Churches and Castles

Apologies for all the negativity in the last post, but truck-wide, I think we’ve all had enough of Ethiopia. Accentuating the positives however, I will focus on cool stuff to see here: Churches and castles.

Lalibela: Six hours from Bahir Dar is Lalibela, home of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and these awesome 12th century rock-hewn churches. They are enormous up close and the guide I think told us that they were built from the top down. The structure you see above the church was put in place to protect the church roofs from further decay.


These monolithic structures are pretty spectacular, especially when you feel how incredibly hard the rock is and the rather primitive tools they used to carve with back then–hammers and chisels. We started with Bet Medhane Alem, supposedly the biggest monolithic church in the world:


St. George is perhaps the most famous of the churches and is the one you’d see in Ethiopian postcards:



Girls were not allowed to visit the room that is said to house the tomb of King Lalibela (in Bete Golgotha) but this time, I don’t think it’s because we were devils. (Because of our devilishness, girls were not allowed to set foot on one of the monastery-containing islands of Lake Tana.)


Gondor/Gondar/Gonder: (Same thing as Bahir Dar and the funky spellings…) Gondor hosts the Royal Enclosure from where Emperors like Fasilides and Yohannes I reigned. I haven’t seen castles in quite a long time and these were refreshing to see. This is Fasilides’ Bath that, once a year, is filled to host a celebration for the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Pretty much any other time (like now), the bath is drained.


Ethiopia really is a beautiful country – probably one of the most beautiful I’ve seen in Africa. If it weren’t for rain and illness, I think I would have enjoyed it much more. It’s definitely worth a visit for its wonderful scenery and a myriad of interesting interactions you would undoubtedly have with the locals =)

We leave Gondor on August 8th and then bush camp until we cross into Sudan; we only have about six days there transiting through to Egypt. I’ll report from Khartoum if there are Internet facilities, and if not, from Aswan! Hope that wherever you are, you are enjoying the sun! :)