Simien Mountains

About 100km north of Gondar lies the Simien Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with at least a dozen peaks over 4,000 m high, of which Ras Dashen at 4,620 m is the highest and the fourth highest in Africa.

There is a single dirt road that runs through the park, providing an easy way to see most of the park’s key habitat in a short space of time. A more time consuming way to explore the park, but far more thorough and satisfying, is on foot on the many tracks used by local people to travel between the villages on the lower slopes or to reach the high pastures for grazing animals.

Trekking in the Simien Mountains presents one with some of the most dramatic scenery in Africa and the wildlife includes three of Ethiopia’s endemic large mammals, the gelada baboon, the Ethopian wolf and the Walia ibex. There are also non-endemic mammals such as the klipspringer and bushbuck and cliff-nesting birds of prey such as the lammergeyer, Ruppell’s griffon and Egyptian vultures can be seen soaring above the escarpments.