The small town of Lalibela in Ethiopia is home to one of the world's most astounding sacred sites: eleven rock-hewn churches, each carved entirely out of a single block of granite with its roof at ground level. 

Of Lalibela's 8-10,000 people, over 1,000 are priests. Religious ritual is central to the life of the town, with regular processions, extensive fasts, crowds of singing and dancing priests. This, combined with its extraordinary religious architecture and simplicity of life, gives the city of Lalibela a distinctively timeless, almost biblical atmosphere.

 

The Danakil (Dallol) Depression, which straddles the Eritrean border to the east of the Tigrian Highlands, is officially listed as the hottest place on earth. Much of this vast and practically unpopulated region lies below sea level -116 m at Dallol one of the driest and most tectonically active areas on the planet.

The Danakil is an area of singular geological fascination: a strange lunar landscape studded with active volcanoes, malodorous sulfur-caked hot springs, solidified black lava flows, and vast salt-encrusted basins.

 

Fasiledes Castles doesn’t only have the castle of the great king Fasiledes. It also has other castles built by his successors as King of Kings of Ethiopia.

The castles are found in the historic city of Gondar which ones served as capital city of Ethiopia. Gondar is 50 kilometers north of Lake Tana, 700 kilometers north of Addis Ababa and nestles in the foothills of the Semien mountains at an altitude of 2,200 meters above sea level. Gondar, founded by King Fasiledes in 1636, was the capital of Ethiopia for nearly 200 years.

 

Axum or Aksum is a city in northern Ethiopia which was the original capital of the eponymous kingdom of Axum. Axum was a naval and trading power that ruled the region from 400 BC into the 10th century.

These obelisks, also called stelae, are known to be the tallest single pieces of stone ever quarried and erected in the ancient world. Their age and use is a complete mystery. Some scholars, extrapolating from ancient coins found at the base of the giant pillars, suggest that they may have been carved and erected around the beginning of the 4th century AD. Due to their proximity to nearby tombs, the obelisks may possibly have been used as memorials to deceased kings and queens, but this is only a speculation.