Once again in a bid to cover as much ground as possible before the sun becomes unbearable we were up at 05:00 and out cycling not long after. We both felt a little rough this morning, we have managed to pick up colds (ironic that we should gets colds when it is so unbelievably hot here) and we still haven’t managed to sleep more than a few hours since we left England.
Crossing borders is a mighty affair and most of our morning was spent walking from one office to the next to get our passports stamped and cleared to move on. The crossing from Djibouti into no mans land was a relatively somber affair. A number of children were weeping at the gates of their detention cells, their little fingers griped the wire meshing and their parents called out to us to help them. We could only guess that they were people trying to illegally cross the border and were being detained until such time as they were returned to their country. The crossing from no mans land into Ethiopia was a far more cheery experience, apart from the border guard telling me that trying to cycle down this road was total madness and we would surely die in the desert heat (even that was done in a remarkably jovial way) everybody was particularly welcoming and and kind.
Half way through no mans land the tarmac road came to an abrupt end and we now have 250km of dirt road ahead. By late morning we were merrily cycling our way through Ethiopia on the bumpiest road in the world. I don’t know what the population densities of Djibouti and Ethiopia are but from the very first village we crossed in Ethiopia there seems to be considerably more more people per settlement. We have also found a marked kindness from the wealthy people driving 4 x 4’s along this road, each of them seems to have a small stash of bread or water in the back and hands it out to the nomads as they drive past. This courtesy doesn’t seem to extend to the lorry drivers unfortunately and they can’t even take the time to slow down. When we see or hear a lorry coming we have to quickly dive for cover and get off the road. When they come roaring past not only are we showered in a spray of pebbles but they kick up and incredibly dust cloud behind them. Completely blinded by the dust other vehicles try and overtake or cross each other, neither able to see more than a few feet ahead. We figure that they would never see us in time through the dust so we simply scamper for cover at the side of the road.

The landscape is still incredibly sparse with very little vegetation and almost no water anywhere. The road side is however still littered with old burnt out tanks. Most of them have been striped of anything salvageable and simply offer some of the desert creatures shade from the midday sun.