ras dashen

I’ve recently been reading In Ethiopia With a Mule, about a trek across — you guessed it — Ethiopia, in the company of a mule, by the famously brave travel writer Dervla Murphy. She is widely admired for her intrepid travelling style, but does this come at a price?

The title is not a line you expect to hear in a Muslim country, but I’ve made an exception. If all goes to plan by the time you read this I’ll be resting at Toubkal Refuge ready to make a Christmas Day ascent of the highest peak in North Africa.

“The most marvellous of all Abyssinian landscapes opened before us, as we looked across a gorge that was clouded amethyst to the peaks of Simyen.” Rosita Forbes, From Red Sea to Blue Nile – A Thousand Miles of Ethiopia (1925)

An idiot’s guide to topographic prominence Once upon a time paid employees of the British Empire went to extraordinary lengths to calculate the height of the Himalayas. It’s quite widely known that the highest point on the planet is named

Is Dervla Murphy most admired for her writing or her travelling style?

Merry Christmas from Morocco

Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains: great trekking, unusual wildlife, and a summit

How to measure the height of a mountain