Excerpts From Ethiopia

Imagine a people untouched by time.

Imagine rocky canyons, sharp escarpments, towering mountains stretching into infinity. Imagine a lake so big that you can sail across it for days.

Imagine tiny, centuries-old monasteries on secret islands where no woman has put foot for hundreds of years.

Imagine glowing, brilliantly coloured medieval frescoes on ancient church walls, depicting saints, sinners, sloe-eyed angels, complacent Madonnas, pious prelates and screaming peasants being dragged off to hell by black demons.

Imagine a rest house, once the former haunt of decadent fascist Italian generals, with elegant wrought iron garden chairs and flowering plants in shaggy profusion, which later became a communist HQ complete with a 70s brown velveteen lounge suite and plastic flowers, where the waitress is called Revolution.

Imagine a 17-century Royal Enclosure with a 32m-high rose-red castle with turrets, towers and ramparts.

Imagine churches, one as big as an Egyptian temple, buried deep beneath the earth’s surface, hewn out of a single rock.

Imagine a country where time has stood still since its mighty Queen gave birth to King Solomon’s son, and founded a royal dynasty.

Imagine deep valleys, black folded rocks like frozen glaciers dipping to the valley floor. Imagine a tiny hominid, called Lucy, our common ancestor, who roamed this place 3.3 million years ago. (Read the rest of my article on Ethiopia in the January/February issue of Travel magazine.)

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