There’s nowhere like it on the planet for wildlife, wild lands and rich traditions that endure. Prepare to fall in love.
After some heavy searching, we finally found Dhagah Kureh, located about 45 kilometres northwest of Hargeisa. It is a significant Neolithic rock art site, known for its extensive ancient paintings that provide insight into the lives of early pastoralist communities. Situated among granite...
For centuries, the church was extremely remote, requiring a long and arduous journey on foot or by mule. We had no mule, so we took a car and drove through villages controlled by the Fano militia to reach the parking area, from which we still had to hike for 30 minutes up a steep path to...
In the morning, we paid a pretty adventurous entrance fee (🎟️ 100 USD / 15,000 ETB) to see the Lalibela rock churches. The complex was built in the late 12th and early 13th centuries under King Gebre Meskel Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty to create a “New Jerusalem” in Ethiopia...
We took a short flight from Gondar to Lalibela due to the situation in the Amhara region, where the ethno-nationalist Amhara Fano militia controls the road between the two cities. Before it was known as Lalibela, the town was called Roha (or Warwar) and served as the capital of the Zagwe...
The whole afternoon, we spent at Gondar Castle, or the Fasil Ghebbi, a fortified royal enclosure built in the 17th century (🎟️1,000 ETB). Before 1636, Ethiopian rulers used nomadic, mobile capitals. Emperor Fasilides settled in Gondar, a previously obscure village, establishing it as the...
Emperor Fasilides established Gondar as the permanent capital of the Ethiopian Empire in 1636, and it served as Ethiopia’s capital until 1855, a period marked by the construction of magnificent castles and a flourishing culture, and ending with the Zemene Mesafint (Era of the...