Tuscan Impressions

TDA - Days 31-39 (Ethiopia)

Anybody who has been to Tuscany or has seen pictures of the Tuscan landscape is marked for life. The hills have the most perfect shape there, only accented by the tall slender cypresses dotting or crowning them. Hills rolling endlessly and beautifully. The warmth of the light at sunset and sunrise is amazing surrounding everything in magic. The colours of the soil, the blue of the sky and the puffiness of the clouds are absolutely fantastic. There you will encounter all possible shades of brown and golden. Like nowhere else in the world.

Well, that's what I thought until I discovered Ethiopia.

After 2 days of dusty unpaved roads climbing up and down hills under a scorching sun we left behind the scenery reminding of places like the Grand Canyon - a land of red soil and big towering ridges. The slopes were dotted by large trees and the air filled by the twittering and the bold colours of the countless birds. The villages were a collection of huts blending in seamlessly colourwise.

The spectacular escarpment gave way to beautiful endless rolling hills and fields only scarred by the grand gorge of the Blue Nile. It was harvest time and the golden and brown shades of the land were glowing in the light of the setting and rising sun.

Focusing on the paved stripe ahead of me was hard as my eyes kept scouting the horizon, right and left, ahead and behind for more images, for more beauty and inspiration. Memories of Tuscany came flooding to me, triggered by a solitary tree, a slope, a certain contour or a hue of brown or golden.
This place was stunningly beautiful, observing the harvest a privilege and riding there a treat. It was Tuscany at its best with few substitutes: the tall slim cypress trees were replaced by some other kind of trees equally beautiful; the villas were only simple straw and mud huts; the rolls of straw dotting the Italian fields were perfectly cylindrical and machine-made whereas here the little straw heaps were extremely pretty and, obviously, hand-made.