Frequently Asked Questions
Answers to the questions we hear most from travelers planning their Ethiopia trip.
This is one of the many questions raised by visitors. We encourage visitors to tip the assigned guide when they feel satisfied with the guiding service they received. The amount to give depends on your level of satisfaction, so there is no simple fixed calculation for what to give the guide.
You need at least 9 days for a fair visit of the tribes and their colorful tribal markets. In designing itineraries for the lower Omo Valley, we purposely follow the market days of the Omo Valley tribes, since the markets are the best places to photograph the tribes' colorful costumes, body paintings, hairstyles, jewels and local products.
May is not a good season to travel to the southern part of Ethiopia, where road conditions are poor. April, May and June are the main rainy season for the lower Omo Valley region, making the already poor dirt roads muddy and rivers flooded. Outside of that period, you can make the trip on any given day.
Visitors are strongly advised to plan their trip during the cool months between December and February. The closer your travel dates are to February, the more bearable the temperatures — the further out, the more the heat soars.
Yes, it is safe. The Afar region's Culture and Tourism ministry enforces a mandatory police escort policy. Military personnel accompany visitors during their entire trip, with at least 2–3 policemen or militia assigned per visiting group, depending on group size.
A SWIFT code (more correctly a BIC) is a formatted identifier used by banks sending or receiving messages within the SWIFT network, containing a country code and unique institution identifier (8 or 11 digits). The IBAN, by contrast, identifies an individual account holder — it includes the account number, sort code, country code and check digits, and is calculated by the account-holding bank. In short: the BIC identifies the bank, while the IBAN identifies your account with that bank.