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.