The Blue Nile Falls, Lake Tana's island monasteries with 14th-century frescoes, and the source of one of the world's greatest rivers — all in one lakeside city
Bahir Dar sits at the southern end of Lake Tana — the source of the Blue Nile and the largest lake in Ethiopia — a broad, flat city of palm-lined boulevards on the lakeshore, with one of Ethiopia's most dramatic food and coffee traditions and two world-class natural and historical sites within an hour. The Blue Nile Falls (Tis Issat — 'smoke of fire' in Amharic) plunge 45 metres over a 400-metre-wide ledge 30km south of town: in the rainy season (July–September) they produce one of the most powerful water spectacles in Africa. Lake Tana's 37 islands hold over 20 functioning Ethiopian Orthodox…
Lake Tana was the heartland of the earliest Amhara and Agaw kingdoms — the founders of the Ethiopian empire. When Islamic forces expelled the Christian court in the 16th century, the emperors took refuge on Lake Tana's islands (Daga Estifanos held the mummified remains of five Ethiopian emperors for centuries). The Blue Nile was the source of the seasonal flood that made Egypt's Nile Valley fertile — the Egyptians called it the 'Blue Nile' for the dark silt it carried, and its source was one of the great mysteries of classical geography (the Portuguese explorer Pedro Páez 'discovered' it in 1…