Ethiopian Death March

Lalibela tour
Trek Day One
Trek Day Two

In the event of an unexpected landing, please move quickly to an emergency exit, keeping in mind that the nearest exit may be behind you.

This was the physiologic announcement broadcast by my brain to my gastrointestinal tract sometime between 9 p.m. and 3 a.m. Monday night. Apparently my body had enough of the ride and just wanted to get off. But more on that later.

We awoke warm and cozy at Agaw Berat, prepared but perhaps not excited for our 36 km hike all the way back to Lalibela. Zinabie expected it would take us about 8 hours and, after another delicious breakfast of eggs and bread with hot tea, we began our trip back across Abune Josef’s flanks. We were accompanied for a short time by one of the camp guards with his old M1 Garand rifle, but he split off shortly after we rejoined the trail from the day before. Given the distance we had to cover, I thought he might come along just to keep us moving toward the end of the day.

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As with our first time along these trails, we moved quickly once we were past the steepest terrain. We could see our camp from the first night and our feet pounded out the miles for the second time, up the ridges and across the plateaus. We traded out Fuzzy II at our lunch spot, where a good friend of Zinabie’s (and the most outgoing and talkative of our local guides) shouldered AP’s bigger backpack. He was staying overnight in Lalibela and had no place to leave his donkeys, so he was doing their work himself.

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Most of the walk back to the first camp was sprinkled with Zed’s stories about his friend. The first time he’d been to the big market in Addis, where his sister made him dress in city clothes and leave his stick behind and, when he got separated from her he was accosted by a couple of thieves. The first time he’d used a public toilet and, when someone knocked on the door to see if it was occupied, he went completely silent because he was afraid the thieves had followed him to the bathroom. To this day he contends that, had he been allowed by his sister to keep his stick, he would have come out of both encounters much better.

Watching Zed and his “best guy” (whose name I’m afraid I didn’t get) playfully chat and wrestle on the walk out was a great way to pass the time, but by the time we stopped for lunch our feet had gone numb. From Ad Medhane Alem we saw Lalibela again in the distance, 3000 feet below and 8 miles away, with 16 miles behind us already. AP and I both felt okay, but it was noon and the last third of the trip was going to be a long grind, without a doubt. We retraced our steps along the donkey highway.

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The rest of the march back was reminiscent of many long hikes back to the trailhead in the Cascades, if the trailheads were all at 8,000 feet and the Washington sun was twice as strong. We moved fast with few breaks, but the last miles seemed to stretch out like hot, dry taffy. Eventually we made it to the heavily beaten paths close to Lalibela, then the top of the city’s broad slope, then the cobbled streets that led to Tukul Village for the night.

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We bid Zinabie and his friend goodbye (they refused a tip – “it’s my job”), and checked into our room, where Anastasia slumped into a chair, dirty, sunburnt and at the edge of breaking down. The extent of her sunburn and dirtiness was clear when she got ready to shower – shoulders and hands were cooked, as were her ears. Despite wearing pants, the Ethiopian dust coated her in brown from the knees down. I’d faired a bit better since I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, but my neck had been toasted a bit, as had my scalp, since the hat I brought was a bit too small to be comfortable. We showered and rested, then enjoyed dinner and beer (and lots of water) before tucking in for the night.

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But now we’re back to that emergency broadcast from my brain. While Anastasia had lost the sunscreen battle, it turns out I had lost the heat stroke war. My body decided it did not have enough water to process any of the food that it had on board, so all of it had to go. By three a.m I was an empty vessel and slept fitfully until six, battling back nausea the entire time. Anastasia slept perhaps a touch better, but her sunburn (and my emergency landings) kept her awake, so when the light came into the sky we were both still pretty exhausted. We caught our shuttle to the airport, both hoping that I’d be able to keep it together enough to avoid puking on our fellow passengers.


The long journey home began with the flight to Addis, then 13 hours at Bole International. I was cautiously rehydrating the entire day, nibbling on five Gu Chomps from an old package in hopes of restoring some electrolyte balance along with the precious water. Anastasia was fighting nausea as well and we were both incredibly sore from our 50 mile high altitude trekking boot camp – walking from the domestic terminal to the international (about 500 feet) was rough and just leaving our chairs for a trip to the bathroom set us both shivering with the chills.


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It wasn’t until we finally boarded the flight to Amsterdam and I was able to sleep for an hour that I started to feel better. I woke and took a hot sandwich from the flight attendant, my stomach finally ready to do its job. Anastasia, from what I gather, was blissfully asleep in business class for the entire trip, recovering from our trip in her own way.

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So now we’re homeward bound on KLM 6033 to Seattle. It’s hard for me to believe that I’ve been gone for less than a week, but we packed so much in that I guess that feeling shouldn’t be a surprise. Despite paying the price for overextending ourselves a bit, it was an incredible trip and a real treat to get to join Anastasia for one of these trips, to get a small taste of the kind of experiences she has in her travels. And, really, I wouldn’t change much about it. After all, it’s always got to be an adventure. Some kind of adventure.