We mostly chose to travel by car to cover more ground. Some places were very peaceful (Dire Dawa, Bale…), but it only took us one day out of Addis before deciding to play "spot an AK-47" (a franchise based on our "spot a bunker" game in Albania). The only place outside the capital were we counted only one total was Lalibela, despite staying two and half days. We would easily see a dozen AK-47s every single day, plus an uncountable number of rifles from the 1930s and 1940s. Afar was not an outlier in that regard, despite pretty chill overall. Tigray I also liked and we had only positive interactions there, especially in and around Axum. I also wanted to mention that I hold nothing against Tigrayan militias, especially given what unfolded a few months later. Militias did not marginal by any means in Tigray, though we may simply have chanced upon some kind of operation to see as many as we did. They didn't seem particularly hateful or prejudiced against us in any case and we never got to talk with any due to the language barrier. Even the Oromo militias that arrested us were okay to be honest. Bigotry and supremacist thinking was something that I found mostly among Amharas from the capital capable of expressing themselves in English and the profound spite and mob-like violence was mostly an Oromia thing. We got our cheap and battered 4x4 stoned four times in Oromia villages for instance. It was so weird going from a place where we would get thrown rocks at to the very next where kids would be curious and nice, play football with them or letting them play with our camera, drinking tella or sharing qat with adults, etc.

Returning to the Afar, the story about tourists being gunned down was told to me by an embassy source, but it may have been unrelated, older than stated, or even plain false (the seeds of doubt are now sown in my mind!). The whole thing being at least in part a mafia protection racket was something I was told by the folk who set it up for us, however, and something that felt realistic at the time given that we were targeted for random things like trying to cross a government bridge without also paying for the barge that it replaced. I actually tend to believe that there would be more attacks if insecurity were the cause. Clearly, few travellers would go up to Dallol and then cheap out by refusing to pay 50 or 100 bucks for protection, especially seeing all those weapons around them.