Amazing lalibela Ethiopia

Lalibela is wonderfully “Ethiopian” – you really do feel that you are seeing something which is different from anything you would see elsewhere. There are other “rock cut” religious structures around the world but Lalibela possesses an atmosphere of “otherness”. Even if you don’t visit at the time of a religious festival (we didn’t unfortunately) you will see/meet Ethiopian Priests in the churches and get some feeling for the rituals – which mostly take place in inner sanctums containing the “Ark” and are inaccessible to ordinary mortals, with only the sounds to hint at the activities going on behind the curtains.

As a European visitor you will have to accept the high “hassle factor” – you are very much an “opportunity”! As we emerged from our hotel we were accosted by a boy wanting to act as our guide. We usually decline and initially did so on this occasion. Not worth it. Even if he doesn’t/can’t do much guiding his mere presence will save having to continually dissuade alternative contenders. We gave in for this reason - it also appeared that we were his “assigned” tourists for the day to meet as we emerged, follow us wherever we went and use all his powers of persuasion on – if he failed he would go to the back of the guide queue and await his next turn “unpaid” for that day.

As most tourists do we flew in and out on the generally good and very cheap Ethiopian Airways internal flights. I understand that Lalibela “airport” has been resited/acquired a new runway since we were there in 1995. This should make this wonderful place a little less fraught to visit. Any rain closed the old airstrip. And getting away could be a bit of a lottery too. At that time the only communication the local Ethiopian Airlines had with flight control in Addis was via an unreliable radio connection at the “7 Olives Hotel” which, because of geographic/climatic conditions, only seemed to work at night. Thus the morrow’s possible flights were agreed the previous evening and, in the morning, one traversed the several miles of rough road on a 4x4 to the tin hut which was the airport terminal to be weighed with one’s bags on a set of old luggage scales and await whatever plane(s) might turn up! We finished up doing an aerial tour of the country to reach our next destination at Gondar.

During the reign of Gebre Mesqel Lalibela, a member of the Zagwe dynasty who ruled Ethiopia in the late 12th century and early 13th century, the current town of Lalibela was known as Roha. The saint-king was named because a swarm of bees is said to have surrounded him at his birth, which his mother took as a sign of his future reign as emperor of Ethiopia. The names of several places in the modern town and the general layout of the rock-cut churches themselves are said to mimic names and patterns observed by Lalibela during the time he spent as a youth in Jerusalem and the Holy Land.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]

Lalibela, revered as a saint, is said to have visited Jerusalem and attempted to recreate a new Jerusalem as his capital in response to the taking of old Jerusalem by Muslims in 1187. Each church was carved from a single piece of rock to symbolize spirituality and humility. The Christian faith inspired many features receiving Biblical names; even Lalibela's river is known as the River Jordan. Lalibela remained the capital of Ethiopia from the late 12th into the 13th century.[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]

The first European known to see these churches was the Portuguese explorer Pêro da Covilhã (1460–1526). A Portuguese priest, Francisco Álvares (1465–1540), accompanied the Portuguese Ambassador on a visit to Dawit II in the 1520s. Alvares described the unique church structures as follows: "I weary of writing more about these buildings, because it seems to me that I shall not be believed if I write more ... I swear by God, in Whose power I am, that all I have written is the truth".