hillside, from great drops where the road bordered the gorges, they’d be on bridges, along the river beds…everywhere. Ninety per cent of them were terrific, all waves and smiles with just a handful who liked to wave sticks or bend to pick up rocks.
We passed through a town where some of the buildings had glass in the windows, built of stone with tin roofs, and some with electricity. Beyond that we were descending again, the same kind of uncertain gravel, and taking a left hander Ewan lost the front. It just washed away; no warning, no reason other than the transfer of weight and subsequent loss of traction: just as my bike had done that day on the Dakar. He was off before he knew it and my heart was in my mouth. By the time I pulled up he was already hefting the bike from the dirt. He didn’t say anything, just took a cursory look for damage and refixed the tank bag. I can’t stress how tough it is for a guy who so rarely rides off-road to spend day after day on this kind of surface. Twice this morning he’d had serious moments and had ridden on without complaint.
EWAN: I was used to the spills by now and what choice did I have anyway? What was I going to do, leave the bike and hitch a lift?
Riding along I could smell eucalyptus, a scent that will always remind me of this country. I watched the different colours of the earth, thinking about how it changes so much and how you can see it, the yellow and black of Sudan to the green and brown of Ethiopia. On a motorcycle you really feel it, smell it, you’re part of it. Every now and then you come into contact with it and it hurts. Make a mistake and the bike spits you off. That’s just the way it is.
We climbed and descended, crossed rivers on bridges built by the Italian army back in the 1930s, passing cattle and sheep that were often just lying in the road. We were seeing a few camels now and hundreds of donkeys; poor put-upon little creatures carrying everything you can imagine in metal panniers slung across their backs. I was thinking how I’d like to come back and rescue the donkeys, take them back to England – them and some of the people. Maybe we ought to have some kind of people sanctuary, what do you think?
As it turned out all we were able to do was grab some lunch in Axum. We paid for a hotel room and took a quick a shower: it was almost a week since the last one. We had no choice but to press on as the UNICEF team were waiting for us in Adigrat. Allegedly it was four hours further, three and a half maybe, and about a third of the road was tarmac. I was hoping we could do a three-and-a-half-hour ride in three and a half hours for once, but I suppose that was optimistic. So it was a bite to eat, a quick douche and five minutes crashed out by the bike.
The route looked pretty gnarly in places and it was being worked on. I’d been down the road once already today, not to mention losing the back end, but I was in good spirits. I actually thought the riding was fantastic and I’d fallen in love with Africa all over again. The very fact that the roads were so tough meant we could stop and talk to people, laugh and joke with them, see how they lived – and that was why we were here. It was a pity about Axum, though; I really would’ve liked to have spent more time there. I’d heard a lot about it and the history really appealed because our view of Ethiopia is nothing like the reality. Historically it had been such a diverse and powerful nation – up until fairly recently the currency was salt bars, and to this day camel trains bring salt from the Afar region to the market at Mkele.
There are huge standing stones in Axum, it’s a UNESCO world heritage site; massive obelisks erected by the
kings as tombstones. The largest is twenty-four metres high and was put up by King Ezana something like sixteen hundred years ago. There’s another even bigger one that fell during construction and it’s said to be about thirty metres.
According to the people the Ark of the Covenant is in Axum, guarded night and day by a priest in the Church of St Mary of Zion. It’s also where Ethiopian Emperors were crowned or inaugurated or whatever happens to a new Emperor when he takes over.
We were heading towards the Eritrean border now which in itself was amazing. Travellers just don’t go there. For thirty years Eritrea and Ethiopia were at war with each other; Eritrea finally gaining independence in 1991. But between 1998 and 2000 the fighting flared up again. It was all to do with territorial demarcation lines. A lot of lives have been ruined, families split; people who’ve lived side by side for hundreds of years. It was tragic, especially when you consider the countries share pretty much the same traditions and religious beliefs.
Anyway, that’s where we were headed and the road was part dirt, part pothole and part sand (I was starting to take this personally). When it rained the tarmac part looked like a sheet of glass.
And boy did it rain. I’ve never ridden in anything like it – far worse than the rain in France at the beginning of our trip. Charley had a dark visor on his helmet and had to partially open it to see, which meant the rain got in. That’s a nightmare in the wet because droplets form on the inside, mist up with your breath and there’s no way you can demist it.
In some ways the landscape was even more spectacular in the rain. We were climbing to these rugged, open plateaus with the most fantastic cloud soaked mountains all around us. I could see bolts of lightning, and the thunder that followed was crashing right overhead. The raindrops were fucking monstrous, falling hard as hail, and in no time the world was running with water. The whole earth seemed to steam, a thin fog rising from the ground, and to make matters worse there were men working on the road. Lorries were hauling gravel, turning round and dumping it. There were massive wheelbarrows all over the place and with the visibility as bad as it was I almost clattered into one. I was soaking, riding without the inners to my trousers because I’d not had time to put them on.
Long Way Down Page 20