From Axum, we took a minibus to Adwa, then to Adigrat and finally to Hawzien in Tigray. Tigray is known for its rock-hewn churches – little cave churches that have been carved into the rocks many many years ago. Some of them can only be reached by some climbing and hiking – an adventure that sounded just right for us! Like the Simiens, most people visit this region on an organized tour… but since that’s not our style, we did it by ourselves – some hassle involved but so much cheaper!

We first took a minibus from Hawzien to Megab, where we were supposed to pick up a (mandatory?) guide for visiting the churches. However, after realizing that we didn’t have our own transportation but wanted to go by public minibus and walking, none of the guides was interested to accompanying us anymore. Lol. So we just started walking, then caught a minibus to where the road forks off to Abuna Yemata Guh – probably the most famous church. We were the first ones to arrive and the ticket „office“ was still closed (meaning: there was no one sitting under the tree yet, selling tickets), so we just walked on – getting hassled by two teenagers so much that I had to threaten to call the police if that didn’t leave us alone. Their attitude changed from one second to the other and they disappeared. Luckily!

We hiked on until we reached the point where you have to climb up a wall. There were already 2 scouts and another guy waiting to „help“ us up (you’re forced to accept their help and then tip them for help you didn’t need and want). Firstly though, the priest had to go up and await us up the steep rock mountain to open up the church for us. Once we had reached the top, the views were incredible! You’re walking on a small footpath with a steep drop-off just next to you. Really impressive!

The church itself was beautiful too with some nice paintings that the priest pointed out. It’s crazy how they built this church all the way up in the rocks!

After some more hassle on the way down and back, we hitched a ride back to Megab from where we walked along the road to Debre Maryam Korkor and Daniel Korkor – the two other churches we had planned to visit. It was a dusty, hot walk, but the views were nice so that made it better.

Again, people tried to force us to take a scout with us but we plainly refused and were able to walk by ourselves. The hike took longer this time, but there was no real climbing involved. We basically had to climb a whole mountain, which came a bit as a surprise for us! At times, the trail was hard to spot, but with Maps.me we were fine. Also, we just ended up following some groups here and there. The churches themselves didn’t excite us that much this time – but the views were again stunning!

Tigray is a beautiful region and I’m sure there would be some beautiful hikes that you could do. Unfortunately, at this stage there is no infrastructure for independent travellers, you would have to go on an expensive tour for seeing more churches over multiple days. But for us, this was good enough! I believe we saw some of the most impressive churches and after a day with lots of hassle, we were ready to move on…