Blue Nile Falls

These are the falls on the Blue Nile, about 32 km downstream of Bahir Dar and Lake Tana. The Blue Nile joins the White Nile at Khartoum to form The Nile. They are called Tis Abaye in Amharic, which means "smoking water", or "smoking Nile" depending on who you believe. It was quite spectacular. You walk for about 20 minutes, before you see the falls. James Bruce was here in 1770, and claimed to be the first European to find the falls and the source of the Nile. Many of his claims were doubted when he returned to Europe. Some of them were incredible; some were lies. He would have had to cross a Portugese stone bridge to get to the falls, and locals, whose language he spoke, would have had plenty of stories about the Portugese missionaries who were kicked out of the country, or killed, long before he arrived.

I'm still mystified as to why the source of the Nile was so sought after for so many years. Wasn't it bound to be a little stream somewhere?