Ancient Abyssinia & the Blue Nile

Nothing quite prepares the traveller to Ethiopia for the breathtaking beauty of the country, its remarkably ancient history and its sheer diversity of peoples. A fiercely independent and highly idiosyncratic country, Ethiopia has never been successfully conquered or colonised and it boasted for a while the most powerful empire in Africa. Indeed, Ethiopia viewed itself as an empire until the second half of the 20th-century when Emperor Haile Selassie claimed unbroken lineal descent from an alleged liaison between the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon.

Christianity, introduced as early as the 4th-century, took strong root and still functions as a strong and socially cohesive force in the Christian areas. Amongst its more dramatic achievements are the eleven 12th-century rockhewn subterranean churches of Lalibela and the ancient monasteries of Debre Libanos and Lake Tana. Its major claim to significance within the Christian world however is its assertion that it holds the original Ark of the Covenant under guard and away from view at Axum. A further Ethiopian architectural curiosity are the castles of Gondar, constructed during the 17th to 19th centuries.

Scenically, dramatic mountains give way to the Great Rift Valley, to the forbidding desertlike wilderness of the Danakil Depression and Ethiopia’s largest lake, Tana, which feeds the Blue Nile. Recent political and social turmoil has perhaps obscured the fact that Ethiopia offers the more adventurous traveller an experience unlike any other and a welcome from a generous and warm people.