Adventure In Ethiopia
THERE was a time, not so long ago, when an adventurous vacation was simply any involving a passport, but today, longer-haul, less mainstream destinations like Ethiopia are rising stars in holiday brochures.
For older generations, Michael Buerk’s harrowing 1984 famine report may spring to mind.
But as we discovered, having spent a month travelling in the cradle of civilisation, the events of 36 years ago are thankfully long past.
Harvests have been good and the economy is on the rise.
This huge landlocked African country is staggeringly beautiful, fascinating and frustrating – all at the same time.
Most package tours try to avoid road transport, as distances can be huge and most highways double as cattle-droving tracks.
Fortunately, Ethiopian Airlines have an extensive and reliable network of flights, making short holidays viable, although a fortnight can seem too brief to appreciate this country.
A nine-hour flight arrives in Addis Ababa in time to catch an internal flight towards one of four major destinations.
Few visitors venture into the Danikil Depression, whose volcanic landscape often experiences 50-plus temperatures.
Instead, visitors can fly east towards Harar, the ancient walled trading town and one of Islam’s holiest cities.
They will find it unlike most of Ethiopia.
Here, you can stay in a traditional home, with walls decorated by tightly woven baskets and colourful enamelled bowls.
Tiered areas, carpeted with rugs, were separated for family members, while
Neil McAllister is captivated by this African country.
the head of the household sat opposite the door.
South of Addis, a flight to Jinka opens up a totally different culture, tribal and bewildering, where traditions survive despite the modern world’s encroachment.
Most villages comprise little more than wood and mud huts with few opportunities for the occupants to earn money.
Turmi Market is a riot of colour and costume, but if you carry a camera ensure you have a pocket of small notes handy.
The rise of tourism has encouraged beautifully adorned locals to charge 5 or 10 birr (12 or 15p) for each photo.
In some villages, a set fee of 200 birr (£5.17) allows visitors to snap away, the money being equally distributed.
Body adornment in the form of patterns formed by scarring is common to many tribes.
Many Mursi people in Mago National Park still practise the tradition of piercing and stretching their bottom lip to insert plates – you’d think that would make eating and drinking near impossible!
Other tribes, like the Karo, employ less permanent adornment in the form of body painting.
Flights north from Addis lead to the mainly Christian highlands, where the altitude means bearable temperatures and no mosquitoes, though the fierce sun requires a hat.
This is a land of mountains, monasteries and ancient churches which every saint’s day are filled with white-shrouded devotees.
Worshippers can spill out on to surrounding hillsides, creating a scene reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount.
A flight to Axum, the oldest town south of the Sahara, would have saved Indiana Jones a great deal of trouble, as a shrine within Maryan Tsion Cathedral supposedly contains the Ark of the Covenant.
It is occupied by one priest who only leaves upon his demise; he is the only person ever to see the box containing the Ten Commandments, until his successor makes another life-long vigil.
Sometimes spelled Aksum, this has been a royal town for millennia. Its regal residents are commemorated by tall obelisks.
Some are plain, others beautifully decorated and, since the third-century Remhai Stele fell and broke into pieces, we are able to admire the work of craftsmen who fashioned the granite so beautifully.
To avoid long drives, flying back to Lalibela allows you to fly on to
Bahir Dar, to explore Lake Tana’s monasteries, view
the Nile Falls, travel on to Gonda, or walk the Simien Mountains.
Lalibela is the country’s most visited town, famous for churches carved from the living rock – with the help of angels, they say.
Planned by King Lalibela in the fifth century, it supposedly reflects the layout of Jerusalem.
The surrounding hills contain more ancient sites, so many visitors stay for four days or longer.
All churches bar one are covered to protect them from being damaged by the elements, although the work erecting canopies did more harm than good, when one was dropped on to a church roof.
St George’s is iconic, as the cross-shaped structure is uncovered, but beware the 45-foot drop.
It’s reached via a narrow passage, and the saint himself is said to have
Getting Around
visited on horseback, leaving hoof prints in the walls.
The chances of visiting when churches are filled with worshippers is strong, but spray your ankles with insect repellent, as fleas inhabit many church carpets.
We arrived before sunrise at Bet Gabriel-Rafael on the day celebrating the Archangel Gabriel, to discover a packed church.
The three-hour mass was already two hours in when we arrived, but it was a delight to experience the priest’s Amharic prayers which, although we couldn’t understand, were strangely moving.
An hour later, our guide whispered, “The service is over,” but worshippers loitered for blessings and to pick up holy water or injera – a traditional sourdough flatbread.
Excursions out of town can involve hillside walks.
There is one you can take to Yemrehanna Kristos Monastery, where there is a church inside a cave.
Pilgrims, many of whom had walked for days to reach here, filled the cavern.
At the back of the cave is a charnel house where lie the bones of 10,000 devotees who made their final pilgrimage to the holy site.
A road with hairpin bends leads out of town, up the slopes of Mount Abune Yoseph, pausing en route to Asheton Maryam Monastery at a little coffee-house.
Here, as in much of the country, a traditionally dressed woman roasts beans, then grinds them and brews small cups of delicious black Buna.
Ethiopia is the home of coffee, and this ceremony in someone’s home can take many hours, with each part of the process filled