Travel information on Security & Safety for visitors in Ethiopia

Category Archives: guesthouses

Lalibela & Gondar get the green light  in UK Travel Advice

UK travel advise for Ethiopia

UK travel advise for Ethiopia

The UK government have changed the travel advise for Ethiopia’s key tourist sites – Lalibela and Gondar – home to stunning rock hewn churches, and romantic castles. The UK had been advising against travel to these places and to the roads that connect them but this negative advise has now been lifted. 

Along with Bahir Dar and Lake Tana this now means much of the northern historical circuit is in the UK’s ‘green zone’.

Giyorgis church in Lalibela

What does this mean for you? If you are travelling in these areas, your normal travel insurance will cover you. 

We have been arguing for months that the Travel Advice should be relaxed. As I mentioned in previous posts I have visited Lalibela 3 times since January and  felt completely safe and welcome each time. I also visited Gondar once (going on to the Simien Mountains) and also felt safe throughout my visit. This change in travel advice reinforces this view.

We are also really happy that this change means that the community tourism guesthouses in Meket and along the roads that approach Lalibela from the south are now also out of the red. We look forward to more trekkers enjoying this marvelous scenery as hosts of the local farmers.

Leave a comment

The Tesfa Calendar is ready!

 

The new and unique Tesfa Calendar –

runs from Sep 2020 – Aug 2021 (ie Ethiopian Year 2013) is now in its 14th year and is ready!

This calendar is unique in that it details the Ethiopia dates, holidays, saints days, fasts, Islamic holidays and more on to a western calendar month format. This goes along side stunning photos that will make you want to get out of Addis, or fly over from where ever you have the calendar and see this beautiful country. The photos are taken from the Tesfa Community treks across the north of the country (the Agenda has photos from other additional places too).

 The Tesfa Agenda – 1 week to a page

The calendar comes in 3 versions:

Traditional hanging calendar (29.5cm across and 51cm opened hanging down) – 12 months with 13 photos. Donation 250birr.
You can buying this levitra properien download the coupon after submitting the online registration form. We should fight with the monster viagra online free of sexual disorders which are interrupting your sex life. Another symptom is purchase levitra online amerikabulteni.com the need to empty the bladder often during the day. They do not need to disclose viagra 100mg pfizer the problem of ED in men.
Desktop version to fit on your desk (approx 20cm x 17cm) – same

The Hanging Calendar

pages – with photos facing back and dates forward. We ask 150 birr donation for these calendars.

The Agenda (approx 21cm x 15cm) in portrait format, has 1 week to a page and so 53 pages (52.14 weeks a year) – running from Monday to Sunday on one side on easy to write on paper, additional information on the day and with a photo to match on opposite page. Donation 350birr.

We ask a donation to help support the Tesfa communities who have guesthouses around the country hosting visitors enabling them to walk through their beautiful landscapes.  The calendars are available from our offices at Kebena, but we will also have copies at various locations around Addis.

For further information email calendars@tesfatours.com

Leave a comment

Annular Solar eclipse 21 June- be careful

A ‘ring of fire’ – how a solar eclipse looks

This coming Sunday – the 21st June, is the date of solar eclipse across a big swathes of Ethiopia. Across a particular part of Ethiopia it will be an annular solar eclipse. That is to say that the moon will cover more than 98% of the Sun and leave a small rim of light around the edge.

The central line on which the annular eclipse (where it will be longest) will pass cross is the Bahir Dar road just south of Injibara but it crosses the road that goes from Motta to Bahir Dar near a town called Sheba,  comes close Nefas Mewcha in Gayint, then passes Tesfa community trekking guesthouses in North Wollo, passing directly over Lalibela, crosses the main road to Mekele just south of Alamata and heads out into Afar just south of Lake Afdera.

Map of Annular Eclipse passage in Ethiopia see  https://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov

In places like Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, Gondar and Axum you can see a partial eclipse- with around 90% of the Sun blocked out by the moon at the highpoint.The Eclipse will start at around 6:50am reach its high point just before 8am and finish around 9am.

You should include natural food in your diet to prevent hair loss and naturally viagra uk appalachianmagazine.com regrow hair. Both mutually labor to slash down appalachianmagazine.com get viagra australia the sexual barrier. viagra india There are plenty of counterfeit companies out there which offer quality preventive maintenance and onsite services Hyderabad for businesses. In his medicine chest was found an herbal viagra 100mg pfizer . Please note however it is highly dangerous to look directly at the Sun during an eclipse. Your eyes will open wider because it is in fact darker and the harmful the sun-rays can penetrate into your eye and burn your retina. You must try to get hold of proper solar eclipse a viewing glasses. Sunglasses will be useless. There are also articles on the Internet showing how you can burn glasses with smoke to make them darker or you can use old film negative or part of

Safety glasses should be worn

a CD disk however there are many other professionals who say this does not give you any proper protection.

Please make sure you your friends and family and other people around you are aware of how dangerous it is to look directly at the Sun during an eclipse. The only point at which it is safe is when the moon has totally covered the sun, at this point is not going to be visible for most people in most places. I have read that the Sun will also damage cameras as it will penetrate writing to them. However it may be that your phone camera can take a few pictures so long as you don’t have it filming the Sun and don’t have it zoomed in. But you must be very careful not to be looking at the Sun while you do this which is difficult.

Take care, Mark and the Tesfa Tours team

Leave a comment

Coronavirus update from us

Handwashing stations in central Addis Ababa

I am absolutely sure all of our clients and supporters know full well about the Coronavirus that has swept through so many countries of the world. There are 11 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ethiopia (as of 26 March), however due to lack of testing it is widely accepted that there will be more than this.

We have taken the decision to ask staff to stay at home. A few staff will come to the office occasionally to process salaries and other critical payments, but all others will stay at home in an effort to protect them, their families and try to stop the spread of the virus. The staff of Tesfa Tours have voluntarily agreed to take 1 week unpaid leave per month, as there is no business in the near future. I have undertaken not to make any staff redundant at this point, and am also planning to pay the communities some money to help them keep the guards paid at the community guesthouses and to keep some income rolling in.

We have also agreed to close the community guesthouses even to local tourism as of 25 March (when our last client will return from his trek), as we do not want to spread the virus from Addis to the rural areas.

I will be checking my emails regularly and my senior staff will work from their phones, but with the uncertainty caused by the virus we can not accurately cost or plan trips in the coming months. Never the less we will still be here on the other side and the communities will need your support, so we encourage you to look at visiting the Ethiopian highlands once this is all over.

I will send out a few blogs to let you know how we are doing in Addis Ababa.

Please everyone –

  • Stay safe by taking proper precautions and thereby keeping those more vulnerable than you safe;
  • Remember we are in this together, and we must all come out on the other side more unified and together as a result of this pandemic;
  • Keep positive, and do not keep reading worst case scenarios – we need to keep a perspective here.

Taking plentiful sleep- A person with good lifestyle and stress-free life enjoy the sleep to purchase generic cialis the fullest, which help him maintaining sexual health as well. If you are not able to give the customer viagra pfizer canada a side effects free products to use. Allergic reactions to lactose, other foods, hypothyroidism and even some parasitic attacks would cause the prescription de viagra canada digestive track to show these signs. How PDE-5 Inhibitors Work All three popular prescription medications are PDE- 5 inhibitors. free cialis
We look forward to more positive news in the near future.

Mark, and the Tesfa Tours Team

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment