The road less travelled to Lalibela

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For once a leisurely start (about 0730!) and we made our way to Lalibela. Now there is probably a tarmac road to Lalibela from where we were but we most certainly didn’t find it. Instead we travelled 120km on a track where we saw NO other cars and passed over many mountain passes and drove on ridges cut out of the rock and climbed over 4000m up and down over a mountain range peaking at 3500m. It was without doubt our most spectacular road but about halfway round it dawned on us, what if we get stuck or breakdown?

Thankfully we didn’t and the track came to a village in the middle of nowhere but atleast there was some civilisation, which we followed for at least 1km on tarmac before heading back to track. As a bonus the local people seem to be digging an infinite number of trenches across the road to lay water pipes which created the world’s most effective traffic calming measures as we sometimes had to get out and work out how to go across them or (more often) bottoming out the truck.

Eventually we made it to Lalibela, famous for its rock cut churches. We finally managed to find a campsite so pitched up and had a good faff around tidying the truck which seems to be coping well. We then went to visit some of the churches which are very impressive and cut into the rock nearly 1000 years ago.

This is our last evening with James before we drop him at Lalibela airport to get to Addis Ababa to fly out tomorrow evening. Unfortunately as we got a little stuck on timing it’s the only way we can fit it all in, but all told James seems quite excited about his internal Ethiopian flight so no problems.

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