From Wadi Halfa

Before dawn I am riding again, between the imposing steel pillars of a shiny new bridge, over to the east bank. The road leaves the river and soon I am flanked by two vast expanses of mustard dust. I stop and sit on the pebbled verge off the road and eat some biscuits and watch a green lorry trundle past. It turns into the desert and dumps a boot-load of rubbish into the sand. Bottles and plastic bags and torn wrappers cartwheel across the dust, spinning and tumbling towards me in the breeze.

I ride into the wind, heat streaming from the blazing sun. I am hot and I see a cafeteria ahead and pull off the road. Beneath the shade of tarpaulins men smoke on bubbling shishas and I fill my bottles from cool stone urns with water the colour of milky tea, thick with Nile silt. Outside a generator whirs loudly and a battered green LandRover stands on flattened black tyres. I lie on a rope bed and my mum calls from home and wishes me a happy birthday. We talk for a long time, while all around men are washing their feet and beginning to pray. An old man edges his way into the shade, pressing his gold-leafed cane carefully into the sand with each step. His eyes twinkle like bright butterflies beneath his white turban and he comes over and shakes my hand. 'My dear, you are welcome in Sudan. Do you have something cold to drink? This is your bicycle. This is very good.' He tells me I must rest until the sun is lower and to be careful for hyenas: 'You will see their eyes in the dark from the road.'

The wind drops later in the day and I ride fast through the rocky desert plains. There are granite boulders strewn across the sand and mounds of purple scree sloping into the dust. I follow the road through the dusty hills and rejoin the palm-lined river. The sun begins to set, reducing the low western hills and the scruffy palms to dark silhouettes and painting the horizon, just above, deep yellow. I turn off the road and fetch water from the river and camp beside a crumbling wall.

From here the road follows the river, passing neat clusters of smooth-walled dwellings. I stop at a police check-point near midday and drink cool water and eat dates in the shade. Near sundown I reach Ferqa, a village on the river, and a young guy invites me to stay with his family. He gives me goat stew and begs me to take him to Ingliterra. A little later there is a great commotion and his mother rushes into the courtyard, flustered. Saleed tells me a man has been eaten by a crocodile. It has bitten off his leg. All the village has gone to the bank to help. He says the other men beat the crocodile away, but the hospital is far.

Next morning, while it is still dark I get lost in the deep banks of sand between the village and the road. I wander through the rocky dunes for almost an hour and only find the tar as day begins to break. I ride all day to make Wadi Halfa by night fall. The mounds of black rock that were scattered irregularly across the sand further south, dominate the landscape here. Stout mounds of burning black and purple boulders tumble towards the narrow plains of sand just off the road. They give shelter from the wind and I ride quickly northwards. Near town the rocky outcrops recede into dunes and the gravel returns to sand. I see the fringes of the lake ahead and the cluster of buildings on its bank, which look so grand after the emptiness behind. In the lokanda I sleep on a rope bed in a full courtyard. Men in jalibiyas lie everywhere, scattered like discarded clothes, and spit and snore and smoke through the hot night.

In town the next day I pass the occasional weathered white face on the dusty streets. I see Nico, whose thick auburn beard is longer then when we last met in Addis Ababa. He is backpacking north and we have met in Botswana, Zambia, Ethiopia, and now here. There is a French couple, dirtier than me, who have walked here from South Africa. And Eduardo, an Argentine with a thick grey moustache, in an all-in-one Addis tracksuit. He speaks no English and tells stories with animated expressions like a silent cartoon, screwing his face up and drawing streams of tears from his eyes, with his fingers, to show sadness, and bending over, clasping both fists, and letting out energetic whooshes, to mime bicycling.

He tells how he rode a scooter from Morocco, aiming for the World Cup in South Africa. By the time it was over he had only reached Nigeria, so he decided he would see the pyramids instead. He crossed the Central African Republic into Sudan and now he is here waiting for the boat. In Central African Republic he got stuck in the mud in the jungle. He was found by monkey hunters on bicycles. They helped him out and he lived with them for three days, eating monkeys, until they reached the border.

We sit around in the shade eating beans and falafel, waiting for the boat, which leaves for Egypt tomorrow.

From Dongola

I ride alongside the wall of a heavily guarded compound, encircling the towering mirrored fortresses of the security services headquarters. I cross the Nile, where a lone rowing boat drifts between metal pylons that rise from the murky water. Into Omdurman, around the crowded alleys of the souk, and further north, through scruffier streets, past lower dwellings, tattered flags and donkeys with bleeding backs. I have ridden fifty kilometres since leaving the cool sanctuary of John's flat, and still I am in Khartoum. Abruptly the city ends and the desert begins.

A straight band of smooth black tarmac severs the coarse brown sand in two. There is a low escarpment of pale sandstone far to the east and small mud-brick cubes stand isolated and crumbling on the silent horizon. The boat to Egypt leaves Wadi Halfa in a week and I must ride 950 km across the desert to make it.

Patches of thin grey cloud hang high above the sand, filtering the sun's strong rays into a grainy haze. On the roadside the sand is thick with dark pebbles and further off the grains merge into an indistinct plain of dull orange. Scrawny plants, the colour of parched lime flesh, cling to the barren earth and for long stretches worn acacias are the only forms on the endless flats. There are villages far from the road; clusters of twenty square blocks, camels and a beaten-up buggy and billowing white jalibiyas flowing from coal-black faces. I stop at a cafeteria and eat a bowl of beans amongst the flies and the praying truck drivers, and fill up with water from thick stone urns, shaded by a straw orning. Close to sundown I pull off the road and pitch my tent beside a derelict mud wall, to shelter from the wind.

I wake at three and ride through the dark. Twin lamps bob up and down, miles ahead, peering out across the sand, and the silence is broken as the truck passes, and then it is quiet and black. Gradually the fine contours of the sands become discernible and colour separates the desert from the sky. The horizon is pale pink and the sands moon-grey in the morning twilight. Soon the sun burns yellow, growing visible in fragments at a time, as wisps of morning cloud melt before it, slowly revealing a full circle. I am amongst high dunes of caramel sands, speckled with molten black rocks, rough amidst the shimmering smooth mounds of sand. The sparse patches of green have ended and beyond the frail telephone lines to the west there is mile upon mile of golden wilderness. Far ahead I see a faint outline of a rectangle, thickening into form as I approach. I wheel the bike through the deep sand and an old man gives me a glass of tea. His sons are sprawled out on straw mats, all in white jalibiyas. I wonder where the women are, and what they are doing.

Back on the road the air is hot and the wind floods towards me, gripping the thick tyres, and slowing me to a crawl. A constant gust rushes in my ears and I am already tiring. The sun is higher, the sand the same; pock-marked where the wind has whisked it up and set it, swirling, down. For sixty kilometres I see nothing and then over the brow of a broad dune, the crescent-tipped spire of a tall minaret, gleaming white, comes into view. I press hard on the pedals against the wind, and turn into a truck stop on the edge of the little village, where I spend the night.

Men talk till late into the night, and groaning trucks pull into the dust, and a butcher hammers his cleaver through legs of meat, thudding loudly on the wooden counter. My body is tired, but I cannot sleep, and a thick pool of sweat coats my dusty mat. I pack up and ride for hours through the cool darkness. The sun rises and the wind is relentless. Plains of bare sand stretch out to meet high dunes to east and west. And the road blazes flat and straight across it all. Far ahead I can see a line of green and as I get closer I see mosques and a petrol station and low, mud-walled homes. I cannot see the water, but I can trace the Nile by the long line of tall palms that rise from its banks. The villages are continuous here, low and sprawling, covering the sand between the river and the road. I ride all day and sleep in the courtyard of a restaurant in a riverside village.

It is a hundred kilometres to Dongola, the only town between Khartoum and the lake. The road archs back and forth between the desert and the river, and torrents of dry air flow heavily towards me, pinning me back, as if I were dragging an anchor. I turn into town after lunch and ride through empty streets. Metal shutters hide shop facades and the souk is desolate. It is Friday and everyone is praying. I sit for an hour beneath a tree and watch the streets gradually awaken; cars and bicycles slowly return to the roads, and shop doors are unlocked. I am given a rope bed in the courtyard of a guesthouse and sleep just as night begins to fall.

