Highway 3 wanders to the north and west across the Ethiopia plateaus, dipping into gorges and crossing mountains. The road passes through spectacular countryside and traverses some of the culturally rich territory of the Amhara, Agaw and Awi Peoples of Abyssinia. Visitors are shown some of the wonderful hospitality of the region.  Both the people and the scenery seem to get more and more wonderful every day.

Unfortunately, from above the town, what should be an expansive view of Addis Ababa is often obscured by the gray hue of the city's air pollution problem.

The immediate environment is much more pleasant because much of Entoto Hill is planted in eucalyptus, creating a substantial forest.

Along with all of the motor-traffic on the road, there is an astonishing the number of load-laden donkeys and people streaming into the city on foot.

After cresting at 2630m (the first peak on the graph below), the plateau rolls for the next 80 km (50miles), to Debre Tsege, 1000m above the gorges of the Jamma River and Muger River with an average elevation of just over 2630m (8680 feet).  Ethiopians tend not to name geological features like this so it doesn't exactly have a name. A term that is applied to the area is Saalalii, but this refers more to the culture and ethnicity, which are not geographically bound. The terms Abyssinia Plateau and Ethiopian Plateau are used for this plateau, but their totality is even broader, incorporating the highlands all around the headwaters of the Nile River and its tributaries in the area.

The plateau's ups and downs are never more than 80m higher or lower, and if you are acclimatized it is a pretty pleasant ride.  If you are not acclimatized, even if you are in shape for the lowlands, each climb seems brutal. But, if you rest at the top of the climbs, take a few deep breaths, stay hydrated and pause for a minute, you rebound pretty well -- until the next sustained climb when your legs again feel like lead.

It is nice of Google to generate these topographical graphs, but they are a little deceptive: On this graph the vertical axis coves 300 meters and the horizontal axis covers 85,000 meters.  In reality the steepest slope on this section is not a cliff, but only an 11% grade.  The average up slope is 2.9% and the average down slope is 2.2%, so a lot of the ride seems pretty flat.

Some of the chatter in the graph is created because Google route lines don't always superimpose on the road accurately.  So if the route line runs off the road into a gully and then come back on to the road the computer code that is analyzing the GPS elevations is going to show a dip and climb that don't exist on the road, which tends to have steady grades.
 

At a high point at the edge of town is a characteristically round Ethiopian Orthodox church.  The Abyssinian highlands are predominantly Ethiopian Orthodox Christian.  Every settlement of any size has a church nearby and even a small town might have several churches.  Traditionally churches are surrounded by trees, so often, at best, you get a peek-a-boo view of them.  The alignment of the road and break in the trees provide a clearer than normal view of the church in Sulutan.  Most of the thousands of churches on the route -- even the finest -- don't get immortalized in the photographic record because their features can't be seen well through the camera lens.

As more and more rural highways were paved, about 2010, three-wheeled Bajaj (tuk tuks) started to appear in rural town around Ethiopia in large numbers. They are the people taxis of small towns. An indicator that a town was coming is Bajajs start to appear on the road 5-10 kilometers before the town, and the density increase as you reach the town. They are surprisingly durable and don't limited themselves to the pavement. Goods are still mostly transported more traditionally -- by donkey.
 

Relatively low-capacity power lines run down the field paralleling the road.

In Sulutan there was a water station with standpipes.  Many other similar set-ups seem to be overgrown and abandoned, presumably because something in the system had broken. What do the people who depended on these installations for water do now?  Whose responsibility is it to fix the problem?

There are also numerous signs of bilateral development assistance. Cars passed that were associated with Japanese technical assistance, USAID, German development, for example. The sign (left) is for an Ethiopia-Korea water development project (photo to the right).
 

The new agro-industry on the plateau is horticulture (flowers). Most of these are joint ventures between Ethiopians and foreign investors. They are criticized for taking land from local farmers without fair compensation, but the developers argue that they provide jobs planting and cutting flowers. Of course in this case the job is at someone else pleasure and if the ex-farmer looses the job they have nothing to eat.
 

One quirky consequence of Chinese investment is that "China" has become the moniker for all foreigners.  Bicycling past them, the kids will yell, "China, China, China!"  It is not clear whether they really think we are Chinese. Do all foreigners look alike?  Or are they a little vague about what they are saying?

Another anomaly in the area is an upscale travelers' rest stop serving fancy coffee, cake and Western food. I view it as an indication that the middle class Ethiopians are traveling and using this road.
 

The church at the far right is of the same style but in Debre Tsege.

The wildlife is wonder what will come next.

