Harar and Eastern Ethiopia – Gheralta Expedition

With its 368 alleyways squeezed into just 1 sq.km., Harar is believed to be the fourth holiest city after Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem. The 82 mosques and 102 shrines within the fortified city formed the largest concentration of mosques in the world. Noted for being a center of Muslim scholarship and commerce, it once issued its own currency. The city’s lively markets and unique gey gar (city houses) are relicts of the many centuries when Harar served as the most important trade emporium in the Horn of Africa, linking the ports of the Somali coast to the fertile Ethiopian interior. Harar Jugol was inscribed as a UNESCO, World Heritage Site in 2006. Awarded the UNESCO Cities for Peace Prize in 2002, Harar is a delightful and welcoming city to explore on foot, its winding labyrinth of alleys leading to busy market places where colorfully-draped local women sell deliciously juicy tropical fruits, pastel-painted cafes brewing coffee plucked from the surrounding hills, and craftspeople such as cotton traditions weavers, jewelers and bookbinders.

What to See?

UNESCO regards Harar’s unique city houses, with their exceptional interior design, to be the most spectacular facet of its cultural heritage. Entered via a traditional carved wooden door, the houses have a split-level interior centered on a living room whose niched walls are hung with myriad household items, notably the circular flat polychrome baskets for which Harar is famed. A good example of a traditional gey gar, decorated with hundreds of vintage artifacts, is the well-executed facsimile in the Harar Community Centre Museum.
The Sherif Harari City Museum, set in the wide-balconied double-storey mansion where Emperor Haile Selassie spent much of his childhood, hosts a superb private collection of antique Islamic manuscripts, Harari coins minted during the 18th century, traditional Harari costumes, musical instruments, and household artifacts.
The Arthur Rimbaud Museum is housed in the beautiful fresco-ceilinged house where its namesake poet-turned-trader reputedly lived in the late 19th century. It now functions as a museum with displays dedicated to the poet and a fascinating collection of monochrome photographs of the city taken in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The domed Awaach of Amir Nur, the 16th-century ruler who constructed the walls around Harar Jugol, is the most important of 438 Awaach (shrines) dotted around the old town.
Thought to be the oldest of the city’s mosques, the modern-looking Al-Jami Mosque was reputedly founded in the 10th century and includes one minaret dating to the 1760s.
As dusk falls over the city, Harar’s famous Hyena men emerge to feed wild hyenas at two sites: Aw Ansar Ahmed Shrine outside Argob bari Gate and the Christian slaughterhouse outside Assumiy Bari Gate

Getting There

Harar lies 510km east of Addis Ababa along a well-surfaced road, passing through Adama and Awash National Park. The main air gateway to Harar is Dire Dawa, 52km by road to the northwest.

Ethiopian Airlines (www.ethiopianairlines.com) flies daily between Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa, where taxis are available at the airport to whisk you along the surfaced road to Harar.

Another possible air gateway, Jijiga, the capital of the Somali Region, lies 100km east of Harar and is also connected to Addis Ababa by daily Ethiopian Airlines flights.

Getting Around

The Harar Jugol is best explored on foot with an experienced local guide who knows their way around its confusing maze of alleys. Guides can be arranged through any hotel or by asking at the central Tourist Information Office.

Taxis and bajaji can be picked up at Feres Megala and along the main road through the new town.

Accommodation

The most attractive accommodation is a quartet of inexpensive family-owned cultural guesthouses set in traditional Harari homes within the walls of Harar Jugol. A new international standard hotel is being built in 2015.

A few budget lodgings such as Heritage Plaza, Sumaya hotel, Harar Ras Hotel, Grand Gato Hotel, Wonderland Hotel, Belayneh Hotel, and Winta hotel are also scattered around the new town. Other hotels are found in Dire Dawa.

Annual Events and Festivals

The usual Islamic holidays are celebrated in Harar, including Eid al-Fitr, the end of Ramadan. At the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, the first day of the month of Shewal is celebrated as Eid-al-Fitr. This is followed by six-days of fasting. The 8th day of the month of Shewal is Shewal Eid – a special Harari cultural festival, consisting of 24 hours of celebrations.

Harar comes alive during the Ashura ceremony, which takes place on the 10th day of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar.

