Somaliland: Go for the Sun, Stay for the Camels

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go for the Sun Stay for the CamelsDown memory lane

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

A couple of weeks ago, I posted an item on this blog encouraging American students to dip their toes into Africa by visiting Ethiopia as tourists. So if you want to go in as far as your ankle, come here to Somaliland — where you can buy a lovely camel like this one for about $700. The capital, Hargeisa, has a great camel market — the kind of thing you don’t find in, say, London or Rome.

If you do make it to Ethiopia, try a side trip to Somaliland. It’s an easy flight from Addis Ababa and a good way to see a conservative Muslim society that is friendly and stable. It also apparently has great (and of course completely undiscovered) beaches, although I never visited them.

This article was originally posted in http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com in 2007/03/01/