Lalibela

Lalibela is eleven churches cut downward into the red rock of the Ethiopian highlands, and no photograph prepares anyone for the fact of them: King Lalibela of the Zagwe dynasty, around the year 1200, had his masons carve a New Jerusalem out of the living stone — not built up but dug out, roofs first, each church freed from the mountain and hollowed inside, connected by trenches, tunnels and a channel named for the Jordan. The northern group holds Bete Medhane Alem, the largest monolithic church in the world, Bete Maryam with its painted ceilings, and the Golgotha where the king is said to lie; the southern group, Bete Amanuel, Merkorios, Abba Libanos, Gabriel-Rufael and Bethlehem, is a labyrinth of passages and courtyards; and apart from both, at the bottom of its own trench, stands Bete Giyorgis, the cross-shaped church twelve metres deep that is the image of Ethiopia. They are not ruins: priests in white keep them, pilgrims sleep in their courtyards, and on the seventh of January, Genna, tens of thousands come up the mountain for the Ethiopian Christmas. A UNESCO site since 1978, the town sits at two thousand five hundred metres; Asheten Maryam is a monastery on the peak above, and Yemrehanna Kristos, forty kilometres out, is an older church built inside a cave.

The traveller who has cause to be there flies in from Addis Ababa — an hour, when the flight goes — and takes the five-day ticket and a guide from the association, because the churches without a guide are stone and with one are a story: the northern group on the first morning, when the light comes down into the trenches; Bete Giyorgis at the end of the day from the rim, then down; the southern group and its tunnels — one is walked in the dark, on purpose — the next day; a mule or a walk up to Asheten Maryam for the view and the monks; the Saturday market; injera and shiro at a family table, tej in a tej bet, coffee roasted in front of the guest; and, if the calendar allows, Genna, which the traveller does not visit but joins.

The Guide's honesty, gently: the Amhara region has carried a conflict since 2023 — the town has changed hands before, the roads from Addis are checked, chancelleries counsel against travel to the region, and the Guide does not argue with them; for those with cause to be there, the flight is the door and the guides' association the honest hand; the churches are entered without shoes and with covered shoulders, and photography of the priests is by leave; the altitude is real, the nights are cold, and the ticket is paid in cash; and the churches, seen at dawn from the rim of Bete Giyorgis's trench with a priest below beginning the day, are one of the sights of the world, which is why the Guide sails this page informed and keeps it near.