Travel to Ethiopia and enjoy Culture, traditions, history, and heritage

Ethiopia is the oldest independent country in Africa and the second-oldest official Christian nation in the world after Armenia. Unique among African countries, Ethiopian maintained its freedom from colonial rule with the exception of a short-lived Italian occupation from 1936-41.

Ethiopia is in the northeast African region known as the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa (after Nigeria), bordered by Eritrea to the north, Djibouti to the northeast, Somalia to the east, Kenya to the south, and Sudan and South Sudan to the west.


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Ethiopian Addis Ababa with tourist Visa

Located more or less at the dead centre of Ethiopia, and surrounded by the state of Oromia, the capital city of Ethiopia is governed as a 540 square km city-state of which less than 5% is rural. According to 2013 estimates of the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia, the population of Addis Ababa is 3.1 million of which 51.6% are female. Almost half of Addis Ababa cosmopolitan population is Amhara, with Oromo, Gurage and Tigraian residents respectively making up 19%, 17% and 7.6% of the remainder. More than 80% of its residents are Orthodox Christians. The capital city is subdivided into six zones and 28 woredas. Amharic is the working language, but English is widely spoken.

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Ethiopia Afar with tourist Visa

Although it covers a vast area of 270,000 square km running up the border with Djibouti and Eritrea, Afar region is arid, thinly populated and almost bereft of large towns. According to July 2013 estimates of the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia, the total population of Afar is 1.65 million, of which less than 10% live in urban areas. The tiny capital of Assaita will be replaced by the purpose-built capital of Semere in the near future. Afar region is named for the pastoral people who comprise roughly 92% of its population(the remainder consists mostly of people from elsewhere in Ethiopia who have settled in the region). Geographically, Afar forms the most northeriy part of the Rift valley, and it is characterised by low- lying plains that receive less than 2oomm of rainfall annually. Me Awash River runs through Afar from south to north, draining into a set of desert lakes south of Assaita on the Djiboutian border. salt and various minerals are mined in the region.

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Ethiopia Amhara with tourist Visa

Governed from its large modern capital city of Bahir Dar, on the southern tip of Lake Tana, Amhara covers an area of 170,752 square km and supports a population estimated at 19.2 million in 2013. Although the substantial cities of Bahr Dar, Gondar and Dessie all lie within Amhara, roughly 90% of the region's population is rural. The Amhara people for whom the state is named comprise more than 90% of the population, and Orthodox Christians outnumber Muslims by a ratio of 4:1. Several of Ethiopia most popular tourist sites lie in Amhara, most notably the former imperial capitals of Lalibela and Gondar. The Simien Mountains to the north of Gondar include Ethiopia highest peak, the 4,620m Mount Ras Dejen, and harbour the country's main concentrations of the endemic gelada baboon and Walia Ibex. Lake Tana, Ethiopia largest body of water and source of the Blue Nile also falls within Amhara, as does the Blue Nile Falls.

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Ethiopia Benishangul-Gumuz with tourist Visa

The most obscure of Ethiopia's regions, practically never visited by tourists, is Benishangul-Gumuz, which runs for about 2,000km along the Sudanese border to the east of Amhara, but is on average no more than 200km. Relatively low-lying but with an annual rainfall in excess of 1,000mm, this remote and poorly developed area is characterised by a hot, humid climate. The regional population of about 1.03 million is governed from the small capital town of Asosa in the south.

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Dire Dawa in Ethiopia with tourist Visa

Dire Dawa is Ethiopiab second-largest city, with a population exceeding 377,000, but the administrative boundaries of the city-state cover an area of around 130 square km, boosting the total to 395,000. Surrounded on all sides by the region of Oromia, the dominant ethnic group of this cosmopolitan city is the Oromo (48%), but there are also substantial Amhara, Somali and Gurage populations. Amhara is the official language of Dire Dawa, and Muslims outnumber Christians by a ratio of 2:1.

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Ethiopia Gambella travel with tourist Visa

The small state, which covers an area of 25,274 square km along the southern Sudanese border, essentially comprises lush, humid lowland draining into the Baro River, an important tributary of the NileRiver. Relatively remote and undeveloped, Gambella region supports a predominantly rural population of roughly 406,000 ethnically varied people. The main nationalities represented in the vicinity of the regional capital, the small river port of Gambella, are the Nuer and Anuwak, who respectively account for 40% and 27% of the regional population. Minority goups include the Mezhenge, Apana, Komo and various recent migrants from the highlands. Although the state is predominantly Christian, more than half the population subscribes to recently introduced protestant and evangelical denominations, with the remainder adhering to Orthodox Christianity, Islam or traditional animism. A fair amount of wildlife - lion, elephant and buffalo as well as various monkeys and antelope - persists in Gambella region.

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