The small town of Lalibela in Ethiopia is home to one of the world's most astounding sacred sites: 11 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 river Nile, over 800km in length within Ethiopia and the longest river in Africa, holds part of its heart in Ethiopia. From lake Tana, the Blue Nile, known locally as Abbay, flows for 800 km within Ethiopia to meet the white Nile in Khartoum to form the great river that gives life to Egypt and the Sudan. It has been said that the Blue Nile contributes up to 80% of the Nile’s flow.