From Khartoum

The sky is dusky; day bleaching the darkness grey; the stars fading out. I tiptoe past the snoring policemen, splayed out on rope beds, and stop outside the hut. I let my eyes adjust and slowly trace the forms of the rocky outcrops across the road. The camels are sitting patiently where they were placed the night before and the cluster of huts behind is silent. It is cool and the wind not yet up and all I hear is the chain whirring gently as I ride. I pass a village and hear barking growing louder from amongst the huts. Three black dogs tear towards the bike and I shout and slash the air with waving arms, and they are close now, snapping and drooling. I kick out and hit one in the jaw and they sink back as I pedal wildly on.

There are two boys ahead tending to a herd of goats. One is tall with broad shoulders, wearing a jalibiya and skull cap. As I pass he turns from his animals and runs at me with a thick stick raised. He swings once, his eyes maddened, shouting frantically in Arabic. I swerve and fall, catching the bike, and he swings again, bringing the stick close above my ducking head. A younger boy behind is looking at the floor and I hear the clamour of older men rushing from a hut. The boy stands looking over me, eyes blazing, the stick raised, clasped with both hands, ready to swing again. I stumble backwards and get to my feet and yell at him. He stares, furious, and begins to shout and neither of us moves. The elders are all around us now and usher him back and I swear and shout and they look pleadingly and gesture food and apologies. I am shaking as I ride on.

Isolated villages give way to a sprawling line of low-brick houses, and the fields recede into the dust, as I head west. The houses are all the same; a low rise wall of sandy stone surrounding a single-storey square building within. There are no schools, or shops, or cafes, that I can see, just the monotonous trail of sand buildings, a few people milling about. An old man flags me down and ushers me into his courtyard. He brings a little table and bread and yoghurt and tomatoes and a glass of tea. He speaks no English and sits and grins as I eat. He leaves for a minute and comes back with a clean white t-shirt and gestures that mine is no good. I look down; it is torn and coated in dust and grease. He smiles when I have changed and waves me on gladly.

I am heading for Wad Medani, a town on the banks of the Nile, and just past midday I see the river I will follow to Cairo, for the first time since the Gorge in Ethiopia. It is wider now, lazy and brown near the banks, and rushing at the centre, where bubbles foam on the crests of the currents. I cross a broad, metallic framed bridge, beneath the stares of stern policemen, and turn off into town.

It is 190km to Khartoum and I wake early to try to reach the city before dark. Before long the sun is burning and a gale is blowing into my side. Grains of dirt and scraps of paper and swirling plastic bags sweep across the road and all I hear is the rushing breeze and the continual growing and fading roar of passing trucks. The tar is narrow and each time a lorry passes I am sucked into the road and I must swerve awkwardly back towards the wind. The houses are low and grim, the walls smoothed by dust filled winds, no one about. A group of boys saunter on the verge, and as I pass, they throw handfuls of pebbles into my face. I am tired and it is hot and when I feel the stones thud on my check and temple I am angry. I brake, letting the bike clatter to the floor, and run like a madman after them: across the dust, through a gate, into a courtyard, and then a house. I knock over a man praying on a mat in the first room and grad hold of a boy in the backyard. He looks helpless and ashamed and I feel the same. Sweat is pouring from my temples and I let him go. An older man comes out and screams at the boys and gives me water and holds my shoulders, saying sorry.

The wind is making me slow and the stream of traffic is continuous now. I am still far from Khartoum, riding through a wasteland. Strips of barbed fencing hang from metal poles, jutting from the dust, in front of endless plains of smoke and rubbish. There are small groups of children kicking bottles between pyres of burning plastic and goats grazing on rotting food from battered cans. It looks like the end of the world here. Every time the wind picks up waves of plastic bags sail towards the road: greens and blues and bright reds and blacks tumbling helter-skelter across the path of the deep red sun. They snag on the barbs or flutter to linger beneath the engines of choking lorries. Gradually the buildings thicken and the sun disappears behind the high wires that link the towering pylons to the west. Ahead, there are modern factories basking in the glare of their fluorescent lights, dropped like new toys in the sprawling dust-fields. I pedal hard and the road widens and I am in the suburbs of Khartoum as night falls.

It is enormous. I ride for mile after mile in the dark, down a four-laned industrial boulevard, past thousands of cloned square blocks, four or five stories high. Many are half built and it feels like the city has emerged overnight. There are no signs and I don’t know where to go. I am weary and stop outside a shop for food. A thickly set white man pulls up in a four-by-four and asks what I am up to. We talk, as he thumbs the tyres and looks disapprovingly at the chain and feels the brake levers, and he invites me to stay. Within an hour I have had a warm shower and have a glass of vodka in my hand, sitting in front of a big plate of pasta, with John and his girlfriend.

From Habrisa

From Gondar I ride west towards Sudan, across the fringes of the Abyssinian highlands. Green hills swell gently before me, and drop into wide valley basins, and the road is quiet. I ride through Aygll, a rickety strip of bars and stores, straddling the tar, and a few miles on, the hills sharpen into mountains. Rolling mounds sheer into skeletal crags, and deep forested canyons sever the solid highland frame into a precipitous range of angular ridges. It is down from here, and I rattle round and round the spiraling road, like a child on a bumpy slide. On my right there is a steep embankment of bare orange rock, crumbling in parts, and overlain by gentler grass slopes. On the left is the canyon. The long shoulder of the ridge is creased like crumpled paper and carpeted in green scrub that tumbles between the folds towards the gorge floor. Thin waterfalls run from the mountain side like veins of liquid silver.

Ahead, shepherd boys amble in the road, their whips lying slack in their hands. As I pass they smack the rope on the asphalt, sending a crack rebounding like a gunshot across the gorges. I near Shehdi, and stop to stare back at the far-off mountains behind, then pedal lightly on through flatland bush. It is my last night in Ethiopia and I watch an old lady stooped over a black stone oven, baking injera, and I eat one last plate of tibs.

From Shehdi I ride 200km, across the border, to Gedaref. The land is flat and green and empty. Endless fields of sorghum and sesame span out to where I can see no further, broken only by a train of high pylons, running imposingly alongside the road. I am stopped again and again at police checkpoints, and khaki gunships, manned by waving soldiers, whose faces are covered by white scarves, speed past me. Every hour or so I pass a neat village of a hundred symmetrical huts, all with straw domed roofs, enclosed in square wooden pens. Large groups of women in bright tobes are washing clothes in streams and stand and stare as I pass.

It begins to cool and soon I am racing the falling sun; Gedaref is still forty kilometers away and the sun is already glowing as it drops; its fringes sharpening into a defined orb, its light deepening from indefinite glare, to heavy yellow, and then to orange. I pass the checkpoint on the outskirts of town just as the red tip of the circle descends behind the fields, and head towards the centre.

Low walled courtyards line the street, and in front, on long mats, men in white jalabiyas sit crossed legged in front of metal trays of food. A man shouts at me as I pass and beckons for me to join. It is Ramadan, and the men are sitting out to break the fast together. I take off my shoes and am handed a mug of juice and then bowls of dates, chick-peas, flatbreads, goat, and yoghurt with cucumber. We eat quickly and then they get up to pray. Four lines of white robes at dusk, standing, and bowing, and kneeling, hands outstretched. I watch and when it is done we drink black coffee from tiny china cups and smoke cigarettes. I ride on towards the souk, towards the glare of all the fluorescent lights. Everyone is out taking the air, and I sit on the curb with a cup of juice and smoke, and watch, while old men stop to shake my hand and smile and bow and walk on by.

The land dries as I head west; the grass starching, and dusty patches spreading by the roadside. I pull into a truck stop in the midday sun and lean my bike against a pile of dusty tires. A vaporous haze blurs the air above barrels standing before the clutter of plastic chairs. Legs of raw meat hang above a wooden counter and flies swarm from the meat to my face. Scrawny cats pick at bones on the floor and two young girls in billowing tobes ride past on a weary donkey.
Back on the road I am heading towards three far off mounds of rock, distant pimples on a featureless landscape. It is hot and I am low on water and the outcrops ahead are not growing yet. Dragonflies hover in the air all around and acacias stand low in the scrubland off the road. I am in a daze now, thinking of water, and where the next village might be. A van passes, honking, and pulls over. I stop and see it is a French ambulance. A Breton couple get out and give me two bottles of water, and oranges, and make me tea while we talk about journeys.

Between the hills I reach a village and turn off the road as the sun is dropping behind the boulders. A man in a smart blue uniform ushers me to the police post and I pitch my tent behind the little blue building. I watch as he puts the camels, which they use for patrols, to bed, sitting each one down in the dust and tying their front legs together. As the sky darkens we sit on a straw mat and break the fast, sharing a big bowl of millet with spicy red sauce. I wake to the tent flapping violently in the wind and one of the men shouting: 'Mr Robin, Mr Robin. Storm is coming. Come inside Mr Robin.' Soon I am lying on the floor between their rope beds, and fall asleep to a grainy Arabic radio crackling above the wind.

From Gondar

There is a mosque on the outskirts of Dejen; two circular pillars stand tall either side of a cream dome, tipped with a turquoise crescent. I ride slowly past, and the rest of the little highway town is already familiar. I pass the buzzing engines of sky blue minibuses, pausing, two wheels lying on a muddy verge, and a crowd of children tapping on the windows, offering up baskets of oranges, chewing gum, kola nuts. A child sees me approach and at once they are all around, my eyes directed to the little baskets by gentle nudges from every angle. Soon the shoeshine boys will join, and then the guys with bikes will ride along beside.

The strip of wooden shacks; shadowy bars and bakeries and tiny general stores, is broken by muddy alleys branching from the tar, weaving between smoke-filled corrugated shelters that recede into the cluttered half-light behind the road. I pedal past long lines of men returning from the fields, wrapped in blankets, tapping their donkeys along with sticks, and women shooing away landing crows from hides of cattle, laid out to dry on the dirt. Men wash in a ditch parallel to the road, and just behind, groups of boys huddle around a cardboard square, playing a game with bottle caps. Ahead I see a row of numbered doors, behind an open metal gate, in one of which I will spend the night.

Over the next two days I ride 190 km to Burie. I notice little beyond the cloud, the rain, the endless dull moors. Streaming currents of silt-filled water have carved deep red groves across the fields, and young shepherds, huddled in drenched blankets, stare bleakly as I spin pass.

It has rained for five days and at last the cloud's hold on the landscape is broken. I climb from Burie, the sun already streaming yellow light through the morning haze. The road undulates gently across soft hills, fields of barley, maize, and teff, pouring out across the little valleys in squares of green and brown. Loaded donkeys trot along the roadside and occasionally I pass men on taller white mules, sitting on brightly embroided saddles, an umbrella in one hand, the reins in the other. I stop for lunch, leaning on an abandoned wooden wheel and eat bread and smoke a cigarette. Out of the corner of my eye I see children crawling on hands and knees through tall maize stalks in front. They jump from the field sheepishly and stand and stare. I ride on through the flats, the rivers becoming more regular as I near Lake Tana. There are tanks lying in the grasses; decrepit metal shells, sitting sadly where they were halted years ago. The road begins to descend and I can see beads of light twinkling on the flat lake ahead, and the steel skeletons of future-apartment-blocks, marking the edge of Bahir Dar.

I pass through town to the shore and sit beside the water. Small flocks of heron float beside a lone buoy and men washing from the rocks send crescents of expanding ripples across the flat surface. There are two upturned boats at the end of a collapsing jetty, and further off, I can see clumps of green; the southernmost of Lake Tana's island monasteries.

I take a boat to the islands, passing fisherman casting their nets from low-lying papyrus canoes. Reeds rise from the shallows to the forested island banks, and I follow a muddy path through the trees, past a woman weaving cotton on a wooden spinner and a baboon tied to a string patrolling a little hut, to a circular church in a clearing. A circuit of high limestone arches runs around the edge of the building and four sets of tall wooden doors give entry to the inner chapel. A young monk leads me in and opens each of the doors and light slowly penetrates the brightly painted interior. A raging emerald devil sits amidst spikes of fire, serpents flowing from his lap, and the heads of the damned clasped to his chest. Above, two saints, with perfectly spherical heads, stand in orange and green robes, spearing the blooded head of a whale beneath.
In an outbuilding he shows me golden crowns; gifts from kings centuries ago, and the thick pages of ancient amharic bibles, bound in tattered gold-leafed leather. Monks sit in alcoves reading aloud and beyond the trees I can hear water lapping at the bank. The young monk tells me he has not left the island in three years. Many of the elders have spent whole lives here.