Kulubi Gebriel, on the road back towards Addis Ababa, attracts up to 100,000 Christian pilgrims on 26 July and 28 December, holy days dedicated to Kidus Gebriel (Saint Gabriel).

Things to do

Hyena Feeding

One of Harar’s most enduringly popular attractions is its two ‘hyena men’, who make their living by feeding wild hyenas after dusk on the outskirts of Harar Jugol, thereby providing proof that Ethiopians are capable of perversity far beyond the call of duty. A highlight of any visit to Harar, even to those who have seen wild hyenas in less contrived proximity, this atmospheric spectacle usually starts at around 18.30, when the hyena man starts calling his familiars by name. After 10 minutes or so, the animals appear from the shadows, timidly at first, but they soon become bolder and start taking bones passed to them by human hand or mouth. Visitors are invited to feed the hyenas directly, too, before eventually, the stock of bones runs out, and these spectral creatures slink back to whence they came.

Cultural Tours

Go Beyond Just Jungle Safaris

Although you might have heard it countless times let us remind you about the sophistication of Ethiopia that makes the country a must see of the planet. Ethiopia is truly full of wonderful and breathtaking places that you must see in lifetime says Jumia Travel.

Ethiopia imbeds cultural civilization from North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East allowing you to get several continent cross-cultural values in one place in the ancient country known as Ethiopia.

For history buffs, for hikers, for adventures and daring destinations explorers, the country has everything that perfectly suites and fulfills travelers demands. From its admirable warm season all year long to its exquisite sights it’s one of a kind destination that wows every expectation.

4 Day Tour to Harar and Eastern Ethiopia

Harar and Eastern Ethiopia 4 Days

This tour combines the natural beauty and wildlife of Awash National Park and the lakes of eastern Ethiopia, with the rich culture and history of the city...

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Available through out the year:

Desert Tours

Desert Holidays by AET

Bubbling volcanoes light up the night sky, sulfurous mounds of yellow contort into other-worldly shapes, and mirages of camels cross lakes of salt. Lying 100m and more below sea level, the Danakil Depression (የደንከል በረሃ) is about the hottest and most inhospitable place on earth. In fact, it’s so surreal that it doesn’t feel like part of earth at all. If you want genuine, raw adventure, few corners of the globe can match this overwhelming wilderness. But come prepared because with temperatures frequently saying hello to 50°C and appalling ‘roads’, visiting this region is more an expedition than a tour.

4 Day Tour to Harar and Eastern Ethiopia

Harar and Eastern Ethiopia 4 Days

This tour combines the natural beauty and wildlife of Awash National Park and the lakes of eastern Ethiopia, with the rich culture and history of the city...

View Details

Available through out the year:

Historical Tours

Historic Travels to Ethiopia by AET

Details on the origins of all the peoples that make up the population of highland Ethiopia were still matters for research and debate in the early 1990s. Anthropologists believe that East Africa’s Great Rift Valley is the site of humankind’s origins. (The valley traverses Ethiopia from southwest to northeast.) In 1974 archaeologists excavating sites in the Awash River valley discovered 3.5-million-year- old fossil skeletons, which they named Australopithecus afarensis. These earliest known hominids stood upright, lived in groups, and had adapted to living in open areas rather than in forests.

Coming forward to the late Stone Age, recent research in historical linguistics–and increasingly in archaeology as well–has begun to clarify the broad outlines of the prehistoric populations of present-day Ethiopia. These populations spoke languages that belong to the Afro-Asiatic super-language family, a group of related languages that includes Omotic, Cushitic, and Semitic, all of which are found in Ethiopia today. Linguists postulate that the original home of the Afro-Asiatic cluster of languages was somewhere in northeastern Africa, possibly in the area between the Nile River and the Red Sea in modern Sudan. From here the major languages of the family gradually dispersed at different times and in different directions–these languages being ancestral to those spoken today in northern and northeastern Africa and far southwestern Asia.

4 Day Tour to Harar and Eastern Ethiopia

Harar and Eastern Ethiopia 4 Days

This tour combines the natural beauty and wildlife of Awash National Park and the lakes of eastern Ethiopia, with the rich culture and history of the city...

View Details

Available through out the year: