Home to the earliest hominid yet discovered, to spectacular churches hewn from rock or built into sheer mountain cliffs, to a unique cuisine, great jazz and some of the continent’s most remarkable indigenous groups, Ethiopia is a proud, independent country quite unlike any other in Africa.
One of the last countries to open up to the outside world, it is the only African country never to be colonised by Europeans and has a fascinating history and a plethora of UNESCO World Heritage Sites to discover. Ethiopia’s Christian heritage predates much of Europe, and you can often feel as if you have stepped into the pages of the Old Testament. Add in some unusual and rather magical wildlife experiences, and you have all the ingredients for an incomparably thrilling and often eye-opening adventure.
"We can allow you to access extremely remote and astonishingly beautiful locations such as the Tigraian rock churches or the Afar communities of the Danakil Depression."
The Explorations Company has been designing specialist travel itineraries in Ethiopia for years. While the situation has improved somewhat over the last decade, the lack (for the most part) of quality accommodation, a dramatically beautiful but convoluted geography, long distances on ever narrower and more bone-shaking tracks mean that visiting Ethiopia can be a challenge. As a destination, it is therefore better suited to a certain breed of traveller not looking for conventional luxuries.
Creating a successful trip to Ethiopia requires a different approach. In remote bush areas, we can build a private pop-up camp for you complete with a private chef and comfortable bathroom facilities. We can deploy helicopters that knit together the high-quality lodges that exist, as well as allow you to access extremely remote and astonishingly beautiful locations such as the Tigraian rock churches or the Afar communities of the Danakil Depression, which might otherwise take days to reach by road. Above all, we can bring in experts to enrich your travel–a leading anthropologist to deepen your understanding of the Mursi or Suri tribes; a biblical scholar to illuminate sacred Coptic manuscripts; a primatologist who has made gelada baboons their lifelong passion; or, for a complete change of pace, how about improving your running technique with an Ethiopian Olympic champion?
A wonderful introduction to Ethiopia would be to start in the capital Addis Ababa, travel north to Lake Tana to explore its island monasteries and the source of the Blue Nile, continue to the fortress town of Gondar, before spending time marvelling at the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela. Finish by visiting the holy city of Axum and the astonishing cliff churches of Tigray. For those with more time or specialised interests, we wholeheartedly recommend hiking in the jagged Simien Mountains, tracking down rare spices and Abyssinian wolves in the Bale Mountains, and spending time with the astonishing tribal communities of the Omo Valley including the Mursi with their remarkable lip plates, the Hamer body painters, and the crocodile-hunting Dassanech.
Despite the diversity and depth of its culture, Ethiopia has until now been ignored, relatively speaking, by tourism. Perhaps this is because it does not have the abundant wildlife found elsewhere in countries like Kenya, Tanzania or Botswana. What it does mean, though, is that you’ll have Ethiopia’s many splendours pretty much to yourself.
