Lalibela, Ethiopia

After a day of three long and bumpy bus journeys and its requisite touts and hassles, Rosie, Yuka, and I (all continuing together from the Danakil tour) forced ourselves awake at 5:30 am on a Sunday morning — though the non-stop chanting over the loudspeakers all over town started at 2 am. We joined the masses of white-clad worshippers to the churches of Lalibela. Looks like the whole town’s awake.

Lalibela’s known for its 11 rock-cut churches — to be clear, these are churches that look like they’re standing buildings, but were not built up like buildings, but carved *down* from the massive bedrock and made to look like buildings. (And I thought Petra was impressive enough — those are just façades!) Nothing prepares you for such a sight: peer down a massive quarry and you see a giant building in the hole, surrounded by maze-like passageways and tunnels. Archaelogicially, geologically, and architecturally fascinating as it may be, what fascinated me most was its continued use as a place of worship. Here were are, in 2015 (well, Ethiopian 2008), and these churches carved in the 1100s are still very much lived-in, crowded by villagers using it as their regular place of worship, and further crowded by pilgrims from the rest of the country.
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