Luxury Vacations in Ethiopia

Religious devotion knows no bounds in Ethiopia's soaring sandstone Gheralta Mountains, where pilgrims scale near-vertical slopes to reach precipitous churches and worship the heavens. Much easier to reach are the subterranean altars of Lalibela, filled with a white-robed congregation during January’s Genna Festival, when candle-lit all-night vigils are held.

Firmly entrenched in everyday life, the roots of Christianity connect to a biblical civilisation as influential as the Egyptians, centred around the city of Aksum. Surrounded by towering obelisks and 6th-century palace ruins, devotees believe the original Ark of the Covenant is hidden here. But history in this East African country, dubbed the cradle of mankind, extends much further; human fossils recovered in volcanic valleys are estimated to be 230,000 years old. Fired by the earth’s core, epic landscapes and endemic species belong to the beginning of time. Gelada monkeys scamper between the meadows and high pinnacle peaks of the Simian Mountains, while Ethiopian wolves – the world’s rarest canid – cling to the Afro-alpine moorlands of the Sanetti Plateau.