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.