Travel to Bahir Dar

a relatively relaxed cosmopolitan atmosphere

Bahir Dar is a relatively large city set alongside the substantial Lake Tana in northern Ethiopia.

The main reason to include Bahir Dar in your trip is to visit the impressive Tissisat Falls on the Blue Nile and various historic monasteries around the lake.

The town attracts a significant flow of visitors (including a considerable number of domestic tourists) and is renowned for the intensity of its street hustle, with every man and his dog trying to sell you something.

Bahir Dar tends to be one of the first locations to be dropped when trips start to get a bit too long, but remains popular with less active travellers who tend to drop the hiking locations of Simien Mountains and/or Gheralta instead.

Seasonality

The best time to visit Bahir Dar from a weather perspective is during the Nov-Mar dry season period.

However this optimum period only just overlaps with the best time to visit the Tissisat Falls, which is during the high water of Jul-Dec, with the falls potentially running dry during Jan-May.

So we are really looking at an optimum window of Nov-Dec only.

The area lies on the margin between a tropical savanna climate and a subtropical highland climate, with an Apr-Sep rainy season, which reaches a peak during Jun-Aug.

Peak daytime temperatures are usually rather high, at around 28C/82F most of the year, rising to 32C/90F (occasionally spiking to 38C/100F) in advance of the rains during Mar-May. However night time temperatures usually still fall to a pleasant 13C/55F year round.

Getting around

The north of Ethiopia is usually reached by means of regular daily flights from the capital Addis Ababa.

Some of the interconnecting journeys within the region are best done by air, others have to be done by road.

Bahir Dar is usually connected by air to most locations, but by road to nearby Gondar (and on by road to the Simien Mountains).

Where to stay

The town of Bahir Dar contains a modest range of accommodation options, mainly at the lower end, but with a small selection of slightly better properties which are more suited for an international audience.

usually a quick in-and-out on the way to the Simien Mountains