Harar Half-Day Tours: Top 5 Unique Experiences

If you only have a little bit of time, Harar, Ethiopia that boasts a history as captivating as its walled city, still packs an amazing punch. Half-day tours are just a remarkable option to soak in its distinctive blend of culture, history, and, yep, even hyenas. Instead of trying to figure it out yourself, why don’t you get familiar with the very tours people are raving about, right? We’ve got a roundup, so too it’s almost like you have a roadmap, of what’s good out there. I mean, like, if you’re keen on roaming markets, peering at mosques or having hyenas eat out of your hand. Now, that part? Totally optional!

1. The Historic Walled City Walking Tour

Walking tours, you know, like they offer an introduction into the heart of Harar, Ethiopia, very known locally as Jugol, so too it’s almost like it’s totally enclosed by old stone walls. A guide tells you all about the city’s vibrant history, still like he’s going to drop names like, it’s almost like, Arthur Rimbaud because it’s almost like there is a poet who spent time there and a ton about its role as a trading center and a spiritual place. It’s an interesting way to start your time just by stepping into a totally different age, actually. When exploring the five historic gates and the blend of 82 mosques and 102 shrines that it holds inside its old walls you may feel like you’re traveling to the past. It typically gives a taste of everything Harar. From that historic city, it will almost give you everything you could imagine about their customs and belief.

2. The Hyena Feeding Spectacle

If you want something pretty different, there’s this after-dark hyena feeding happening just outside of the city walls that is, anyway, basically famous! And? Guys hand-feed hyenas, yeah, those hyenas, alright, with just sticks. We usually don’t think about how old the tradition is or think about whether it really, really does determine, like, a harmonious relation between humans and animals or if it’s just simply cool to look at something that sounds so crazy and see it actually happen. Even if this looks, in some respects, so different, what could happen, there’s local families, yeah, they do it, just, typically for generations now, so the hyenas and people have a kind of bond, anyway. This event might be a top-of-the-list unique experience that you wouldn’t experience anywhere else. People typically see Harar because of their amazing interaction just as a wildlife tour that’s unique in their community.

3. A Coffee Tour & Roasting Experience

Ethiopia is almost the very birth-nation of coffee, isn’t it? This means, arguably, that while you’re in Harar, it’s worth finding yourself just on some local coffee tour. See the whole coffee routine, it is, arguably, from bush to cup, it turns out, as a matter of fact, when it’s freshly, yeah, roasted at a community business and, yes, ground with so much care. Find out, like, that people take a bit of pleasure in taking these things slowly and respectfully; this tour can be an enriching time of day, just in terms of aroma and also history and culture. Just try and feel yourself actually understanding how deep it goes and maybe taking part. If you visit and actually roast these coffee beans together it’s a big custom to get to learn just in your half-day tours and even taste the very organic tastes. Not only that but you get a bit to support local harari coffee bean growers through community experience.

4. The Harari Cultural Immersion Tour

And yet this tour is about stepping inside a local family’s existence to, well, it’s that it helps get to the point where you can admire their old, great, yeah, very way of being. It actually means finding out about old customs or how local art and culture came around or even what the regional dress really is all about; typically there is time involved. In some aspects you might be sipping Harari tea together with the family while listening as people talk to you about old stories. If you’re so lucky to participate you will definitely discover a place that, just a little, totally brings in your own awareness, now this can change everything just as you start learning everything of their very beautiful lifestyle culture here.

5. The “Arthur Rimbaud in Harar” Literary Tour

Do you remember the super good poet Arthur Rimbaud I told you about, earlier? Instead of seeing a person by reading, like, maybe his works in college, why don’t you check the towns out, still following around places in Harar that really actually touched him? Now this tour involves not just learning the stuff of Rimbaud’s lifetime as an entrepreneur living away somewhere but also an investigation of Harar by what he liked to talk about and everything he saw. His spirit of exploration just makes things seem bigger somehow because, let’s just say, it almost takes your whole experience over the limits. If this thing appeals to you then you totally may actually feel a bigger closeness there to somebody who, arguably, already knew how important art and seeing the earth may truly be.