We arrived in Ethiopia on the 26th of January, 2023 and immediately bought an Ethiopian SIM card at the airport. Here’s our experience and how you can get mobile data in Addis Ababa and beyond.    Ethio Telecom Monopoly Doing the research on what SIM card to buy in Ethiopia was simple; there’s only one company. Ethio Telecom (ኢትዮ ቴሌኮም – pronounced ītiyo tēlēkomi) is a government-owned provider. Though this makes things easier than in Madagascar, there’s also a risk that the government sets the price too high. Luckily, this turns out not to be the case in Ethiopia, asContinue reading

As a traveling vegetarian, Ethiopia is quite an easy country to visit. Many national dishes are vegetarian or vegan. These are the Ethiopian food and drinks I wolfed down during my one-month stay in Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, and Lalibela. How to Find Out Which Ethiopian Foods are Vegetarian? Ever since the start of our journey of learning about Ethiopian food, we’ve used this handy glossary to figure out what’s what. I use ctrl + F or page search to find out which dishes are veg. We basically started with the beyayenetu (በያይነቱ – meaning ‘variety’), which is vegetarian unlessContinue reading

We visited the wonder on the 7th and the 10th of February, 2023. Bete Amanuel is a spectacular church carved out of a single rock in northern Ethiopia. It makes an appearance in the video game Age of Empires II as the wonder of the Ethiopian civilization. One of the Reasons We’re in Ethiopia Our motivation to travel to Ethiopia after Madagascar came from two things: we love Ethiopian food and I knew there was an Age of Empires II wonder to visit here. The wonder is called Bete Amanuel and it’s a 900-year-old church carved out of a singleContinue reading

This guide to Madagascar also appears under the Digital Nomads Guides brand Why Madagascar? Introduction to the Red Island Madagascar is basically its own continent. Though Madagascar is by no means an easy country to work online from, a visit will absolutely be rewarding in many ways. Madagascar offers digital nomads a wildly different experience from the established destinations. Madagascar is a developing country. By some measures, it’s the fourth-poorest country in the world, having suffered a lot under French colonialism till independence in 1960. But as nearly everywhere on Earth, the essentials of the 21st century to make internationalContinue reading

Paying for things in Madagascar isn’t as straightforward as in many other countries. Here’s how to get your hands on fat stacks of Malagasy Ariary, how to use the mobile money apps in the country, and how to identify when people are quoting prices in Malagasy Franc (†2005). Using money in Madagascar is very intertwined with having a Malagasy SIM card, so check out that article as well. Intro to The Ariary—Paper Money Only The Malagasy Ariary has been the official currency of Madagascar since 2005. Unlike Dollars or Francs, no other currency in the world goes by the nameContinue reading

This happened on the 29th of December, 2022. Jonas and I did our first cursory hitchhiking in Madagascar session. Since it was so spontaneous and unplanned, the featured photo of this article was taken on the 2nd of January, 2023 while waiting for our cotisse from Ranohira to Ambalavao and does not represent the text below. Tired As Fuck After eating lunch and asking the Isalo National Park office about tours, I was quite exhausted. We’d traveled from Toliara at sea level to Ranohira at 1000 meters by cotisse. Though we had expected lower temperatures at this altitude if anythingContinue reading