Un week-end à Harar

Dire Dawa/Harar

The city of Dire Dawa exudes a particular atmosphere unlike any other in Ethiopia, which is not only due to its architectural and industrial peculiarity. The former French presence is still deeply felt. At first glance, the city may seem asleep, frozen in the too-fresh past of its brilliant railway. After your arrival and a refreshment, we will take you to the mythical city of Harar. We invite you this evening to two dinners, one quite normal: yours, and the other most strange and mysterious – that of the hyenas that come slipping behind the city walls at nightfall, to feast on the heaps of meat reserved for them by a curious restaurant owner-sorcerer.

Overnight at Ras Hotel

Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Harar is a mythical city, the fourth holiest city of Islam, which seems to have been spared by the centuries and remains a fantasy that brings travelers from all corners of the world. Rimbaud did not choose to live here for nothing. A Muslim city founded in the 8th century, powerfully fortified in the 16th, capital of the Sultanate of Adal, rebellious and rival of the Christian empire, Harar only definitively became Ethiopian under the reign of Menelik II at the end of the 19th century. From then on, Harar became for European adventurers, including an obscure French merchant, a certain Arthur Rimbaud, the gateway to distant and inaccessible Abyssinia… A city of knowledge, tradition, and atmosphere, Harar is another face of Ethiopia that does not leave one indifferent.

Overnight at Ras Hotel

Harar/Dire Dawa

This morning, you will stroll through the colorful alleys and streets of millennial Harar, which seems to have remained frozen in the past for eternity. After this wander through the ancient city, we will return to Dire Dawa. In this mushroom city built around its railway that connected Djibouti to Addis Ababa, there is an astonishing place not to be missed under any pretext: the fascinating and unique train cemetery, an open-air museum where machines from all eras stand side by side.

Return in the afternoon to Addis Ababa