Back on the bike I ride north, the lake slipping in and out of view, between gentle hills to the west. The road is elevated from the surrounding plains, and a film of brown water covers the land as far as I can see. Trees stand half-submerged and huts are scattered across the flood like smoking match heads. I hear screams from the water and a crowd of naked boys storms across the road, waving their arms and hurling stones and jumping in front of the bike. Ahead, a thickening range of hills come into view and loom larger as I approach Addis Zemen, where I spend the night.

I set out for Gondar while the sun is still hidden behind the mountains to the east. Near the summit of the first climb a lone tooth of sheer rock stands bare above the green ridges below. I stop and watch the sky turn sulphurous as the upper rays of the morning sun rise above the heads of the black mountains behind, burnishing the silken clouds orange, like dull embers given life by a sudden gust of air. As I descend, the valley, flooded with light, glows green, and a light breeze sends me whirling through the flats. By noon the sandy turrets of Gondar's castle come into view and I am climbing past the fort's thick walls, into the old city.

From Dejen

I am back in Addis Ababa now, yo-yoing between the high-walled compounds of embassies in search of a visa for Sudan. At the Sudanese Embassy I am greeted by the head of security, wearing tight leather trousers and crocodile-leather shoes. He ushers me past a crowd of patient Muslim women and I am told I must first have an Egyptian visa and a letter from the British Embassy. At the Egyptian Embassy a pretty Ethiopian girl laughs at my photo and tells me to come back in four days. Back to the Egyptian four days later, onto the British, back to the Sudanese; it is closed on Tuesdays, to the Sudanese on Wednesday, and finally, back once more, to collect my freshly stamped passport.

I fill the hours and days between, wandering the city’s museums and markets and shanties. On Sunday the thick cloud that has overlain the city skyline since I’ve been here, recedes, leaving a deep blue sky, and I walk out past Siddist Kilo towards the fringes of the city. Goats nibble at piles of junk amongst the corrugated shacks and kids whizz past on shiny new bikes. On the corners old men sit on plastic stools drinking tea and the blind tap their way gingerly along the street, handed from helping-passer-by to helping-passer-by like a baton in a slow race. A long line of shaded stalls, selling flashing Chinese gadgets and brightly sequined dresses, runs along the main street, and on the curb a man sits naked with his head in his hands, his feet dangling in the gutter.

In the afternoon I chew chat with two young barbers, who work across the street from where I stay, and the bitter leaves make me drowsy. We play cards and drink glasses of black coffee in the shady backroom of a Piazza bar. That evening I have drinks with Florian, a German doctor who is here for a few months. His room has a balcony overlooking the hotel terrace, and from my table, I watch him lower a rucksack, dangling from shoelaces, to a ready waiter, who places a cold bottle of beer in the bag, before it is hoisted back up. I join him and soon the rucksack is ferrying two bottles upwards.

He sits very upright, and nods a lot, and his hands adjust his tortoiseshell, pebble spectacles as he talks. The sleeves of his ironed shirt are folded at right angles, just above the elbow, and the shirt tails are tucked neatly into thick mustard corduroys. He tells me about the hospital, how many patients are wealthy Somalis, who have traveled from Mogadishu to have surgery on gunshot and car-bomb wounds. Every now and then the conversation halts as a pigeon lands on the ledge in front and Florian stops mid-sentence to hurl a peanut at the bird and mutters about missing his rifle.

We go to supper at a friend of his, Awguchew’s, whose wife gives us big bowls of pasta and glasses of honey wine, filled to the brim, and sits in silence, smiling, while we talk. Awguchew asks about my journey and as I describe the route he recalls hotels along the way: ‘Awassa, hmmm, I been there. Yes. Big hotel there: very modern, very expensive. Visa: they have... Yes, and Nairobi. I stay Hilton. You Know? Very big room, with big bed. Mini-bar: there is...’ He nods approvingly at the recollection and looks disappointed when I say I stayed elsewhere. After each sip of wine he jumps up to refill our already-full glasses and when his young son comes shyly in from playing he plucks him from the floor and gives him a huge hug.

