Every Christmas, 60 000 Orthodox Christians make the pilgrimage to Lalibela in Ethiopia to visit eleven churches hewn into the rock there 800 years ago
The donkey knows the way. It trots along for hours over arid, yellow plains, our luggage on its back. My mountain guide, Fentaw Asnake, 30, and I pass through eucalyptus groves and roundhouse villages. He grew up here, and many people know his name. We hear children giggle on the other side of thick sisal hedges. Women sit outside their houses, grinding coffee and dried corn in wooden tubs on the ground. It is our first day on the trail through the highlands of northern Ethiopia, a landscape of craggy cliffs and deep canyons.
At the heart of the highlands lies Lalibela, a town of roughly 22 000 inhabitants. Its claim to fame is its eleven stone churches dating from the 12th and 13th century. Instead of rising into the sky, they are hewn into the rock floor, their roofs level with the ground. No bricks were used in their construction, either: Walls, pillars and windows are all carved from a single block of terra-cotta-colored rock. These rock churches form a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage Site, which remains to this day one of the holiest sites for the over 1600-year-old Ethiopian Orthodox religion. At Christmas, which is celebrated on January 7, 60 000 people pilgrimage to Lalibela.
