HALFWAY THROUGH a two-month walk through northern Ethiopia, accompanied by thirst and hunger and temperatures that oscillated between extreme heat and paralysing, night-time cold, I reached the town of Abi Addi. I’d waited a long time to get here. Twenty years earlier I’d met an elderly architect in Somerset who is still one of the few people to have explored the rock-cut churches and monasteries of this region. Since then, I’d visited numerous Ethiopian monasteries – but civil war had prevented me reaching these, one of the least-known concentrations of holy sites on Earth. And they are living ...
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