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Published: April 30th 2024
My next adventure with Trekkup was during our week-long Eid al Fitr holiday. This was kind of a bucket list of Ethiopia adventures, starting with Lalibela, which is known for its World Heritage Site rock hewn churches. I have wanted to come here for years and it was finally happening!
Flight from Dubai to Addis Ababa was fine, very crowded. I have avoided Addis Ababa airport for the last few years because there is always something that happens to me there. At least on this connection, it was ok, just had trouble finding the domestic terminal, which was about a 15-minute walk away. They are clearly doing a lot of renovations on the international terminal there, which we were able to see on our way home. For now, it was just to get through customs and to domestic for our short flight to Lalibela. We boarded a small propeller plane and had about an hour flight. Landing at the airport was easy and we immediately found our guide, Alex, waiting outside for us.
The airport is well outside of town, so we drove for about 20 to 30 minutes through the countryside and up into the hills to get
to the town of Lalibela. Our hotel,
Sora Lodge, was absolutely gorgeous. According to one of our group who spoke extensively with the owner, he had been sponsored by a Norwegian family as a child, including getting money and support for his education and business. So, he has invested heavily into this dream hotel of his - very well done! He employs locals and he has also started an orphanage, his way of giving back to the community. It was very inspiring and great to see that the sponsorship was well received and proactive.
We checked into our beautiful rooms, with a nice balcony that overlooked the mountain in the background. We then met for a nice lunch in the restaurant, where I just got a sandwich, but a couple others got shiro, a chickpea dish served with their injera bread. It looked delicious. It should be noted that this is still the Lent period for the Ethiopian Orthodox church, and people here take it seriously (90%!o(MISSING)f the country are considered very religious, either Orthodox or Muslim). So, they do not eat meat or animal products at all during this time. In general, we were very happy about,
especially the vegan in our group. Most restaurants catered to an extent to the tourists, but there were some dishes that just were not available at this point. The food was really good either way!
Rock hewn churches - Northeastern Group For the afternoon, we were going to visit five of the rock hewn churches that are clustered together. Ethiopia adopted Christianity way back in the 4th century and churches were established around then. These rock hewn churches are generally considered to have been excavated about 800 years ago during the reign of King and Priest Lalibela. Muslims stopped pilgrimages to the Holy Land so he wanted to have an area that was reminiscent of Jerusalem and Israel, so you'll see many things intended to honor this. For the most part, all churches were excavated from the top down, by hand. There are three types of architecture of these churches: monolithic (basement connected), connected at basement and roof, and built into the rock.
After getting our (expensive!) entrance tickets, we started at the largest of the churches:
Bete Medhane Alem (House of the Saviour of the World). At the end of the 19th century, it was in
a bad state of repair and was commissioned to be repaired by Empress Zewditu. There are three entrances: North for men, south for women, east for clergy.
The next location was the
Biete Maryam (Church of Mary), which is part of a small complex within the excavated ground. Even though this church is smaller than Bete Medhane Alem, this is where the religious ceremonies are held with people and priests lining the ground above the excavation, wearing white capes / covers. There were two small churches in the side walls:
Bete Meskel and
Bete Danagel (which is the house of the virgins).
Bete Sillase and Bete Golgotha are combined as one and only men can enter beyond Bete Sillase; the representative Tomb of Adam is located beyond those doors.
It was quite interesting to see all the churches. In some respects, they were similar. But each one had a unique character. It was lovely. For instance, in Bete Maryam, there are beautiful paintings on the walls and ceilings, depicting scenes from the bible; this was Lalibela's first project. The Bete Sillase is quiet and austere. Bete Danagel is small, cozy and peaceful. In each church, they have a
stand of long sticks with a perpendicular portion at the top. These sticks are used for the people who are waiting for hours to hear the ceremonies and masses. They can lean on them with one arm, lean forward and rest their chins.... whatever they want to do to be as comfortable as possible.
Alex told us some of the stories and traditions here. There are a lot of replicas of key religious items found in Jerusalem. Baptisms were traditionally performed in the outside fonts, with boys being baptized 40 days after birth and girls 80 days after. It was a very interesting afternoon, seeing our first five rock hewn churches in just a few hours. It boded well for the next couple of days!
Asheton St Maryam Monastery The next morning after breakfast, we were collected for the trip up to a monastery, located at the same mountain you can see from our balcony. We were able to drive most of the way, but the roads had clearly been impacted by the very heavy rain and thunderstorm from the night before (I was woken and super happy!). We went through a couple of check points, including
a small village, which seemed to accept money as a kind of toll.
It was really interesting to drive by what seemed to be a substantial logging operation. Many men were cutting by hand eucalyptus trees and carrying them to piles. Our guide told us that eucalyptus grow back very fast, so they replant them and they grow well during rainy season (June). Indeed, we saw that the forests were clearly planned in many areas. They use the tree for construction, firewood and medicine - this is what I love to learn about the way people live in other places!
We stopped at a small village, with about a dozen people waiting for us. They all wanted to "help" us up the fairly easy 20 minute climb to the monastery, a short steep section, then flat along the cliffs, then another short steep section. They kept trying to "help" me, but I was fine and in fact it was often more of a hindrance, especially on the way back down, when they would grab my arm from behind while I was trying to move forward. Then they wanted a huge tip, even though I said NO!. So, that
was frustrating.
The monastery itself is quite nice. This is an actual cave church with a courtyard covered for protection from the elements. There was a priest there that showed us many religious texts with colorful pictures as well as the ceremonial crosses. It was fascinating. Outside, there were some people who seemed to hang out here during the day, plus all the people ready to head back down. We spent some time just admiring the amazing view of surroundings and cliff above the monastery. I spotted our hotel from the view point, and we took some group photos here before heading back down. It was a little sad to see some kids sitting up collections of souvenirs just for us as I do not think anyone else was coming up here. A couple of the others each bought something, but I had no money. All in all, it was a very nice visit.
Rock Hewn Churches - Southeastern Group After lunch and a bit of downtime back at the hotel, we were picked up at 2:30 pm to finish the Lalibela church tour. They were closed to visitors during mass from 12-3 anyway.
We started
across from the
St Rafael and St Gabriel churches, which were just concluding their mass. We took off our shoes at the entrance to the bridge which spanned a big pit. There were hidden entrances for the king and priest which they have not yet found. We went through St Gabriel church first, where there is a large painting to depict him; the cool thing about this painting is that if you walk in front of it, his eyes seem to follow you. Then you step into St Rafael church, just on the other side of the wall. You could see lots of monitoring of the condition of the church with crack gauges and drainage control here. The cool thing with this church is that you can walk outside and stand on the rock balcony across from where we started. It does not seem so big until you are here!
Next we walked briefly past the Bete Lahem church and then above the square church of Bete Emanuel. It is almost perfectly square with a large protective covering above the excavated area. In order to access the next church,
Bete Merkerios (which I thought he said 'Dmitrios' so I'll
refer to that name), we had to go down some rock stairs, through a narrow path until we enter a cave. You are to walk through this 50m passage completely in the dark, right hand on the wall and left hand on the ceiling. I went last and you could not see anything in front of you. At some point, I could not reach the ceiling anymore and just had to trust that I would be ok. Thankfully, the floor was not too rough and was relatively flat. It was a pretty cool experience! We emerged from the darkness and climbed up stairs to see the church, which used to be the second largest of the area before it collapsed; essentially, while we were outside, there used to be a roof covering this portion. There were a couple of cool things about this large church. There was a display of panel paintings protected by glass that depicted The Passion. Next to it on one of the large stone columns were light colored paintings. On the top portion was the depiction of the three wise men, with the Ethiopian having brought frankincense. The bottom two rows of 6 depicted the 12
apostles. It was lovely. We also learned that St George was always shown with a white horse while Dmitrios was shown riding a black horse, and he had killed a pagan king who was killing the people, so very revered.
Next, we walked to the
Church of Emanuel and entered, where we saw an impressive priest. Honestly, I was unsure how I felt about much of the decorations, but I grew to love some of the curtain partitions - they seemed so rich and regal, though I am sure they were very basic. You can tell this is a poor area, but they have definitely made their precious churches so lovely.
Finally, we approached
Bete Libanos, which is connected by roof and basement and you can walk around the outside of it completely. We did this instead of entering the church, and all along the back are worship areas with paintings and curtains. Very different, and this was some of the others' favorite (mine was Bete Maryam). Leaving this church, you walk through a large outdoor worship area with benches set among the trees with
Bete Libanos seen to your left. Very peaceful.
St George's Church After leaving the Southeastern group and walking along the road past a cemetery (with some random guy trying to chat me up), we approached the most famous of all these churches:
House of St George. It was a bit of a walk from the others and it was the last one commissioned by King and Priest Lalibela before he died. It is just as impressive in person. Love it. We took some photos from above so you see the beautiful cross shape within the excavation. Then you head down some stairs through a narrow passage before you get to the church. We removed our shoes and went inside. One of the unique features here is that there are no freestanding pillars. It is three floors and is intended to represent Noah's Ark, and 12 windows to represent the apostles.
I think we were all in awe that we were here and we got to see so many beautiful churches that were clearly lovingly made and lovingly maintained. This was such a lovely place to visit with very friendly people. I highly recommend a trip here if you can!
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Lalibella
We were in Lalibella for Timket (the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist) in 2011. What an inspiring place. I'll have to check my photos as your pic of St Georges Church shows leaching that I do not recall but adds to its allure. I will post this in TB's "Cathedrals, grand churches, mosques & places of worship" thread in the Photography Forum. Check 'em out.