Ethiopia offers wildlife found nowhere else on earth and ancient monuments without the crowds of better-known destinations, Travel Weekly UK told British travel sellers in July 2019.
Gelada baboons in Ethiopia's Simien Mountains (Rod Waddington / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The trade magazine's pitch rested on two strengths that remain true today: endemic highland wildlife and a cluster of UNESCO World Heritage sites in the north of the country.
The Simien Mountains National Park, inscribed by UNESCO in 1978, is the best-known wildlife destination. Its jagged escarpments are home to large troops of gelada, a grass-eating primate found only in the Ethiopian highlands, as well as the Walia ibex, a wild goat that lives nowhere else, and the Ethiopian wolf.
Further south, the Bale Mountains hold the largest surviving population of the Ethiopian wolf, Africa's most endangered carnivore, along with the mountain nyala and many endemic birds.
The historic circuit covers Lalibela, where churches were carved out of solid rock in the 12th and 13th centuries; Aksum, with the giant stone stelae of an ancient kingdom; Gondar, the 17th-century royal city of castles; and the island monasteries of Lake Tana near Bahir Dar.
Visitors should check current travel advisories before planning trips to the north, where conflict has affected access to several of these sites since 2020.
Sources: Travel Weekly UK, UNESCO: Simien National Park, UNESCO: Rock-Hewn Churches, Lalibela, UNESCO: Aksum