Tigray

The northern region of Ethiopia, and the destination of Harry’s journey from Addis Ababa. Tigrayans regard themselves as culturally and linguistically distinct from Ethiopians, which is part of the background to what happened here.

Civil war broke out in 2020 between the federal government and the TPLF. A peace deal was signed in late 2022, but some leaders rejected it and remain armed, the region has fragmented into factions competing for power, and federal troops are still deployed. Harry’s summary is that the situation is fragile, the war could restart, and civilians are stuck in the middle.

On the death toll: Harry’s own narration puts the war’s dead at over 600,000. His driver in Tigray says over a million. Both figures are recorded here as given rather than reconciled.

What the war left

• Displaced people who haven’t gone home, years after the fighting.
• Schools and infrastructure destroyed.
• Half-built towns. Construction in Wukro and Mekelle stopped when the war started and was never restarted, so whole streets stand unfinished.
• An abandoned tank at the roadside, which Harry reads as the region’s symbol.
• Tourism has collapsed. It was low season when he visited; the foreign visitors who do come are German, Spanish, French and American.
• The human version, from two people he meets: a guide who spent the war hiding in a mountain cave, unable to get food or water, and who says civilians were shot at in their houses; and an elderly woman walking alone on the road whose children and husband died in the war, who is nearly blind and cannot afford a hospital.

Getting there

• Checkpoints, including one at five in the morning that asked Harry for 4,000 birr. Bribes are expected at some and not others.
• A fuel crisis, which meant buying poor-quality petrol on the black market.
• Soldiers on the roads in numbers, and Harry deliberately does not film them.
• Drivers advise hiding your belongings — while also saying Ethiopians are good people. Both things are said in the same breath.
• The roads themselves are good, and newer than he expected.

Abuna Yemata Guh

A church cut into a cliff at 2,500 metres, and the reason Harry came. Abuna means father; the church is named for its founder.

Why it’s up there: it was built high deliberately, because an enemy would struggle to find it. That logic is a thousand years old and the region has kept proving it.

The climb is barefoot, with no ropes and no harness, up a rock face with a 250-metre drop. Someone fell while Harry was on it — he survived, and the guides said he was two steps from dying and couldn’t explain how he hadn’t. Local people make the climb at midnight without lights. The resident priest has done it more than a thousand times.

Inside: paintings of Mary, Jesus and the twelve apostles, and manuscripts around 900 years old written by hand on goatskin in Ge’ez, with ink made from charcoal.

Visitors are expected to bring the priest a gift. Harry brought a cross necklace and a live goat, carried 500 kilometres from Dessie.

Harry’s tips

• Come and look. His guide’s closing line is the argument: politics is spoiling the tourism, and if you actually get here there is no political problem — what you hear and what you see are different things. See judge a place for yourself.
• Bring the priest something. It is expected, and a goat is an entirely normal answer.
• Budget for checkpoints and for fuel being difficult.
• Don’t film soldiers.

Source

• I Hiked to the World’s Most Dangerous Church 🇪🇹 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-uZw7r6wU0