He tells about his work for an HIV charity, about the need to distribute condoms, about truck-drivers with girlfriends in every town: ‘in ten town between here and Djibouti, every stop, different girl. No protection. Very bad.’ He says people are trying and things will improve: ‘Look Uganda. Infection: falling. Because good government. But government can be very problem too.’ He says how at a meeting with African ministers, an official from Mozambique had suggested that America introduced the virus to control the African population. ‘This is rubbish. And I say “why, to them, why we look from where the virus come?” And then I ask to them: “if a lion were to walk into the midst of our group now, what would we do? Would we stand here, still, and ask to one another, “from which direction did the lion come?” or would we kill the lion, and ask after, from which direction did it come?” They say, of course, first we must kill the lion, then ask from where it came. I say to them, it is the same with the virus. First we must end it and then we may ask from where it came.’

‘How can we expect the normal peoples to prevent illness, when the leaders, they are not trying? This is the problem. The politicians they come to discuss and spend their times in Sheraton Hotel, drinking whiskies and wines.’ He looks grave and his eyes wander to my glass and he bounces with bottle in hand to refill and starts to tell how some years ago it was heard that Colonel Gaddafi came to Addis and hired out the whole third floor of the Sheraton. He paid for exclusive use of the swimming pool and had a slide erected from his window to the water…

It is my last night in Addis Ababa and time to leave. Early next morning I ride north and the sprawl of rusted corrugated roofs and half built concrete blocks gradually recede as I climb into the forested slopes of the Entoto Hills. Rain starts to pour and I am cold as I reach the top and stare out at the band of asphalt before me, thinning, and finally disappearing between plains of grey moorland ahead. Gusts of wind sweep across the high plateau, driving pellets of cold water into my face. I ride on and find a motel at Fiche, where I spend the night.

I have ridden only five kilometres and my body is aching. The hills are gentle but my knees sting every time my foot presses on the pedal. Pain shoots from my shoulder and I stare grimly at sheets of rain merging thick clouds with the featureless ploughland all around. I stop again and again, edging slowly northwards. After eighty kilometers I reach Goha Tsion, find a bed, and go to sleep, wondering if I’ll make it up the hill I know I must climb in the morning.

A few minutes out of town the road dips and a thousand metres below the Blue Nile snakes its way through a deep canyon. The ravine walls are sheer and patches of cloud are strewn across the great valley like shreds of torn cloth. Terraces have been carved into the slopes and they descend in a shrinking green staircase to the distant thread of water below. For almost an hour I freewheel round and round the falling canyon wall, the river growing wider, and my forearms stiffer as I clamp the brakes shut. I pass waterfalls and little straw huts, camouflaged in the trees, and startled children fleeing from the road. Soon I am crossing a mighty current of rushing water and now I am climbing, the road spiraling up and around, and I slowly with it, the river shrinking and my legs tiring. For twenty-one kilometers I crawl upwards, and after nearly three hours, I reach Dejen.

From Mekele

It is half past two in the morning and beneath the glare of airport night I wait for Ed and Duncan to walk through the shiny gates in front of me. I have two weeks travelling in Northern Ethiopia, two weeks off the bicycle, two weeks with my brother and an old friend. They arrive and soon we are on a plane to Gonder, a bus to Debark, and at the foot of the Simien Mountains. 　

We will be in the mountains for five days and we traipse through the muddy streets of Debark, between dim wooden shops, in search of rice and oats and kerosene. We set off early the following morning and soon the ramshackle, mud-coated village paths give way to a wide green valley, dotted with patches of thick forest. Beyond broad ledges have been carved across the faces of the shallow hillsides and clusters of straw-domed huts are scattered across the verdant slopes. The sky is clear and speckles of highland sunshine flicker like floating sapphires in the thin streams that twist through the soft grasses ahead. We pass young shepherds leading sheep to graze and old women wrapped in white shawls on the way to market in Debark. 　

As we climb from the valley the air cools and beads of grey moisture begin to hang lower in the air, gradually thickening, until the hillside is shrouded in a bleak cloak of dense fog. Branches from nearby trees protrude indistinctly out of the whiteness, seemingly floating in the mist. We reach a plateau and the surroundings sharpen as the cloud thins to a veil. Ahead, shrieks and howls pierce the mountain quiet. We are in the midst of a troop of Gelada Baboons. They dash between the low junipers, huge clumps of sandy fur, charging and snarling and abruptly stopping to dig. We have been walking for seven hours now and rain starts to fall. We pull our hoods tightly around our faces and trudge up the slippery path, reaching Sankaber, the first camp at three. As night falls we huddle around the low flames, which rise from the burning eucalyptus, and shelter from the sheets of icy rain driving through the open-sided hut.

