Eritrea

Harry spent three days in Asmara with Kieran in 2025, shortly after the country began opening to tourism.

Observations

From Tourists Don’t Visit this Secretive African Dictatorship 🇪🇷

• Access: the visa used to cost $1,000 and tourism was nearly impossible; since the war ended the country has opened up and tourism is slowly starting. Immigration still took nearly two hours. Harry recommends the guide Phil (eritreavisit.com), who also arranged the permit the tank graveyard requires.
• State control: one ruler since independence in 1991, state-only media, indefinite military service (women serve too), no free movement out of the country, and filming bans that surface without warning. Harry, having just visited North Korea, calls the “North Korea of Africa” label overstated — similar, but less tightly controlled.
• Connectivity: no ATMs, no SIM cards or data; wi-fi exists only in a few hotels and internet cafés (15 nakfa/hour), at speeds too slow for a speed test to load, with VPNs needed for most services. Plan to be offline.
• Safety: the standout. Unlocked bikes left outside a market went untouched; Harry walked at night with camera and pizza feeling completely safe — safer than London, in his and Kieran’s estimation.
• History: Italian colonisation left pizza, espresso, gelato, cinemas, and art deco; British administration followed; UN federation with Ethiopia turned into annexation and a 30-year independence war costing over 300,000 lives, won by underfunded fighters who captured and reused Soviet-funded Ethiopian tanks.
• People and culture: quiet, kind, multilingual (the football-shirt shopkeeper spoke five languages; schoolkids learn everything in English), proud and patriotic, with cycling as the national sport and Premier League football on every bar screen. Locals told Harry the country is now developing fast — “come back in two years and everything is changed”.
• Money and costs: hotel $60/night; airport taxi $20 (from video – unverified); bike rental 200 nakfa/day; large pizza 160 nakfa ($8–10 (from video – unverified)); draft beer about $1 a pint — among the cheapest in the world.
• Quirks: only carbonated water is sold (a plastic-saving measure, Harry was told); some bars serve no beer before 7pm.