Ethio Backpacker Tours

Not well managed and will no respect to the environment

We booked the 3 day Danakil depression tour with Ethio Backpacker Tours.

Danakil depression is an incredible place, definitely worth visiting. The sights we visited during the tour were great, and our guide Aman was friendly and very attentive. Our driver was great too.
It should also be noted that unlike the rest of the group, we had to finish our tour in Semera. The guide managed to arrange a special agenda for us on the last day so that we didn't miss anything. We are very grateful for that. And the food was also very good.

However, there were many things we didn't like.

1. Gashaw told us the group size will be 15 people max, in reality because of some last minute bookings it was about 30. Which is a huge difference, we would not book it if we knew we'd be in a crowd.

2. On the first day of the tour there was some fuel issue which caused us some 4-5 hour delay. As we learned later, it could have been prevented.

3. The camping sites are very dirty with plastic bottles and other garbage. It's painful to see the nature being treated this way. Nobody seems to care.

4. Travelling long distances with 5 people per car (4 passengers and driver) is quite uncomfortable.

5. The sleeping places in one of the camps were right next to the kitchen, so when the chef started cooking at 2 am, everybody woke up. Almost nobody had proper sleep that night.

My impression is that the operator just took on more clients than they could manage properly. So maybe it was an exception and not a rule.

Throwing out plastic bottles and not cleaning the camp sites is a serious issue though. I hope they will start paying attention to this.