Ethiopia bus guide

What is it like to travel by bus in distant Africa?

Can we book a bus ticket online and go to the station with an electronic ticket? Where can we find information about bus departures? Is there a portal similar to bilety.pl where you can compare carriers and choose the best offer? After a month of traveling around Ethiopia and several bus trips to the south and east of the country, we would like to present you a short bus guide to Ethiopia. Maybe one of you will visit this beautiful and extremely diverse country – then this information will be necessary. For those who only travel within Europe, it will probably be quite a surprise how much this system differs on another continent.

Bus departure information online!

The area of ​​Ethiopia is almost four times larger than Poland, and the road infrastructure leaves much to be desired, making traveling by bus much more difficult. We plan to leave the capital of the country – Addis Ababa – south, to Arba Minch. Forget about information on the Internet. The only website available, guzo.et, offering a connection search engine, does not contain any detailed information – only the names and logos of bus companies. When entering the towns we are interested in, we receive the following message: “Your trip has not been found“. Our guide from 2017 contains little current information, both on prices and the location of stations.

Bus ticket offices in Ethiopia

We find ticket offices in the center of Addis Ababa, near Meskel Square. These are makeshift sheet metal booths, equipped with wooden desks and advertising posters of transport companies. There are people on site who guide travelers to the appropriate offices – depending on the town they intend to go to. We cannot choose the carrier or departure time here. Why? We’ll find out about that later. There is no reservation system – tickets are written out manually on paper and the carrier is informed by phone. You may feel as if you have traveled back in time 25 years ago.

Addis Ababa – Arba Minch buses

Berhan Bus was chosen for our trip. The ticket costs 1,500 birr (about PLN 48), which is a great price for a nearly 500-kilometer route. Seats are allocated in advance. The bus leaves at 4:30, and due to the difficulties in getting to the station at such an early hour, we have to book an additional Halo Taxi transport – which increases the cost of the trip by about PLN 8. To facilitate the organization of journeys, all carriers depart at the same time. Although the bus is not full, additional passengers board the bus during the journey, we still recommend purchasing a ticket at least a day in advance.

The buses are usually old models of Chinese companies (e.g. Yutong), whose best days are behind them, although they are still relatively comfortable. In Ethiopia they are called “luxury”, although in Europe they certainly would not deserve this category.

The journey to Arba Minch takes about 10 hours, and after covering 500 km, we arrive at about 2:30 p.m. There is one break along the way – a 30-minute stop for a toilet and lunch (around 11:30). In the morning, passengers receive free water and a roll. The condition of the roads is terrible – they are often just gravel roads. However, this does not prevent drivers from reaching dizzying speeds and overtaking everything they can, often risking the safety of passengers. It’s safe to say that riding a bus in Ethiopia provides a solid dose of adrenaline.

When returning, we use the services of the same carrier, but this time we buy a ticket just before departure. This is not the best solution – in such cases, there are often only places left at the end of the vehicle, where the unevenness of the terrain is felt the most. We recommend reserving seats in the middle or front of the bus.

Harar – Addis Ababa buses

We traveled eastwards by the only Addis Ababa-Djibouti train operating in Ethiopia. However, we chose the bus to return from Harar. We visited the ticket office again to find out how the system works. Once again, it turns out that all carriers leave at the same time – this time even earlier, at 3:00 in the morning. Agents gradually fill the buses of individual companies. In our case, we found the carrier Air Bus. Comfort, organization, crazy driving – everything looked the same as before. The ticket price was 1,550 birr (approx. PLN 49) for a 550 km route. This time the journey lasted 12 hours.

An interesting fact is the passenger wake-up service included in the ticket price. When purchasing, we provide the phone number to which the driver calls, informing us about the need to get up and go to the station. Even though the bus was supposed to leave at 3:00, the phone rings at 1:36 – and we are only 5 minutes’ walk from the station. On-site procedures, such as checking passenger lists and packing luggage, take a lot of time. However, a good solution is to attach seat numbers to luggage, which protects it against being taken by another passenger by mistake, and this happens very often in Europe.

To sum up, traveling by bus in Ethiopia is a real adventure – from the moment you buy the ticket to the ride itself. It’s a kind of time travel: paper tickets, no online information, and “luxury” buses, which in reality are far from this term. And yet there are also standard buses and minibuses – but that’s a topic for another story.


Bilety.pl could open online sales here or at least provide information about connections, but it would encounter many difficulties and challenges. This experience shows how quickly technological progress has changed traveling in Europe – thanks to the Internet, purchasing tickets has become more convenient and saves a lot of time. Meanwhile, in Ethiopia we still have to wait a long time for this comfort.