ethiopia .READER REPORT readerr © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagaezaine reportre de p r or © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemt.agazine © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine SUDAN ERI. © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine AddisAd Ababa d YEMEN is Ab ab DJ.D ETHIOPIAE a J. TH ARRIVING IN ETHIOPIA WITH HER HUSBAND AND TWO DAUGHTERS, UG.U IO G. PI CATHERINE COULTER © RRealeal TravelTravel magazinemagaziAne SURPRISINGLY BEAUTIFUL LANDSCAPE AND PEOPLE KENYA SOMALIA lush lands © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine n the words of particularly IapparentThomas when Friedman, I find that I can book“the internal world is flat”. flights within EthiopiaThis becomes by using SPENDS TWO WEEKS GETTING TO KNOW A Expedia, from the comfort of WRITERW my home in Ottawa, Canada. PROFILEP RI The world has changed… R TE are beginning to spring up in ©O RRealeal TTravelravel mmagazineagazine Worshippers circling NAME F R IL haveOur seen kids, so muchnow aged of the 13 world and 10, remote places. A place where St Mary of Zion church AGE CATHERINEE COULTER. tough people still plough the land INFO 45 that they have become rather blasé about it all. From tea with lamas by hand, some homes have satellite Canada, with Lawyer her Catherine husband andlives daughters. in Ottawa, As well as Ethiopia, the family’s favourite in Ladakh to touring the Killing dishes and electricity. The land of recent trips included Bhutan, Ladakh, Laos, Fields of Cambodia, not much famine from 20 years ago is filled © RealReal TTravelravel magazinemagazine Cambodia and trekking in Nepal. fazes Emma or Hannah. However, with fields and trees, all brilliant READER REPORT none of us had yet explored any green during the summer rainy of sub-Saharan Africa, so in March season. Perhaps most surprising 70 of all, it is a land of poverty where last year my husband George and I stuck the proverbial pin in a map the people don’t seem to begrudge along with the Mercato (Africa’s and were off to explore the Horn foreigners their wealth. By the largest market) and most of the .ethiopia of Africa with our kids. end of our trip, we came to the shops and restaurants across the © RRealeal TTravelravel mmagazineagazentirein city.e We finally found one conclusion that the people of filledWe with arrived contradictions. in a country A largelythat is Ethiopia are among the friendliest attraction that was open – the rural and agricultural country, on the face of the earth. National Museum. Although it is internet cafés and cell phones the home of the bones of ‘Lucy’, a funnyThe place capital on of a AddisSunday. Ababa The is one of the oldest hominid’s ever perpetual traffic jams disappear discovered, the museum’s exhibits © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine and one is left with the dichotomy looked like they had been put of a shiny modern African city together by Hannah’s fourth grade juxtaposed with tin-roofed huts, class, with descriptions written on donkey carts and camels in the pieces of paper that were stuck to streets. You don’t visit Addis for the items with scotch tape. But that think nothing of being a little its tourist attractions, particularly was okay, because the real reason adversarial when necessary. In the on a Sunday. The recommended © RRealefora our tripl wasTravelT to rsee thea much-vel magazinemagazine midst of my belligerence about our Ethnological Museum was closed, vaunted historical circuit in the northern part of the country. missing bags, I ended up meeting the son of the President of Ethiopia, of AxumWe flew not intofar from the smallthe Eritrean town Solomon Woldegiorgis. Solomon border. Although our flight was overheard my discontent and © Real Travel magazine uneventful, we found out that our stepped in to try to resolve matters. It turns out that although Ethiopian- bags were still sitting somewhere some plain, they look remarkably in Addis. The unhappiness that born, he is Canadian and has lived of the Covenant is reputed to be like Egyptian obelisks. The largest this generated led to one of the in London, Ontario, where George Bet Giyorgis (St George’s) held. We’re talking of the stelae was taken out of the highlights of our entire trip. I come and I had attended university. LostL Ark country by the Italians under cover from a long line of women who The next thing we knew, we had o church in Lalibela st of night in WWII. Finally returned an invitation for a personal tour it’s theA realr thing is a matter that k stuff here. Whether or not to Ethiopia in 2007, it was still © RRealeaofl the PresidentialTravelTra Palacev one our l magazinemagahas keptz severalistnu authorse in business, as the Ark is underff lock and key waiting to be raised