Bahir Dar

Bahir Dar is a modern small town on the southeastern shore of Lake Tana in the north of Ethiopia. It hosts the fabled Blue Nile falls, the beautiful highland Lake Tana and 14th-century island monastic churches.
It lays on a altitude of 1850 meters and has a very nice center with wide lanes, surrounded by palm trees, lots of gardens and tropical flowers and plant.
From Bahir Dar you have to explore some of the ancient monasteries that have been built around Lake Tana or on the many islands in the lake. There are 37 islands dotted all over the lake and 30 of them house churches and monasteries of great cultural and historical interest. They contain beautiful manuscripts, objects of worship and crosses dating back to the dawn of Christianity.

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LALIBELA ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES

“By vast expense and hideous pain, the rock a church became”, wrote a historian in the 17th century. Lalibela is also described as the “African Petra” or “New Jerusalem“. Undoubtedly the 12 rock hewn churches, whose construction started during the reign of king Lalibela (13th century), are one of the foremost wonders of the world.

The legend tells that Lalibela received a heavenly vision and angels helped to finish the work in a short time. But it is more likely that Lalibela received his inspiration during his exile in Jerusalem, which gave him a longing to built a kind of “new Jerusalem” in Ethiopia, accessible for all Ethiopians.

Lying in the rugged Lasta mountains it is still a rather isolated place and the little town has not changed since the building of the churches 700 years ago.

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SEMIEN MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK

Located in north of Gondar along the road to Axum, the Simien Mountains offer a uniquely wonderful sight: high peaks and deep gorges, valleys and rivers, golden barley field’s as far as the eye can see.

The highest mountain (4439 meters) is Ras Dejen, hut a lot of the peaks are above 4000 meters. Only a few roads on the Simien Mountains are reachable by car, but the entire area is crossed by tracks used by locals to travel from village to village or to lead their animals to pasture. This makes it the ideal place for trekking: you can walk through for days. along easy paths, occasionally passing through villages amid breath-taking views, frequently encountering colonies of ‘gelada ‘baboons and, at nightfall, among the steep gorges, sighting Waliyas and, frequently, the Ethiopian Wolf. .

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AXUM

Axum is an ancient town in northern Ethiopia. It lies at an elevation of about 2100 meters just west of Adwa in Tigrai region. Once the seat of the kingdom of Axum, it is now a tourist town and religious center best known for its antiquity’s tall granite obelisks, 126 in all, stand (or lie broken) in the central square. Once measuring 33 meters, now fallen, is said to be the tallest obelisk ever erected. The obelisks range from nearly plain slabs to intricately inscribed pillars. Door and window-like shapes are carved into some of the pillars, giving them the appearance of slender buildings.

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ROCK-HEWN CHURCHES OF TIGRAY

Hidden from the rest of the world, the highlands of Ethiopia have hundreds of rock-hewn churches and monasteries, with all their mysteries and precious relics.
Before 1966, the rock-hewn churches of Tigray have been described by the British academic Ivy Pearce as the greatest of the historical-cultural heritages of the Ethiopian people. Most of these architectural gems remain in active used today, several house paintings and other sacred medieval artifacts, and every one of them is imbued with and aura of spirituality that seeps from the very rock into which they are carved. .

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Gonder

Gondar is 50 kilometers north of Lake Tana, 783 kilometers north of Addis Ababa and nestles in the foothills of the Semien mountains at an altitude of 2200 meters above sea level. Gondar, founded by King Fasiledes in 1636, was the capital of Ethiopia for nearly 200 years. This fact is reflected by the number of palace buildings in the castle compound.

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