Gondar

Before you think that I miraculously left Ethiopia and suddenly appeared in the world of Lord of the Rings, forget it; I am still in Ethiopia! A bigish city/town with an ancient monolithic church. Although, I’m yet to explore it.

So after my eager attempt to write something about Ethiopia the other night, I woke up at 4:30 not sure why but with little luck in returning to sleep. But the good news was that by 6:30 however, we were all ready packed, tyre changed and ready to go… well crowded by a flock of children made it fun, not naughty, or cheeky, just wanting to stare, it seems like they simple appear out of thin air.

615161546157

Our little ride into Gondar (about 20 minutes of slow riding from where we stayed the night) and soon finding a place to stay put us in the place where the 3 Belgians we met in Luxor (and again all the way down here). Apparently, they had similar problems at the border as us, but had to stay the night in customs waiting. I’m glad ours worked out fairly simply. Also in the same place are a couple of South Africans on bikes heading north, good to pick their brains about the roads ahead.

The day seemed to pass fairly fast doing lots of talking exchanging of details and stories and small bits of tinkering of our bikes inside the compound of our hostel/pension.

Yesterday, the other 4 we left behind in Khartoum, arrived, with a yellow contraption towing Kim’s bike. After a few chores on Daisy (my bike’s appointed name) as in cleaning, refueling and oil changing, we (the 8 Brits) and the Nevil (one of the South Africans) went for a meal.

… I’ll spare you the details, I’m currently curled up in the pension feeling sorry for myself, having not slept all night from being ~somewhat~ ill last night. The others, this morning they’ve headed north to see the Simen Mountains; they should be back in a couple of days after a nice hike up there, I was really looking forward to going, alas it wasn’t to be. Meanwhile here in Gondar I’ll have time (I hope) to have recovered. Frankly, I’ve never been so ill in all my life. Today, I’ll just fast and wait for this thing to pass.

6160616361666169