How to get there:
The town of Robe is located nearby. This town is served
by Goba airport (airport code GOB), it is about a one
hour flight from Addis Ababa.
From Robe, drive south. The road starts out paved, but soon becomes
a pretty rough dirt road.
There is a gate when entering the natioal park, one should
have the correct paperwork available.
Continue along the road as it climbs
to the plateau, then again more south to location N6.80287, E39.83282,
where a summit road forks right.
You have seen the mountain for
several minutes before getting to this important waypoint.
The summit road is fairly
short and serves the obvious high point.
Route:
See above.
There is a summit marker near the highest point.
Comments:
This was supposed to be the first peak on a trip to Ethiopia.
I had planned this trip pretty carefully, but many peaks had extremely little
information, so the trip would be a true exploration trip. Visa valid for
30 days was easily obtained on the official web site, steep price of USD 60, but
otherwise no issues. My plan was to leave Bergen on February 12., however a nice
visit with my son Tor, his wife Cecilie and our grandchild Idun, put me in Oslo the
weekend before and I decided it would be much better to remain in Oslo, then leave on
Monday, February 11.
I had an upgrade to business and a nice
dinner followed by a few hours of good sleep before landing in Addis Ababa. I knew
I had a short connect in Addis, exactly one hour to clear immigration, then clear customs,
recheck the bag and get across to the domestic terminal which now is in a separate building.
Thus, I got off the plane first, only to find that we had a bus gate. The bus got us to
the terminal and I hurried to immigration, almost no queue, so this looked good.
"Sir, your visa is only valid starting tomorrow", What?? Of course, I had entered my
intended travel day, totally forgotten this detail. I was directed to a new window,
Visa on arrival, I had to buy myself a completely new Visa for another USD 60. Lesson learned:
Whenever applying for a visa that is valid longer than your intended stay, enter arrival day
2-3 days before your planned arrival.
I hurried to the baggage conveyor and spotted my bag, took it through customs and found my
way to "domestic recheck", this counter was nowhere close to the customs area.
A woman received my bag there, a quick look at my watch showed that I still had about
35 minutes to departure. What remained was to run back to get out on the sidewalk. They have
organized this in such a way that you must run away from the domestic terminal before you
are allowed to exit. A final dash, several hundred meter, got me to the domestic terminal.
Boarding had not started, yet another bus would take us to the small airplane serving Goba.
We left on time at 0755.
Arrival from Addis Ababa at 0900, on time. My big bag did not make it.
They assured me it would come on the next flight in 6 hours.
I located Ayu and the Landcruiser. We set off to Tullu Dimtu.
We picked up a guide, unclear what his role was. There was a gate
at the park entrance, perhaps the guide was needed in order to pass
here?
Drive from the airport, first on paved road, but then quickly a rough dirt road.
Arrival on top<
after a little more than one hour.
Nice weather, a light breeze. There is a small
fenced in communication area on
the summit. I walked around it. Nothing much higher inside the fence.
We left after about 15 minutes and drove back to town for lunch.
The bag did not arrive as promised. The next chance was tomorrow at 0900.
This would delay us as the plan called for about 200 kilometer of driving after
a morning ascent of Tullu Dimtu.
The next morning, the bag finally showed up and we started driving towards Amaro.
