By plane

Aba Tenna D. Yilma International Airport is the second largest airport in Ethiopia. Ethiopian Airlines flies several times a day. There is also Air Djibouti and a few other smaller airlines of Middle Eastern countries. The unrecognized break-away Republic of Somaliland also has an airline that flies to Dire Dawa. 

By car

Dire Dawa is connected to Addis Ababa and the historical city of Harar by road, but fly or take train from Addis to get in to Dire Dawa.

By bus

There are three bus companies operating services linking Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa. The cheapest, least comfortable and slowest is the government local bus service. This can take anything from twelve to fifteen hours.

The most expensive is the Sky bus service, a luxury Chinese coach with toilets and a movie system, which takes around ten hours. The Salem bus is a reasonable middle option, which is much quicker than the local service but still a bus rather than a coach.

Tickets for government buses are bought in the main bus station. Sky bus tickets are sold from a discrete office in the Cornell area of town. Salem bus tickets are purchased at the Samrat Hotel opposite the Ras.

Harar is the other major destination. Small mini buses leave whenever they are full from the main bus station and take about an hour. It rarely takes longer than fifteen minutes for a minibus to be ready to leave.

By train

A brand new railway line has been inaugurated between Djibouti and Addis Abeba, reducing the journey time from days to a few hours. There is one passenger train every second day in each direction. It took the train 11 hours from Addis Ababa to Dire Dawa (July 2019). 

Bring enough food and water for your trip, since it seemed that the train restaurant ran out of everything in the middle of the trip to Dire Dawa (note that there are no shops nor restaurants at the station).

The ticket costs 616 ETB one way (July 2019) and can be bought at a ticket office located at La Gare lightrail stop (under the station), advisable a few days in advance. You will get a voucher which you should exchange for your ticket at the train station one hour before the departure. The train station is located outside of the city - ask at the ticket office for directions, since many taxi drivers do not know how to find it. Taxi to the train station - 300 ETB from Olympia.

What to See in Dire Dawa

Dire Dawa has a rich wealth of pre-historic cave paintings some of which have achieved international recognition. This has been through the efforts of the French and American Geologists. They have studied them several times in the last 75 years, while there are still other caves that have never been studied so far.

2nd World War Memorial

The remains of the British airmen and African soldiers who, during the second World War, fought besides the Ethiopian forces to liberate Ethiopia from Italian occupation.

The Old Railway Station

The railway line that reached Dire Dawa in 1902 is believed to have been the reason the city came into being in the first place. That is why the railway station is one of the destinations of tourists and other visitors coming to the city.

Kefira Market

Kefira is a traditional market place where one can see the colorful presentation of all people of the region in their cultural dresses. The presence of camels, donkeys, and the inevitable Gharris, two wheeled carts drown by a horse or a mule, gives it an aura of going back to medieval times.

Italian Mosque

This is one of largest mosques found in the city. It is called Italian Mosque because the Italians built it during their short-lived occupation of Ethiopia.

St. Michel’s Catholic Church

St. Michel’s Catholic Church was built over 115 years ago, and is located 26 kilometres from the city near a place called Beyo Awale. During the month of October Catholic believers from Dire Dawa, Harar, and other place annually gather at the church in there thousands.