Eight regions, each a different country in feel

An Afro-alpine escarpment where the ground simply stops, two thousand metres down.

A seventeenth-century royal capital of castles — and the gateway town for the Simien Mountains.

Thirteenth-century churches cut entire from single blocks of volcanic rock, and never abandoned.

Island monasteries guarding centuries-old manuscripts, at the river's true source.

One of the lowest, hottest points on the continent, and one of the most geologically active.

Churches cut into sandstone towers, some reached only by handholds and bare feet.

Ethiopia's highest peak, reached through the far side of the Simien few trekkers ever see.

A quiet north-shore village where Gondar's imperial story began, before there was a Gondar.

Ethiopian wolves and geladas on highland moor a community has protected for four hundred years.

A weaving village founded on one idea: that men and women should share every kind of work.

The water tower of the Blue Nile, walked village to village with the families who live there.

A highland lake on the road to Lalibela, and the monastery where one of Ethiopia's great saints was taught.

Capital of an ancient trading empire, and Ethiopian Orthodoxy's spiritual centre.

Home to more distinct ethnic groups than almost anywhere else on the continent.

The single best place on earth to see a wild Ethiopian wolf.

Africa's diplomatic capital, and home to the most famous ancestor of us all.

A monastery above a Blue Nile gorge, founded by one of Ethiopia's greatest saints.

Carved stelae, a rock-hewn church and a million years of human tools — all south of the capital.

Volcanic crater lakes an hour from Addis, and a holy mountain with a lake in its summit.

A juniper forest protected by imperial decree since the fifteenth century, forty kilometres from Addis.

A lake inside an extinct volcano, with an island monastery, hot springs and waterfalls.

Ethiopia's oldest national park: a dormant volcano, a waterfall gorge and palm-fringed hot springs.

Fifteen kilometres of river-carved limestone passages, sacred to two faiths.

Singing wells, a salt lake inside a volcano, and a bird found nowhere else on earth.

The palace of a coffee-rich Oromo king, in the heartland of wild Arabica.

Ethiopia's only walled city — 82 mosques, lanes too narrow for cars, and hyenas fed by hand at dusk.

Forty springs, two Rift Valley lakes, and crocodiles basking on the shore of Lake Chamo.

Stone-terraced hills and walled villages — a living landscape more than 400 years in the making.

The hills behind the world's most famous coffees — and a UNESCO landscape where coffee grows under the trees.