Everyone knows it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Of course it is. Notwithstanding, Ethiopia is a heaven that a tourist can enter, relatively easily, in 7½ hours, direct from Heathrow. Perhaps unsurprisingly, you’ll find the camels got there first.
We landed after an all-night flight to chaotic Addis Ababa. In an attempt to establish our cultural bearings at lightning speed, we blundered in a daze through the sounds and smells of its vast, sprawling street market; rushed around two dusty museums; saw one of Haile Selassie’s bathrooms (the blue one); ate the first of countless plates of injera bread, the Ethiopian staple, with our fingers (vegan superfood heaven); saw the remains of what was once the world’s most ancient hominid, Lucy (so called because archaeologists were listening to Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds when they found her); and stumbled exhausted into a small jazz club late at night, only to be rewarded, almost unbelievably, by the sight of the father of Ethiopian jazz, Mulatu Astatke, casually jamming about 10ft away with a band of young protégés.
Still trembling from overstimulation and lack of sleep, we flew on to the ancient capital, Gondar, with its fairy-tale castles, black peppercorn trees and endless circling tuk-tuks. Sitting still for a moment in a cafe on the town roundabout, we watched children carrying king-size mattresses, three deep, on their heads through the traffic, and drank coffee and ate samosas that tasted so good, it was as though we’d never consumed either before in our lives.
In Gondar, we learnt that the Ethiopian royal family line went unbroken from the night the Queen of Sheba slept with King Solomon to the day the Rastafarian god-emperor Haile Selassie was deposed by a Marxist coup in 1974.
The history of this ancient landlocked country is so intertwined with its aural tradition that fact and fiction are often indistinguishable. You probably already know that the black manes of Selassie’s lions are the style model for the Jamaican dreadlock. But did you also know that those same lions would always salute the emperor when he returned home to his palace in Harar? Yes. Our guide’s mother saw them do it. While we’re on the subject, you may be interested to know that I myself actually once had a one-night stand in Emperor Selassie’s grandson’s bed. In Hackney. (He wasn’t in it at the time.)
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In Ethiopia, exaggeration and embellishment are sprinkled into conversation as habitually as spice into the sauces in which you dip your injera three times a day. So, if you’re looking to get away from it all, and enjoy the feeling of lucid dreaming, Ethiopia might just be perfect for you. It also means it’s an entirely pointless exercise fact-checking this article.
When I say it’s a heaven, I don’t just mean because the climate is glorious, the landscape is miraculous and the people are gracious and kind. I mean in the sense that there isn’t any wi-fi. And that you are confronted regularly by what appears to be the opposite set of values to the ones we live by at home.
The difference is apparent in people’s interaction with each other and in their relationship with the landscape. They seem to know their place. Nature is not cowed. Not subdued. It’s overwhelmingly in charge. And people look each other in the eye, not at their phones. In a country largely free of consumerism, ancient traditions still hold lives in balance with nature. The dung from the cows is used as fuel for the fire and to make hives for bees. Free of advertising slogans telling them that they’re “worth it”, people display a modesty and gentility in their dealings with each other that, frankly, put us spoilt western individualists to shame.
We spent most of our time in the highlands in Tigray, known as the roof of Africa. It’s a landscape that makes you suspect there really might be a God. Or there was one until we scared him away.
Christianity is everywhere here. People in the countryside have Coptic crosses tattooed into the centre of their foreheads. Toddlers have their heads shaved in mohican style, to reduce territory for headlice, but also to provide the angels with a handle to hold when pulling them up to God. People appear to actually live by Christianity’s more charming precepts: walk past a stranger’s mud hut and they will ask you in and offer you food. Yes, you. The rich, undeserving European tourist passing their door.
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There’s another thing for any potential escape artist to consider when planning a sojourn in Ethiopia. It’s the issue of time. If you hope to be rejuvenated by a holiday, no country can offer you more, because in Ethiopia it’s not just a different time zone, it’s actually the past. It’s seven years ago. This is because it took King Balthasar that long to get back from his cribside visit to the infant Christ in Bethlehem to break the news: “We can start the clock. Jesus is born!” So in Ethiopia, it’s 2011. Aleppo is still standing. David Bowie is alive, and so is most of the world’s coral. And, miraculously, Instagram doesn’t exist. As I said, heaven.
The time-travel thing isn’t just a calendar quirk. Eighty per cent of the population live off the land, threshing their barley with the hooves of their cattle and sharing their homes with their livestock at night for warmth. They’re not just pre-President Trump, they’re pre-Industrial Revolution.
However, Ethiopia is on the move. It is reputedly one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. The new reforming prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has just ended a decades-long war with Eritrea, freed thousands of political prisoners, fired prison officials implicated in human-rights abuses and begun privatising the economy. The future of this country’s gracious young population appears bright. Which means the delightful feeling we had of being in a land that time forgot may have its days numbered. If you’re going, go quickly. Go this year.
From Gondar, we travelled by car to Ethiopia’s northern circuit. In the glorious Simien Mountains, we sat entranced as tribes of Gelada baboons gambolled past. While searching for the elusive Ethiopian wolf, we encountered the bottle-brush tree, the white Abyssinian rose and the giant lobelia against a background stretching hundreds of miles. From there, we descended to see ancient obelisks at Aksum, via the oldest standing building in sub-Saharan Africa at Yeha. We tried to learn the names of the birds: the thick-billed raven and the red-cheeked cordon bleu, the firefinch, the village indigobird.
Finally, we reached the calm and sophistication of the Gheralta Lodge hotel, with its spectacular views over the Gheralta Mountains. From here, we spent the last days walking from village to village in the hills of Tigray, with a guide, and a donkey carrying our luggage, climbing to visit rock churches and sleeping in simple shelters. We did this with an organisation called Tesfa. Half of your fee goes to the communities you walk through, 25% to the guide; the other 25% covers the cost of your lodgings and food.
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Ethiopia’s rock-hewn churches are justly famous, from the wonders of Lalibela’s enormous sunken churches to the more ancient chapels built high into the cliffs. I will never forget the experience of seeing them and would recommend it to anyone. Wake to the smell of coffee, incense and eucalyptus smoke, and the sounds of roosters crowing, children laughing and donkeys honking up the valley. Climb up to an ancient church built so high into a cliff face that the very process of getting to it is an act of dedication. Be glad for the glory of creation before it is gone, and try to appropriately measure your own significance in it.
Remember the bit in the The Lion King when Simba sits on his rock, looking out over vast plains in an otherworldly luminous glow? Well, honestly, that sort of thing happens a lot here.
You may say this is fanciful nonsense. I am no expert on Ethiopia. I just went on holiday there for a short while, but this is how it made me feel. Of course, you’re free to think what you want as you stare out of the window of a 4x4, being fed appropriate information by your solicitous guide. You may suggest that what I perceived to be a heavenly paradise is merely a population living in ignorance, subjugated by religion and poverty. I don’t know. I wanted to get away from it all. And I did. In the stillness of the vast landscapes, welcomed by the best-mannered people in the world.
Tom Hollander was a guest of Wild Frontiers. Its 11-day tailor-made tour to northern Ethiopia takes in Addis Ababa, Gondar, the Simien Mountains, Aksum, Gheralta Lodge and the Tigray village walk; prices start at £3,850pp, including flights with Ethiopian Airlines, private guides and some meals (020 8741 7390, wildfrontierstravel.com)