Ethiopia
Ethiopia is a land of myths, superlatives and imagery. Ethiopia is one of the only African countries never colonised: splendid imperial Ethiopia. And also a remote land with arcane religious practises: Ethiopia, the African Tibet – and strange tribes – Ethiopia, the museum of peoples. And of course, Ethiopia is also that modern icon of poverty, famine, war and strife – one-of-the-poorest-countries-on-earth.
All of these facets of Ethiopia are somewhat true, somewhat false, or true sometimes, false at others. It rests that Ethiopia is a charmingly and vexingly complicated country, very far from the simplistic views of it held in the West.
A startlingly beautiful country, Ethiopia has changed more over the last few years than in the previous three decades. Growth of around ten per cent per year, fuelled by increases in agricultural productivity and a splurge of infrastructure projects is making a change in the way the country sees itself and is viewed from abroad.
Ethiopia is a country of some eighty million people, of which perhaps half are Christian and half Muslim. Surrounded by Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia and Kenya and with a total area of 1, 104,300 km2, or five times the size of the United Kingdom or two and half times France, the country is largely rural, with eighty per cent of the population living in the countryside. Ethiopia is schematically divided between lowlands to the east and south, and highlands to the north and west and is situated between 3-18 north and 33-48 east in the Horn of Africa.
With altitudes ranging from – 110 in the Danakil Depression to + 4700 in the highlands, temperature and rainfall vary immensely and give rise to an incredible diversity of ecosystems, endowing Ethiopia with a rich endemic flora and fauna. There is a rain season in the highlands, from July to September, during which monsoon like downpours occur daily, and a dry season from September to June, with a short rain season in April.
Our trail rides and treks take place in the woina dega, an Amharic word that labels the highlands found between 1 500 and 2 500 metres. Ethiopia has been called the most populated mountain in the world and the areas we traverse, highly salubrious and totalling lacking in tropical diseases –there is no malaria for example- are heavily populated. These highlands are characterised by great grassy meadows ideal for cavalcades. The local Oromo people still go mostly by horse, or if they are rich, by mule, and are very welcoming to people arriving on horseback, a practise which is for them quintessentially Ethiopian