Activities Calendar Coverage Get a plan Sign in Join free

Coverage / Ethiopia

Ethiopia

Eastern Africa

A high-altitude Horn of Africa nation with its own calendar, alphabet and Orthodox Christian tradition, home to the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, the Simien and Bale highlands, the volcanic Danakil Depression, the tribal cultures of the Omo Valley, and the birthplace of coffee.

7 activities · 8 pairings · 12 verified providers

What you can do in Ethiopia

Culinary / Cooking

Addis AbabaJan Feb Mar Apr May Sep Oct Nov DecAddis Ababa is the place to learn Ethiopian food at its source, in a country that gave the world coffee and a cuisine unlike any other. A hands-on class here means learning to ferment and pour injera, the spongy teff flatbread that is both plate and utensil, and to build the slow spiced stews called wat, from the fiery chicken doro wat to chickpea shiro and vegetable tibs, seasoned with the berbere and niter kibbeh that define the flavour. The meal is shared from a single platter by hand, and it closes with a full coffee ceremony, beans roasted, ground and brewed in front of you in the land where Arabica was first cultivated. It is culture you eat, and Addis is where the ingredients, markets and teachers come together.

Museums & Galleries

Addis Ababayear-roundThe National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa holds one of the most important objects in the human story, and that is reason enough to plan a visit around it. In its basement lies Lucy, known in Amharic as Dinkinesh, the 3.2-million-year-old partial skeleton of an Australopithecus afarensis unearthed in the Afar region in 1974 that reshaped the understanding of human origins. Around her the museum lays out Ethiopia's astonishing depth of prehistory and its later imperial and religious art across four exhibition floors. Standing in front of the reconstructions, one lying and one upright at barely over a metre tall, is a quietly staggering encounter with an ancestor, in the country that has yielded more early hominid fossils than almost anywhere on earth.

Overlanding / Expedition Driving

Danakil DepressionJan Feb Mar Nov DecThe Danakil Depression is an expedition-driving destination in the truest sense, a salt-crusted rift basin more than 100 metres below sea level and among the hottest inhabited places on earth. Convoys of four-wheel drives cross the salt flats of Lake Asale, where Afar caravans still cut and carry blocks of salt by camel, then climb by night to the rim of Erta Ale to look down into one of the world's few permanent lava lakes. A second day reaches Dallol, a low-temperature geothermal field of acid pools, salt chimneys and mineral crusts in yellow, green and rust. This is remote, extreme terrain that has to be done with an organised operator, local Afar guides and a police escort.

Photography Expeditions

Omo ValleyJan Feb Nov DecThe Lower Omo Valley is one of the most concentrated cultural-photography destinations on earth, a region where distinct peoples still live by their own traditions within a short drive of one another. You photograph the Karo in their white body paint above the river, the Mursi women known for clay lip plates, the Hamer at a bull-jumping coming-of-age ceremony, and the trading crowds at markets like Key Afar and Dimeka. The pull for a photographer is the density and variety of subjects and the golden light of the valley, but it demands care: this is real people's lives, not a set, so the ethical way to work is with a guide who negotiates permission, fair payment and time. Handled respectfully, few places reward a camera like the Omo.

Trekking / Hiking

Simien MountainsJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecThe Simien Mountains are the great trek of Ethiopia, a UNESCO World Heritage range of thousand-metre escarpments, pinnacles and afro-alpine moorland that earns the local name Roof of Africa. You walk the rim from Sankaber to Geech to Chennek across several days, camping or using huts, with gelada monkeys grazing in troops a few metres away, walia ibex on the crags and, with luck, an Ethiopian wolf on the high plateau. Longer routes push up to Ras Dashen at 4,550 metres, the summit of Ethiopia and one of the highest points in Africa. National park rules require a licensed guide and an armed scout, so this is a place you trek with local people who know the escarpment and its wildlife.

Wildlife Safaris

Bale MountainsJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecBale Mountains National Park is the surest place in the world to see the Ethiopian wolf, the rarest canid on the planet, with only a few hundred left and the largest population living here on the Sanetti Plateau above 4,000 metres. Drive or walk the plateau and you watch russet wolves hunting giant molerats across afro-alpine moorland, while the road down through the Harenna Forest passes endemic Bale monkeys, mountain nyala and the calls of the Abyssinian owl. It is a wildlife destination that runs on walking and slow game drives rather than crowded convoys, at altitudes that make it feel closer to the Andes than to a lowland safari. The endemism density here is among the highest in Africa.

Witness / Attend

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Culinary
Museums
Overlanding
Photography
Trekking
Wildlife Safaris
Witness / Attend

Upcoming events in Ethiopia