The Blue Nile Falls. Mystical. Breathtaking. Paradise.
The Lonely Planet describes these falls as lackluster and dried up, but we visited during the best time of year (i.e. just during/after the rainy season), making the water flow and ferocity of the falls stronger than ever. The Lonely Planet seems to be wrong on this place.
In my opinion, the falls are truly stunning – too beautiful for words and too magical to be captured in pictures and believe me we tried. We tried photographing this magnificent feat of nature from every angle and while the photos capture some of the awe and wonder of this place, they do not do the falls justice. At one point on our hike through the hills and caverns leading to the falls, surrounded by the greenest of green grass and trees, the most lush landscape and vivid colours, I sat and stared. Simply speechless. While I sat, little children sat in the trees and played the flute (I kid you not – it was like a picture of paradise that you dream about).
I thought this place must be the creation of some higher power, be it spiritual or otherwise (and for me it felt extremely spiritual), a place of such beauty and perfection, so natural and yet so incomprehensible all at the same time that I was dumbfounded. The last time I remember having this feeling of complete wonder, joy and peace was when I visited Puttaparthi last summer for the World Youth Conference and when I set my eyes on the Taj Mahal (both times). For me, the reality of being in this new place, of being in Ethiopia, of my new life since August finally hit home. As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, “We are a long way from Kansas, Todo.”
Ethiopia is a land of such vast contrasts – it is not the desolate desert depicted in international images of this country. Ethiopia is not defined simply in the struggles and complexities that characterize its history and current political realities. It is a country rich in natural beauty and steeped in culture, full of people that give so completely of themselves, a country of such variance that to attach a single description to its name would be a severe injustice.