We awake to a clear blue sky and I look out at a vast body of tall green ridges, splintering the land into a richly forested skeleton of deep gulleys and gorges. In every direction angular veins of precipitous rock stretch out into the distance and a few feet away grassed slopes roll for hundreds of metres towards the valley bed. As we walk along the long spine of the ravine edge, the drop sharpens, and after an hour we reach the Gich Abyss. Here, a hollow shaft descends for five hundred metres, walled on three sides by bare rock, streaked grey and pale ochre. A torrent of water gushes past tufts of euphorbia over the cliff ahead and monstrous black-winged Lammergeier glide above the rocks in search of bones.

The mist begins to descend as we walk the final ten kilometers to camp, and as we build a fire in the little wooden shelter, drops of heavy rain pound the thin corrugated roof overhead. We buy a chicken from a nearby village and I watch a young boy cut off its head in three strokes. Blood dribbles from the bird’s open neck, splattering red drops on the pale rock at our feet. The boy grins as the chicken’s wings beat frantically in his hands, and then it is still.

From Gich we walk to Chennek, across a crumpled landscape of vast gorges and ridges that fan out towards the horizon like waves on a giant, forested sea. Cries of baboons carry from distant crags and children, sheltering in torn sacks to keep the rain from their heads, rush from their sheep to stare. It is a long, cold walk back to Debark, through dense fog and driving rain, and our tired feet our glad to meet the muddy paths of the little town.

From Debark we make our way north to Aksum, and it is from here that we visit the rock-hewn churches of Tigrai. A dusty road winds through slopes of barren sandstone, past stout craggy outcrops, dotted with dark juniper bushes, and ancient stone huts that look to be falling back into the rocky scrub. At the end of the road the monastery of Debre Damos lies on an island of rock, raised seventy feet above the surrounding plains. At the foot of the mound I stare up at a monk lowering a thick rope from a low wooden portal at the top of the plateau. I begin to climb, my hands and feet meeting smooth groves, worn into the sheer face by hundreds of years of monks’ ascents. At the top there is a rectangular chapel made of small sandstone boulders, layered with thick beams of dark wood. Inside the dark room the walls are covered with paintings of cartoon saints slaying dragons, in bright reds and yellows and greens. Dusty carpets lie over the stone floor, and the pages of an ancient bible, laid out on a wooden shelf, glow beneath the flickering light of a dying candle.

Later, in the midst of the Gheralta wilderness, we follow shabby priests up slender paths, past boulders and candelabras and crumbling cliffs, through small wooden doors, into domes and prayer-cells and ancient tombs, all encrusted in great mounds of rock. At Abreha we Atabeha, the cave is full of men and women, shrouded in long white cloth, covering their heads and flowing to the knees. Men sit on wooden benches along the stone walls, clasping staffs, with heads bowed. From a hidden enclave at the back of the cave, a priest begins to chant, and like awakened mummies, the crowd of worshippers rises and begins to hum. The chanting grows louder and some start to sway and the men tap their staffs on the rock floor. The cave is dark and I stand in the shadows in silence, like an intruder at an ancient burial.

When we arrive at the foot of the climb to Abuna Yemata Guh, I look up at two columns of heavily weathered rock, slipping in and out of view, amidst billowing clouds of mist. Bare trees cling frailly to shallow ledges near the outcrop’s base, and piles of fallen boulders clutter the cliff foot. I follow the white-robed priest up a shear rock face for twenty feet, mimicking, in slow-motion, his nimble ascent. We tread across a ledge and clamber up a steep path before the next flat wall of rock appears. There are no ropes and I haul myself clumsily upwards, clinging to the shallow groves in the stone mass before me. We reach a sheltered inlet between the two columns and I stare at a human skull and shattered bones lying in a small cave. To reach the church we cross a final narrow ledge and between shifting veils of mist I can see tattered stone huts, scattered like pebbles, five hundred feet below. The priest unlocks the low wooden door and raises the flame of a candle above his head, to show the faded cream and ochre faces of saints and angels smiling down from the rough cave roof.