Ethiopia

The expedition opens before dawn with a short domestic flight north to Semera or Mekele (we recommend arriving into Addis the previous evening). From the airstrip, our vehicles head out across the Danakil, breaking the drive at Lake Afdera — a brine lake far below sea level in the depression's shimmering heat. By late afternoon we reach the Dodom camp at the base of Erta Ale, the restless smoking mountain that has been erupting continuously for longer than anyone can remember.

We rise for the hike to the summit lava lake as first light breaks across the caldera — the glow, the heat, the sulphur smell. Down from the volcano, the day shifts to the Dallol Depression: a hallucinatory landscape of acid pools, neon mineral crusts, and salt formations stacked in colours that have no business existing in nature. The evening closes at Lake Karum, where the salt flats turn amber and copper as the sun drops into the depression.

An early start brings us deeper into the Dallol — one of the lowest points on the surface of the Earth. We spend the morning among the geothermal vents and crystalline salt formations before visiting a traditional mining site where Afar workers still carve salt slabs from the ancient lake bed entirely by hand. If the timing is right, a camel caravan will be moving through — a sight that feels genuinely untouched by the century. By afternoon we are on the road to Mekele, regional capital of Tigray.

We drive into the Gheralta massif, where ancient Tigrinya communities carved their churches directly into cliff faces hundreds of metres above the valley floor. The morning is given to Abrha We Atsbha, an architectural wonder still used for worship today. In the afternoon we make the ascent — roughly 500 metres of climbing — to reach Abuna Yemata, accessed through a narrow rock fissure that opens into a chamber whose ceiling and walls are covered in murals perfectly preserved since the fifth century. There are few rooms on Earth quite like it.

The road to Axum passes through Yeha, Ethiopia's oldest city — more than 2,800 years of continuous human presence, a ruined Moon God temple, and almost no other visitors. Axum is the weight of empire made physical: 3,000-year-old stelae, the crumbling palaces of ancient kings, and the chapel that claims guardianship of the Ark of the Covenant. We spend the afternoon and evening here slowly.

A final morning in Axum — the Queen of Sheba's Palace, the baptismal pools, the museum — before flying south to Addis Ababa and a short afternoon circuit of the capital: the National Museum (home to the fossil Lucy), the Piazza quarter, and dinner at one of the city's genuinely excellent restaurants.

We fly north to Lalibela, Ethiopia's spiritual heartland, and spend the afternoon with the first cluster of the famous rock-hewn churches: Bet Medhane Alem — the largest rock-cut church on Earth — Bet Maryam with its celebrated carved reliefs, and the perfectly proportioned Bet Giyorgis, set alone in its cruciform pit and arguably the single most iconic image in all of Ethiopian heritage.

One final early morning among the churches — the second cluster this time, including Bete Emanuel, with its finely articulated exterior façade, and Bete Abba Libanos, partly carved from a cliff face that still forms its rear wall. Then a transfer to the airstrip, back to Addis Ababa, and onward international connections. Ethiopia has a way of staying with you.