It’s been a while since we went hiking, so we were excited for the Simien Mountains and to see some of Ethiopia’s nature. Most tourists come on organized tours, but you can very well organize the trek yourself! All we had to do was pay the entrance fee and get a scout (mandatory) at the national park office in Debark. And we had to lie about having arranged transport out of the park already, as the transport mafia doesn’t allow tourists to travel of local busses or trucks that ply the route (and which we were totally planning to do).

To begin with, we took a tuk tuk until the park entrance, from where on we hiked to Sankaber – easily achieved within an afternoon – our campsite for the first night. It was a nice start into our hiking days: first passing through some traditional villages, then hiking along the cliffs with some awesome views!

The first night’s dinner, lunches and breakfasts we carried food for ourselves. Luckily, one of the cooks of the tour groups was nice enough to supply us with hot water for our instant noodles.

On our 2nd day, we hiked from Sankaber to Geech, passing by the almost dried out Jin Bahir waterfalls. Again, we were treated to some really nice views! Even after hiking so much in Patagonia, the Simien Mountains are impressive – just so different again!

It was our shortest day and we already arrived in Geech in the early afternoon. After some relaxing, we decided to walk to the viewpoint Kedadit for some later afternoon light and sunset photos.

What we hadn’t known is that every evening you can also watch big groups of Gelada monkeys migrating down the cliffs to sleep there. It was a really cool spectacle to experience!!

On our last full day, we had a long hike in front of us: Geech to Chennek via Imet Gogo mountain. The first part until Imet Gogo went relatively quickly and we reached this – in our opinion – best viewpoint of the entire hike before lunch. Amazing views in all directions!!

What followed, after a short descent, was a loooong way up to Enati. It was tough, but in exchange we saw some Gelada baboons again aaaaand were incredibly lucky to spot the Ethiopian wolf shortly before reaching Enati. So cool!!

From then on, it was mostly down, but still quite a while to go until Chennek. Fortunately, there were again and again pretty viewpoints along the way which made it much easier and enjoyable.

In the end, we were the fastest ones to arrive in Chennek, even though we were with our heavy backpacks and took lots of photo stops. Haha, sometimes I don’t feel that fit compared to Mathijs, but days like this one show me that I’m probably fitter than I think! Chennek is probably the most beautifully located campsite with amazing viewpoints within short walking distance of the camp. We took some time to walk around again and waited for some Gelada baboons to show up. There was no big migration to observe like at the viewpoint at Geech, but it was still nice to see some more.

Next day, all we had to do was get a truck to take us back to Debark. After bargaining hard, we hopped onto the back with a bunch of locals and off we went to a long dusty and bumpy ride. At the park entrance we had to hide under a blanket for the officials not to see us (which they still did and our scout had a bit of a discussion with them, but in the end we were allowed to move on). Phew! Felt like refugees smuggling into a country for a moment…

All things considered, it was very well worth the little extra hassle to hike the Simiens independently! We saved about 170 USD each, and were able to hike at our own speed, when- and wherever we wanted.