Roads Less Travelled - Ethiopia
Lonely Planet writer Katharina Kane blazes a trail through Ethiopia, a country that's known more for its droughts and desolation than its awesome tourist drawcards. Her journey begins in Harar with a drug-fuelled all-night-trance vigil in the holiest Islamic city in Africa, and ends among thousands of Orthodox pilgrims on the shores of Lake Tana paying homage to a woman who tried to save the soul of the devil. Along the way she gets an insight into the courting rituals of the fearsome Afar nomads, goes in search of a three-million-year-old ancestor and meets a septuagenarian gent carving a church out of rock armed with nothing but a pickaxe.
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When the Berlin Wall came down, escaped the confines of East Germany and took up life in London. There, African summer stages and World Music clubs sidetracked her from practising classical flute concertos and seduced her into a PhD in African music studies. She spent months researching in Guinea and Gambia before decamping to Senegal. She is the co-author of Lonely Planet guides to Africa and West Africa, a contributor to world-music magazines Roots and Songlines and produces world-music features for BBC and WDR radio. She recently explored Ethiopia for Lonely Planet: Roads Less Travelled.
