---
type: Place
title: Tigray
description: Northern Ethiopian region still recovering from a civil war almost nobody covered — half-built towns, checkpoints, and a 900-year-old church cut into a cliff at 2,500 metres.
tags: [tigray, ethiopia, conflict, churches, abuna-yemata-guh, orthodox, mountains]
coordinates: {lat: 13.8813, lng: 39.1275}
timestamp: 2026-08-05T12:00:00Z
---

# Tigray

The northern region of [Ethiopia](/countries/ethiopia.md), and the destination
of Harry's journey from [Addis Ababa](/places/addis-ababa.md). 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](/tips/judge-a-place-for-yourself.md).
- 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 🇪🇹](/videos/s-uZw7r6wU0.md) —
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-uZw7r6wU0