Hiya,
Hello Matt!
It's easier than you think. From Chartoum take the bus to Gedaref (border town with Ethiopia) The journey can be long so stay owernight in Gedaref. In the morning there are buses to the border with Ethiopia (3-4hrs). From the border, if you are lucky you will catch the bus to Gondar, if not go to Shihedi. From Shihedi there are two buses a day to Gondar in the morning, but its a pleasant little town, so if you have to stay there overnight it's not a poblem, in the monrning you catch the bus to Gondar. From there you have plenty of buses to Addis.
From Addis you take the bus to Konso (8hrs). Stay in Konso overnight and in the morning you have a bus to Yabelo or ever further Moyale (ask at your hotel). If the bus goes only to Yabelo then you can take another one from there to Moyale (the border town with Kenya).
Once in Moyale you have two options: bus to Nairobi or truck to Isiolo/Nairobi. Truck is cheaper but less comfortable. But the road is hard anyway, exremely bumpy and dusty but I made it, so you'll make i two.
Feel free to ask more questions
best of luck
Cheers for the message it is comforting knowing this is possible.
Did you plan all this buses in advance? if so where did you get the information? Or was more the information is there once you are in each of the countries?
Hello Matt!
No need to plan it in advance, it's even impossible I guess:D You can easily get all the information once on place. Maybe there is even a direct bus from Addis Ababa to Moyale (the border town with Kenya), I did a stop in the Omo Valley (southern Ethiopia) and then I went to Kenya. But it's quite possible that there is a direct conection betweent Moyale and Addis. The simpliest way is to ask at the central bus station in Addis, they will tell you everything. The same rule for Sudan and actually the rest of Africa too
Hello Matt!
No need to plan it in advance, it's even impossible I guess:D You can easily get all the information once on place. Maybe there is even a direct bus from Addis Ababa to Moyale (the border town with Kenya), I did a stop in the Omo Valley (southern Ethiopia) and then I went to Kenya. But it's quite possible that there is a direct conection betweent Moyale and Addis. The simpliest way is to ask at the central bus station in Addis, they will tell you everything. The same rule for Sudan and actually the rest of Africa too
I did this leg last year. At that time, the only bus going direct to Gonder from the Sudan/Ethiopia border town (Metema) left in the early morning (around 6AM), so you'd have to overnight in Metema if you were planning on catching that. I can't say that Metema's a particularly nice place so it may be better to overnight in Gedaref, as aidni suggests, then try to pick up a bus to Shihedi once you get to Metema.
There's a direct bus from Addis to Moyale (on the Ethiopian side) though the journey is broken up into 2 days - you spend the night in Dila. Once in Ethiopian Moyale, you can walk across the border to Moyale on the Kenyan side.
The bus from Moyale to Nairobi seems to only run a couple of times per month because there are rarely enough passengers to make the run worthwhile. Thus the most reliable option is to ride in the back (or better, but more expensive, the cab) of a truck. The trucks tend to leave around 9AM so you should aim to be in Kenyan Moyale well before then. Kenyan Moyale is a pretty grim place to spend the night - Ethiopian Moyale can hardly fail to be better.
The third option for getting away from Moyale is to wait near the border for any overlanders coming through. After paying well over the odds for a seat in the cab of a truck, which was then cancelled so I got my money back, I was lucky to encounter a guy driving from Switzerland to South Africa in his Landrover so I got a lift with him as far as Isiolo (from where there are some decent buses to Nairobi). Obviously the frequency of this kind of lift is highly unpredictable.
Any further questions on this, let me know.
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