From Mekele

It is half past two in the morning and beneath the glare of airport night I wait for Ed and Duncan to walk through the shiny gates in front of me. I have two weeks travelling in Northern Ethiopia, two weeks off the bicycle, two weeks with my brother and an old friend. They arrive and soon we are on a plane to Gonder, a bus to Debark, and at the foot of the Simien Mountains. 　

We will be in the mountains for five days and we traipse through the muddy streets of Debark, between dim wooden shops, in search of rice and oats and kerosene. We set off early the following morning and soon the ramshackle, mud-coated village paths give way to a wide green valley, dotted with patches of thick forest. Beyond broad ledges have been carved across the faces of the shallow hillsides and clusters of straw-domed huts are scattered across the verdant slopes. The sky is clear and speckles of highland sunshine flicker like floating sapphires in the thin streams that twist through the soft grasses ahead. We pass young shepherds leading sheep to graze and old women wrapped in white shawls on the way to market in Debark. 　

As we climb from the valley the air cools and beads of grey moisture begin to hang lower in the air, gradually thickening, until the hillside is shrouded in a bleak cloak of dense fog. Branches from nearby trees protrude indistinctly out of the whiteness, seemingly floating in the mist. We reach a plateau and the surroundings sharpen as the cloud thins to a veil. Ahead, shrieks and howls pierce the mountain quiet. We are in the midst of a troop of Gelada Baboons. They dash between the low junipers, huge clumps of sandy fur, charging and snarling and abruptly stopping to dig. We have been walking for seven hours now and rain starts to fall. We pull our hoods tightly around our faces and trudge up the slippery path, reaching Sankaber, the first camp at three. As night falls we huddle around the low flames, which rise from the burning eucalyptus, and shelter from the sheets of icy rain driving through the open-sided hut.

We awake to a clear blue sky and I look out at a vast body of tall green ridges, splintering the land into a richly forested skeleton of deep gulleys and gorges. In every direction angular veins of precipitous rock stretch out into the distance and a few feet away grassed slopes roll for hundreds of metres towards the valley bed. As we walk along the long spine of the ravine edge, the drop sharpens, and after an hour we reach the Gich Abyss. Here, a hollow shaft descends for five hundred metres, walled on three sides by bare rock, streaked grey and pale ochre. A torrent of water gushes past tufts of euphorbia over the cliff ahead and monstrous black-winged Lammergeier glide above the rocks in search of bones.

The mist begins to descend as we walk the final ten kilometers to camp, and as we build a fire in the little wooden shelter, drops of heavy rain pound the thin corrugated roof overhead. We buy a chicken from a nearby village and I watch a young boy cut off its head in three strokes. Blood dribbles from the bird’s open neck, splattering red drops on the pale rock at our feet. The boy grins as the chicken’s wings beat frantically in his hands, and then it is still.

From Gich we walk to Chennek, across a crumpled landscape of vast gorges and ridges that fan out towards the horizon like waves on a giant, forested sea. Cries of baboons carry from distant crags and children, sheltering in torn sacks to keep the rain from their heads, rush from their sheep to stare. It is a long, cold walk back to Debark, through dense fog and driving rain, and our tired feet our glad to meet the muddy paths of the little town.

From Debark we make our way north to Aksum, and it is from here that we visit the rock-hewn churches of Tigrai. A dusty road winds through slopes of barren sandstone, past stout craggy outcrops, dotted with dark juniper bushes, and ancient stone huts that look to be falling back into the rocky scrub. At the end of the road the monastery of Debre Damos lies on an island of rock, raised seventy feet above the surrounding plains. At the foot of the mound I stare up at a monk lowering a thick rope from a low wooden portal at the top of the plateau. I begin to climb, my hands and feet meeting smooth groves, worn into the sheer face by hundreds of years of monks’ ascents. At the top there is a rectangular chapel made of small sandstone boulders, layered with thick beams of dark wood. Inside the dark room the walls are covered with paintings of cartoon saints slaying dragons, in bright reds and yellows and greens. Dusty carpets lie over the stone floor, and the pages of an ancient bible, laid out on a wooden shelf, glow beneath the flickering light of a dying candle.

Later, in the midst of the Gheralta wilderness, we follow shabby priests up slender paths, past boulders and candelabras and crumbling cliffs, through small wooden doors, into domes and prayer-cells and ancient tombs, all encrusted in great mounds of rock. At Abreha we Atabeha, the cave is full of men and women, shrouded in long white cloth, covering their heads and flowing to the knees. Men sit on wooden benches along the stone walls, clasping staffs, with heads bowed. From a hidden enclave at the back of the cave, a priest begins to chant, and like awakened mummies, the crowd of worshippers rises and begins to hum. The chanting grows louder and some start to sway and the men tap their staffs on the rock floor. The cave is dark and I stand in the shadows in silence, like an intruder at an ancient burial.

When we arrive at the foot of the climb to Abuna Yemata Guh, I look up at two columns of heavily weathered rock, slipping in and out of view, amidst billowing clouds of mist. Bare trees cling frailly to shallow ledges near the outcrop’s base, and piles of fallen boulders clutter the cliff foot. I follow the white-robed priest up a shear rock face for twenty feet, mimicking, in slow-motion, his nimble ascent. We tread across a ledge and clamber up a steep path before the next flat wall of rock appears. There are no ropes and I haul myself clumsily upwards, clinging to the shallow groves in the stone mass before me. We reach a sheltered inlet between the two columns and I stare at a human skull and shattered bones lying in a small cave. To reach the church we cross a final narrow ledge and between shifting veils of mist I can see tattered stone huts, scattered like pebbles, five hundred feet below. The priest unlocks the low wooden door and raises the flame of a candle above his head, to show the faded cream and ochre faces of saints and angels smiling down from the rough cave roof.