What do you think?
Rate this book
Ethiopia & Eritrea
- includes essential health and safety tips- the lowdown on where to stay, what to eat and where to go- special section on Ethiopias birdlife and 20 pages of eye-catching photographs- comprehensive language section covering Arabic Erthiopian Amharic, French and Tigrinya
400 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2003
4 people are currently reading
89 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 23, 2015
If Nakfa is not beautiful, what is beauty? Perched atop 1,780 metres above the sea level, this little
African village is rich in history and scenic beauty. Nakfa is the remotest village of Eritrea but at the
same time the most sought after place too for any casual tourist from Italy or China. This was the place
where the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front or the E.P.L.F. fought bravely for nearly 30 years before
getting liberation for Eritrea from the rule of the Ethiopian government. For this reason the currency of
Eritrea is also named 'Nakfa'. Nakfa is a nice place to go but it is not easy to reach there. Eritrea itself
is a difficult country to arrive. Lufthansa Airlines operates good flights to Asmara once in every blue
moon but they insist that you reach Germany first. The other option was from Dubai where you had the
official Eritrean carrier 'Red Sea Airlines' flying twice a week to Asmara direct. It was a small Russian
aircraft and the entrance was through the open back; you had to sit crammed along with 30 or 40 other
passengers. But it appears the 'Red' airlines has already stopped flying due to operational losses. Right
now the only way to reach Asmara is through Egypt, Yemen or Sudan.
Every tourist in Asmara wants to visit Nakfa as it is a well known historic spot and very exotic too.
But alas! There are no bus services and taxi drivers simply refuse to go there. You have to take a bus to
Keren town where a village van going to Afabet can be arranged on the next day. You have to
accommodate yourself with cattle and carry bags but you will reach Afabet within a few hours of
comfortless travel. Afabet is the place where you have to show your patience. Transport to Nakfa is
certainly available but you have to wait for one or two days. You want to sleep in a lodge? Yes there are
'lodges' here but they don't have rooms, roofs, water or electricity. You pay six nakfa (Rs.30/-) and you will
just be given a coat in the open courtyard. But the food is sumptuous. For ten Nakfa, you can have
'injira' and 'zigni' which is something like dosai and mutton curry in Indian terms.
The road from Afabet to Nakfa is winding like all the other roads in this country. But in this sector
it is so narrow and the village van is so bulging that you end up paying offering to all the temples back
home in India. When you finally reach atop the Nakfa ridge after some four hours and if your visit is
between November and March the place looks very nice with European weather, fogs and all. The people
here are all tribal Muslims and they live in small stone huts without plastering. But don't worry about
accommodation. One rich Nakfian working abroad in the Saudi Arabian royal palace has decorated his
village with a small six room 'star hotel' with good bedrooms, presentable bathrooms and a dish antenna
but not a restaurant. More important is the generator which is essential as this village has no electricity.
This mountain-lodge is called "Hotel Nakfa Apollo!". Even a telephone is available in the village but it
works on sunny days only as the power source is solar. You can't dial home directly either as it is a link
system and it takes quite some time to connect to Asmara. But the telephone booth looks 'crowded' all the
day as those who come in the morning wait the whole day to get connected. Once connected you can talk
aloud but there is no guarantee of your message reaching the other end as the signals are often very
weak.
Nakfa is beautiful because of the undulating nature of the Sahel mountain range in this area. You
don't see a single mountain but hundreds and hundreds of small hills rolling to all the four sides of your
observation point. Nakfa is one of the few villages in Africa where shifting cultivation and nomadic
herding is still in practice. The tribal population shifts from mountain to mountain in search of better
pastures. The milkmaid
African village is rich in history and scenic beauty. Nakfa is the remotest village of Eritrea but at the
same time the most sought after place too for any casual tourist from Italy or China. This was the place
where the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front or the E.P.L.F. fought bravely for nearly 30 years before
getting liberation for Eritrea from the rule of the Ethiopian government. For this reason the currency of
Eritrea is also named 'Nakfa'. Nakfa is a nice place to go but it is not easy to reach there. Eritrea itself
is a difficult country to arrive. Lufthansa Airlines operates good flights to Asmara once in every blue
moon but they insist that you reach Germany first. The other option was from Dubai where you had the
official Eritrean carrier 'Red Sea Airlines' flying twice a week to Asmara direct. It was a small Russian
aircraft and the entrance was through the open back; you had to sit crammed along with 30 or 40 other
passengers. But it appears the 'Red' airlines has already stopped flying due to operational losses. Right
now the only way to reach Asmara is through Egypt, Yemen or Sudan.
Every tourist in Asmara wants to visit Nakfa as it is a well known historic spot and very exotic too.
But alas! There are no bus services and taxi drivers simply refuse to go there. You have to take a bus to
Keren town where a village van going to Afabet can be arranged on the next day. You have to
accommodate yourself with cattle and carry bags but you will reach Afabet within a few hours of
comfortless travel. Afabet is the place where you have to show your patience. Transport to Nakfa is
certainly available but you have to wait for one or two days. You want to sleep in a lodge? Yes there are
'lodges' here but they don't have rooms, roofs, water or electricity. You pay six nakfa (Rs.30/-) and you will
just be given a coat in the open courtyard. But the food is sumptuous. For ten Nakfa, you can have
'injira' and 'zigni' which is something like dosai and mutton curry in Indian terms.
The road from Afabet to Nakfa is winding like all the other roads in this country. But in this sector
it is so narrow and the village van is so bulging that you end up paying offering to all the temples back
home in India. When you finally reach atop the Nakfa ridge after some four hours and if your visit is
between November and March the place looks very nice with European weather, fogs and all. The people
here are all tribal Muslims and they live in small stone huts without plastering. But don't worry about
accommodation. One rich Nakfian working abroad in the Saudi Arabian royal palace has decorated his
village with a small six room 'star hotel' with good bedrooms, presentable bathrooms and a dish antenna
but not a restaurant. More important is the generator which is essential as this village has no electricity.
This mountain-lodge is called "Hotel Nakfa Apollo!". Even a telephone is available in the village but it
works on sunny days only as the power source is solar. You can't dial home directly either as it is a link
system and it takes quite some time to connect to Asmara. But the telephone booth looks 'crowded' all the
day as those who come in the morning wait the whole day to get connected. Once connected you can talk
aloud but there is no guarantee of your message reaching the other end as the signals are often very
weak.
Nakfa is beautiful because of the undulating nature of the Sahel mountain range in this area. You
don't see a single mountain but hundreds and hundreds of small hills rolling to all the four sides of your
observation point. Nakfa is one of the few villages in Africa where shifting cultivation and nomadic
herding is still in practice. The tribal population shifts from mountain to mountain in search of better
pastures. The milkmaid
January 12, 2013
Useful, as ever, but the author is unreasonably positive about everything Ethiopian, making the qualitative information less reliable.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews