Love adventure? Hate crowds of tourists? Philip Briggs highly recommends a visit to some of the least-known corners of an enigmatic and thoroughly intriguing African nation.
 Off the beaten track in Ethiopia… brazen tautology, surely? I mean, as holiday destinations go, isn’t Ethiopia about as non-mainstream as anywhere the other side of Timbuktu?
Well, yes and no. True enough, there must be kilometre-long stretches of Mediterranean beachfront that attract a greater volume of tourists than Ethiopia in its expansive entirety. And as for Ethiopian tourist facilities, sure enough they exist, but they do tend to be rather low-key ‐ frankly, even the most generous of hotel inspectors would struggle to justify slapping a multiple star rating on any accommodation establishment outside the capital.
Still, Ethiopia is no longer the unknown quantity it was some 15 years ago, when the overthrow of the oppressive Derg regime led to the abandonment of Soviet-like state control over all tourist movement within the country. Today, the names of Ethiopia’s most celebrated attractions ‐ Lalibela, Axum, Gonder, Blue Nile Falls and the Simien Mountains ‐ will doubtless be familiar to anyone with an interest in Africa. And those who have visited the country, or researched a trip there, are also probably aware of more offbeat but regularly visited attractions such as South Omo, the Bale Mountains, the ancient monasteries of Debre Damo and Debre Libanos, and the superlative rock-hewn churches of Tigrai.
To serial visitors such as myself, however, Ethiopia’s greatest strength as a travel destination its inexhaustibility. In common with the better known South Africa, Tanzania or Egypt, this is the sort of country a hardy traveller could spend months exploring and still return home with a substantial ‘to do’ list. And, more perhaps than anywhere else in Africa, Ethiopia offers a wealth of worthwhile, affordable and reasonably accessible sites where the odds of bumping into another tourist are as good as zero. Whittled down from a shortlist of 30-plus locations, what follows is a rather arbitrary but representative sampling of off-the-beaten-track highlights in this magnificently diverse, idiosyncratic and underrated country.
Guassa Plateau
Perched at an altitude of 3200m in the remote Menz Highlands, the 110km2 Guassa Plateau is one of Africa’s largest alpine moorland ecosystems, and it has functioned as a kind of community reserve for four centuries. Bisected by the obscure public road connecting Tarmabir to Mehal Meda, the windswept heather-strewn plateau is of great interest to wildlife lovers for hosting the most easily observed population of the critically endangered Ethiopian wolf along the northern circuit. The magnificent golden-maned gelada monkey is almost certain to be seen, while 14 endemic bird species are present, including the globally threatened Ankobar serin.
Dilla
The bustling agricultural town of Dilla lies on the southern Rift Valley escarpment amidst misty forested hills that produce some of Ethiopia’s finest coffee. Several worthwhile archaeological sites lie in the vicinity, notably Tutu Fela and Tututi, where a combined 1500 engraved stelae were erected as grave markers between the 9th and 12th centuries. The taller stelae at Tututi (up 7.5 metres) have mostly toppled over or been incorporated into newer structures (one rather ignominiously props up a rustic latrine) but the Tutu Fela stelae are nearly all still standing. Also of interest, 8km out of town at Manchiti, is a superb 3000-year-old frieze of rock engravings (pictured overleaf) depicting fifty stylised cattle.
Danakil Depression
This rain-starved stretch of the northern Rift Valley dips to a frazzled nadir of 116 metres below sea level at Dallol (pictured overleaf) – officially the lowest point on the African continent and the hottest place on earth. Tectonically hyperactive, the area is studded with active volcanoes such as the continuously eruptive Erta Ale, whose crater hosts a century-old lava lake. Elsewhere, the inhospitable lunar landscape is pockmarked with malodorous hot springs, multihued sulphurous deposits and solidified black lava flows, while the local economy depends on a series of salt-encrusted basins deposited back when the Danakil was a marine extension of the Red Sea. The Afar who work the salt mines, though staunchly traditionalist, no longer welcome strangers by lopping off their testicles – but their homeland remains a truly challenging destination, accessible only by 4x4 or (for the truly intrepid) by hooking up with one of the regular salt caravans that run there from Mekele.
Menegasha and Wenchi
Only an hour’s drive west of Addis Ababa, the magnificent 2500ha Menegasha National Forest, protected by imperial decree since the 15th century, swathes the slopes of a 3385m extinct volcano called Wechecha. Mysteriously neglected by travellers, despite boasting affordable accommodation and a network of walking trails, this highland forest of juniper, hagenia and podocarpus trees offers those with limited time in Ethiopia an opportunity to see typical highland wildlife such as black-and-white colobus and Menelik’s bushbuck alongside a good range of endemic forest birds. It’s worth combining a visit with one to Lake Wenchi (pictured on page 95), which is set within the crater of an 3386m tall extinct volcano and hosts an interesting medieval island monastery.
Gambella
Best visited in the spirit of travel for its own sake, Gambella lies at the end of a long, rough road connecting Addis Ababa to the swampy Nile Basin via the lushly forested western highlands. An anomaly among Ethiopian towns, it has a leafy, languid and decidedly sweaty setting alongside the wide Baro River, evoking misplaced visions of Conradian Central Africa, as underscored by the exceptionally dark and ritually scarred skins of its pipe-smoking Anuwak and Nuer inhabitants (pictured above left). Formerly the terminus of a British shipping route connecting Ethiopia to Khartoum via the Nile, Gambella today is the archetypal tropical backwater, one whose richly absorbing sense of place more than compensates for a dearth of formal sightseeing opportunities.
Babile
Situated 30km from the walled Muslim city of Harar, Babile lies in a desolate landscape of red earth, low acacia scrub, chimney-like termite mounds and gravity-defying rock formations that appear to be one puff away from collapsing. The village houses the headquarters for the Babile Elephant Sanctuary, whose migratory population of 150 elephants is assigned to the endemic race orleansi. Despite its proximity to Harar, this reserve is little known and totally undeveloped for tourism, but the elephants are quite easily located with the help of a ranger between June and September or from mid-November to early March, when they congregate close to specific water sources. Babile may gain greater recognition should plans to relocate the headquarters from Babile to Harar ever be translated into action.
Sekota
Straddling a little-used back route between Lalibela and Axum, this hilltop settlement of ancient stone houses once served as capital of the delightfully named Kingdom of Wag, which peaked in importance in the 10th century. Only 6km out of town lies Wukro Meskel Kristos (pictured right), a near-monolithic rock-hewn church claimed locally to date to the 6th century, which would make it the oldest such excavation in the country. Spookily, an adjacent cave is populated by several dozen mummies of agonised expression and mysterious origin – depending on who’s doing the telling, Axumite administrators carried there by angels, former Kings of Wag exhumed from their original graves for reburial in a smaller casket, or sinful priests struck dead by God.
Hayk
A contender for the most underrated accessible stopover on Ethiopia’s northern circuit, the small town of Hayk is named after the lake that lies immediately to its north, an ideal spot for casual rambling and highly rewarding to birdwatchers. A thickly wooded peninsula houses the male-only 9th century monastery of Hayk Istafanos, which became the most powerful religious centre in Ethiopia under the influence of Iyasus Moa, a 13th century monk whose busy daily routine included kissing the ground a full 10,000 times. Hoarded away in the treasury are several remarkable antiquities, ranging from a heavy stone cross (pictured below) that belonged to Iyasu Moa to hollow sacrificial stones confirming legends that the site served as a pagan shrine prior to its monastic conversion.
Yabello
This minor route focus on the asphalt road to the Kenyan border is legendary among birdwatchers as the place to seek out the ultra-localised Streseman’s bush crow and white-tailed swallow. Both can be observed in the acacia scrub of the nearby Yabello Game Sanctuary, along with the endemic Swayne’s hartebeest and various other dry-country ungulates. Twitching aside, the arid badlands around Yabello are very different in character to highland Ethiopia, and are inhabited by semi-nomadic Borena pastoralists (pictured on page 96). The Borena ‘singing well’ at Dublock is worth a diversion from Yabello, as is the ink-black saline crater lake known as Ili Sod (Salt House).
Awramba
A short but bumpy side trip from the surfaced Bahir Dar-Gonder road leads to this unique weaving cooperative, founded in 1985 under the doctrine that education and hard work are more reliable alleviants of rural poverty than the traditional placebo of prayer. It’s the only overtly atheistic society I’ve encountered in Africa, affording communal pride of place not to a mosque or church, but to a school and library – indeed the village chairman caused quite a stir when he appeared on national television espousing his beliefs to a nation of bemused theophiles. Foreign visitors are welcome – no fee asked, no begging permitted – but you can contribute by buying a handspun cotton or wool artefact for half what it would cost elsewhere.
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