Throughout the ride on Highway 3 the vistas beckoned photography.  With all the beauty, expansiveness and diversity, there were so many details to remember; color shifts, contrasts in texture, lines and curves and juxtapositions of shapes, and their are ever-changing relationships to one another as we move along.

Over and over we stopped and aimed the camera in an effort, sometimes futile, to record and remember and try to answer our numerous questions:

To remember the vastness -- always hoping that the next picture would capture it a little better.

To remember a gravel road that swept through the foreground and disappeared as its two tracks merged into a single gray line. Where does the road go?  What adventures lie ahead if we follow it?

To remember a field of hay stacks without a single piece of farm machinery in sight. What would change if mechanical farm equipment was introduced?

To remember the prominent crops in an area and the diversity of agriculture. What is the agricultural cycle like here? How do they do crop rotation?

To remember a cluster of houses. For how many generations had the family lived there?

To remember uniqueness of a cluster of house built closely together or another more spread out. With so much land, what do they consider when locating and building a new house?

To remember the layers of hills that peek out from behind one another.  Are the local residents as awed by the view as I am?

To remember a dedicated farmer, often solitary, working his way up and down the country side hoe-stroke by hoe-stroke. How many times has someone covered every inch of the field on foot?

To remember all the other snapshots of life as people worked, played, shopped, prayed and persevered. How does the snapshot inform us about life? And, how is the snapshot deceptive?

To remember a family, on foot, journeying across the landscape.  Where did they start? What is their destination?

To remember a pocket of forest. Was the whole plateau once covered with trees? How did that look?

To remember a hillside of terraced farmland. How many generations did it take to rearrange the land?

To remember gorges, valleys and canyons.  How long does it take people to walk in and out of these chasms?

To remember the diversity of architecture in traditional houses. What imaginations created so many variations on a theme?

To remember the urban livestock -- how normal the scene is here and how improbable it would be in a western urban setting.

To remember the people along the way (although I am reluctant to take these pictures, so they are documented the least.)

To remember the richness of rural life.  To remember the material culture of Ethiopia.

Muke Turi is a frequent lunch stop. The waitress at the restaurant (right) asked to take our picture with her cell phone. We agreed if it was reciprocated. Now her smile and charm can be enjoyed by everyone who finds this page of a billion on the Internet.

Market day in MukeTuri (elev. 2650 m) features such things as grains, vegetables, local pottery, injera cooking stones, and salt.

To the left is a traditional Ethiopian coffee preparation set-up, though the table is more elaborate than most.

[Graphs are built with incomplete data and are only general representations of the topography.]
 

Approaching Debre Libanos the road descends 100m (330 ft), the view opens up, and the earth drops away into the Jemma Gorge.

The roadside viewpoint is populated by young, aggressive curio sellers, which makes it hard to experience and appreciate the vastness of the gorge.
 

On the nearside, the terraced hillsides are impressive and extensive.  How did people get to some of these places? Did it take decades or centuries to build all of the earthworks? The final challenge must be extricating the farm goods after the fields are harvested.

There are also signs that rural construction is also robust. These donkeys (right) hauling poles are not unique.
 

When the collection truck comes around it all take shape: People come out from behind fences and converge from scattered groups to line up. The quality control tester works his way down the line, amounts are recorded and the very fresh milk is poured into barrels on the truck for transport to the processing plant 150 kms away in Addis Ababa.  Someplace not far beyond Fiche seems to be the outer limits of this small-holder activity.  Most likely the collection and transport is not economical over longer distances.

After the milk is delivered to the truck, the people with their small cans walk back into the hills and disappear.
 

Much of the current output of cement is probably destined for the mammoth Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a ten-year dam construction project on Nile River festooned with great promise for the future. Time will tell if it will live up to its promises.

The government of Ethiopia is dismissive about any suggested negative ecological and humanitarian impacts on upstream and downstream inhabitants along the river -- from its source to the delta in the Mediterranean Sea, a distance of 3800 km.  In addition to Ethiopian environmentalists, the governments of Sudan and Egypt have expressed concerns. (The three countries signed a new agreement on water rights for the Blue Nile in 2015.)

Across the road from the cement factory was a table tennis game. It is one of two table tennis sets I have seen in Ethiopia -- the other was a few miles away. My conclusion is it is connect with the Chinese presences.
 

As we traveled west, it was more frequent that kids ran along side the bikes and gathered around us when we stopped.  The running must reflect the stamina that their lifestyle develops.  From there it is not a big step to understand why Ethiopia consistently produces world class marathon runners.  The kids are running barefoot on the pavement, creating a flashback to Abebe Bikila's winning performance at the 1960 Olympics.

(South: Addis Ababa) (North: Gohatsion to Dejen)