This question is one of the many questions raised by visitors. We encourage visitor to tip off the assigned guide when they feel they are satisfied enough by the guiding service they received. And the amount of tip to be given once again depends on the level satisfaction you get too. This means that there is no simply calculation to as to what amount to give to the guide.
You need at least 9 days for a fair visit of the tribes and the colorful tribal markets. In designing itinerary for lower omo valley,, we have purposely followed the market days of the Omo Valley tribes. The markets fall on specific days of the week and are very important for you. This is because the markets of these tribes are the best meeting places where one can get ample opportunities to photograph the tribes’ colorful costumes, body paintings, different hairstyles, jewels, and local products.
The month of May is not good season to travel to the southern part of Ethiopia where road conditions are poor. Particularly, the months of April, May and June are the main rainy season for lower omo valley region. This makes the already poor dirt roads sticky muddy and impossible and rivers will be full of flood hindering any effort to cross them. So, apart from the above period, you can make trip to this region any given day.
Interested visitors are strongly advice to plan their holiday during the cool months between December and February. Therefore, you need to make your travel days as close as possible to the month of February. This is because the more the travel dates are pushed away, the more the temperature soars to unbearable degrees.
Yes, it is safe. The Afar region Culture and tourism ministry has been implementing safety measure by declaring and enforcing mandatory policemen escort policy. The military men will accompany visitors during their entire trip in this place. Depending on the size of the group there might be more however, for every visiting group the ministry assigns at least 2 to 3 policemen or militias.
SWIFT
A SWIFT code or more correctly a BIC is a formatted identifier used by parties in the SWIFT network - i.e the bank sending a message or the bank receiving a message. The format contains a country code and is unique to the institutions.
An example BIC would be something like BANKUS33 where US is the USA. The code can be a short 8 digit or longer 11 digit one.
IBAN - International Bank Account Number
The IBAN code is a standard aiming to create a way for the computer systems to check the correctness of the account numbers of bank customers. Whereas SWIFT BIC relates to financial institutions the IBAN relates to account holders from banks and corporations to individuals like you and me. There are several formats based on the countries where the account holder maintains their account. The format typically includes your account number, sort code, country code and check digits. Given the component parts a system can calculate the correct check digits and compare this to the quoted IBAN number. So a payment transfer request can reject what would end up with a payment being returned due to a wrong account number.
The bank who maintain the account are the ones who calculate the IBANs. And they should print the IBAN on the customer statement.
Example IBAN
GB49TEMN34567800040158 this can be pasted into online IBAN checkers and should validate though it is a fictitous one I created based on the UK style.
In short the BIC code just identifies the bank but the IBAN identifies your account with a bank.
My own room option
Recommended period
- Summer
- Winter
- Autumn
