I’ve decided I might become a gold prospector. I think it’s in my blood! Not only did I spend the last week glued to California Gold Rush (an incredibly addictive iPhone game), I have also just finished reading In Search of King Solomon’s Mines by Tahir Shah. What a great book! I bought it to give me a taste of modern Ethiopia, but it seems it may have also given me a taste for gold…
I didn’t know, but Shah also made a TV programme about his adventures in the Horn of Africa. I’ve tracked down some clips. They’re good fun.
The first is in Harar where he meets the city’s famous Hyena Men:
This next clip takes you straight to an illegal gold mine in Southern Ethiopia. The scenes look almost Biblical as people dig through the earth with their bare hands in search of even the tiniest speck of gold:
In this next video, Shah ventures up a table top mountain where a solitary monastery exists in isolation. The only way up is via a dodgy old rope winched by an elderly monk. Shah hopes this monastery holds the secret to the location of King Solomon’s mines:
The last video takes you to Western Ethiopia - quite near my where I’ll be heading. This is where Shah believes King Solomon kept his famous mines - an incredible bounty left undiscovered for millenia:
