Frequently Asked Questions

Requirements for travel visas vary widely depending on your nationality. Although we are unable to arrange visas on your behalf. If you do require a visa you can arrange them yourself or use the services of a travel agent or visa processing company.

Trip specific information on transportation can be found on the trip summary page however in most cases we use public transportation. We’ve found that how you get there significantly influences the tone of your journey and public transportation allows face-to-face interaction with the local people. Some of our adventures use private transportation.

Yes, in most cases we can arrange additional accommodation at our starting or ending hotels. If we are unable to provide you with the extra nights we will give you the name of a hotel you can contact directly. Please also note that extra accommodations must be booked outside of 30 days of departure.

We always recommend packing as light as possible however the specific requirements for your tour will vary widely depending on where and when you are traveling. Our ‘Trip Details’ document includes a suggested packing list and these can be downloaded from each individual trip summary page. The checklist is tour specific and based upon the experience of our ground staff.

In Addis Ababa you can get pretty much any type of food in the world. There are Italian, Indian, Chinese and a host of other ethic food restaurants to choose from. Of course there is also plenty of Ethiopian food options as well! The main stable of Ethiopia is pancake style bread called Injera. It is made from a grain called ‘Teff’ and is very healty. Injera is eaten with your hands and usually comes with a sauce and a meat or vegtable depending on the day of the week and time of year. In Ethiopia, people ‘fast’ regular. What this means is that they won’t eat meat or dairy products on ‘fasting’ days. The vegetarian options on these days are delicious and a lot of foreigners prefer these dishes to the meat ones. Lamb, beef and goat are the main meats that are eaten.

They say Ethiopia has over 80 different languages. Most of these exist in the southern tribal regions of the country. The official and working language of Ethiopia is Amharic. This comes from the Amhara region of the country. Other widely spoken languages include Oromiffa and Tigrinya.

Ethiopia uses the Birr. On average 1 US dollar gets you around 32 Birr. Nowadays there are three or four banks that allow foreigners to withdraw Birr from ATM’s with a Visa or Mastercard. The max amount of Birr that you can withdraw per go is usually 4,000 but some banks allow more to be taken in one go if you use the in-bank POS machine. It is a good idea to bring some US dollars as well as this can be used to pay for tour and trekking

Ethiopia has a saying that there are “13 months of Sunshine”. This is somewhat factual but in reality there are two rainy seasons and the rest of the year is dry. The ‘small rains’ usually come during February whereas the ‘big rains’ run from July to early October. The extent of the rain differs depending where you are in Ethiopia. In Addis Ababa, the large rains can bring cool temperatures’ and long periods of heavy rain during the day. In other parts, it might only rain heavy for one hour during the day and then it’s back to normal. Temperatures can also vary a lot depending on where you are in Ethiopia and the altitude of that place. In the desert region of Afar the average temperature is above 40 degrees. In Addis Ababa it’s usually mid 20’s. The temperatures in the Simien Mountains plummet during the night time. During the day it will be in the 20’s whereas at night time it can drop below freezing.