We spent a day in Madagascar’s central highlands, in the historic heartland of the Betsileo people and a town often called the “Capital of Woodworking” for its renowned Zafimaniry art. Ambositra is a high-altitude city (1,342–1,422 m elevation) serving as the capital of...
Just a short distance from Antananarivo, Ambohimanga, the “Blue Hill” and the most sacred site of the Merina Kingdom in Madagascar, offers a unique glimpse into Madagascar’s royal and spiritual past. Once a stronghold of the Merina people and the base of King...
After a two-day drive, we finally arrived in Lodwar around 11 in the morning, but immediately continued for another hour to Kalokol to catch our boat to visit the lake. After complicated negotiations, we agreed to hire the fishing boat with a 40hp engine for 15,000 KES and jumped in...
The history of Aksum centres on a powerful kingdom in modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea that flourished from approximately the 1st to the 8th centuries AD. Aksum was a central commercial hub controlling trade routes connecting the Roman Empire, India, and the Red Sea, and its port of Adulis...
Today, we spend the whole day in Harar, a fortified historic city in eastern Ethiopia, in the Ch’erch’er Mountains, at an elevation of 1,800 metres. It is known as the “fourth holy city” of Islam and has been considered a major commercial centre in the Horn of...
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...
First, we stopped in town to pay our entrance fee to the village (1,700 ETB) and hire a local guide (1,000 ETB). Then, we slowly drove to the village, where we usually paid 20 to 100 ETB for a photo of adults, and the children received a lollipop. The Konso are a Cushitic-speaking ethnic...