later in the return to Addis. I’ve always known he Raiders of the that this particular personality trait and protected round there clock by year as part of Ethiopia’s millennium . W celebrations. Millennium you of mine would pay off someday… a guardian monk whose sole jobhe in life is to safeguard it. The Ark wasth ask? Yes, 2008 is the year 2000 in er supposedly brought to Ethiopia by o Ethiopia, which follows the Julian and both men ended up in a ARK OF THE COVENANT r n wary stance, genitals protected. Axum is primarily known for its its king, Menelik I, the reputed son ot rather than the Gregorian calendar. The Ethiopian clock is different, too: The panic on their faces was a collection of stelae and the St Mary wonder to behold. of Zion church. St Mary actually has a 12 hour clock which begins at two Ethiopian Orthodox churches “THE ARK IS UNDER LOCK ANDsunrise. KEY When making bookings From Axum it was on to Lalibela, in Ethiopia, it’s always a good idea the small town which contains the and a chapel within its compound. AND PROTECTED ROUND THE CLOCK greatest number of archaeological The most important, the one we to make sure you know what time BY A GUARDIAN MONK WHOSEthey SOLE are on. and religious treasures in the had come to see, is where the Ark © JOBRReal eIN aLIFEl ISTTravel TOr SAFEGUARDavel mmagazine IT”agazine country. Lalibela sits on volcanic typicalAnother Ethiopian peculiarity greeting. to usShared was the rock and that’s what has made of the Queen of Sheba and King between men, it looks a bit like a it famous. The town is filled with Solomon. The reality, however, is hug, with men almost resting their churches that were carved out of that nobody but the keeper is ever the rock many hundreds of years permitted inside to see the Ark, so ago. Rather than being sculpted we were left to speculate from afar. into the rock like a cave, they are carved down into the hills and on theAs northernfor the stelae, edge they of town. sit in Tall a field then hollowed out, so all you can granite structures, some carved and see is the roofs of the churches when you stand at ground level. We spent two full days exploring necks© on each other’sRealRe shoulders.a l TravelTravethe churches.l magazinem Somea of themg area zine George first encountered it in currently having protective Axum. Having no idea what was suspended roofs installed by going on, he instinctively reached UNESCO, but even with all this for the money pouch hidden down construction around, none of us the front of his trousers. Our guide, will ever forget the feeling of who had initiated the greeting, awe as we entered our first church, misunderstood George’s gesture, Bet Medhane Alem. Walking down through the depths into the cool darkness of that first and largest of churches was like stepping into a site from the Middle Ages. Carpets are laid end over end covering most of the hand-hewn rock© floor, andRReal eal TTravelravel magazinemagazine paintings going back hundreds of years are applied directly onto the church walls. Priests in their white robes with white turbans on their » 71 ethiopia .READER REPORT © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine“THERE ARE MORE THAN TEN ROCK- HEWN CHURCHES IN LALIBELA, THE MOST FAMOUS BEING BET GIYORGIS, IN THE SHAPE OF A PERFECT CROSS” » heads stood singing together in a corner, all leaning on their staffs. © RealReal TravelTravel magazinemagazine In another part of the church, incense burned while the chief priest blessed the locals with a 12 th made centuryof pure gold.seven Stolen kilogram several cross Debre Berhan Selassie years ago and sold to a traveller The ceiling of for $25,000, it was subsequently found and returned, and is now kept locked up for most of the year. which is cut down into the rock in TTheh Simien Mountains e S the shape of a perfect cross. Most im i There are more than ten rock- en hewn churches in Lalibela, the most of the churches are connected by M ou famous of them being Bet Giyorgis, a rabbit warren of tunnels through nt ain the rock – one of them 72m long. © RealReal TravelTravel magazinems agazine Candles flicker throughout the ethiopiae darkness and priests willingly pose t for photographs with sunglasses SECURITYS h ISSUES EC io on to protect their eyes from BorderB U regionsR of Ethiopia should be ord IT p camera flashes. A feeling of ancient avoided,av er but theY balancei ofa the country The architecture is a strange oid re IS Judeo-Christianity abounds. isis generallyed quitegio safe.S UAlthoughfaqf therea cross between English/Scottish ge , b ns ES © RRealeal TravelTravel magazinemhaveha beenane bombingsgut a in of Addisz from timeinq to e Our time in Lalibela also architecture with Islamic/Moorish v ra E time,t foreignerse b lly do notthe seemth to be targeted.