Africa's new spiritual heart

"When you arrive in Ethiopia you become eight years younger!" said Fasil, a guide. How come? Well, the East African country uses the old Julian calendar, and has done since Christianity came here in the 3rd century AD. Here, it is 1994.

Therefore, Ethiopia still has a millennium celebration to come - a fact that will enthral the cultural and spiritual tourists flocking back to what is increasingly being called "Africa's Tibet".

Next week Bono jets in. He's on a humanitarian mission, not a holiday, but nothing puts destinations on the map as surely as celebrities. Here the lure is not Buddhism, but a mixture of earthy Christian churches, royal castles, Islamic shrines and a pre-Christian civilisation that has bequeathed inexplicable standing stones - not to mention a national cuisine that would make a vindaloo tremble.

The kick-off point for Ethiopia is the "historic trail", akin to India's "golden triangle", traversed daily by small groups. After landing in modern Addis Ababa, we went to Bahir Dar, a town on the southern banks of Lake Tana, and took a boat out to small islands where ancient round churches loom from wild foliage, then wandered along the Blue Nile, which snakes from Lake Tana past Emporer Haile Selassie's summer palace, a Fifties pile fronted by a concrete Lion of Judah.

Which reminds you: Ethiopia is the Rastafarian Zion. We didn't make it to the Rasta colony south of Addis, but I met a white American Rasta, who responded to my greeting in Amharic (I couldn't even master the five-syllable "thank you"). Emperor Selassie has been dead since 1975, but he is still worshipped, and in a year or so there is to be a big roots reggae festival in Addis. "Mengistu (the dictator from 1974-1991) didn't allow Bob Marley to be buried here," said tourism commissioner Yusuf Abdullahi Sukkar. Shame: imagine the pilgrims.

Gonder was our next stop, a dusty town with art deco remnants from the Italian occupation of the late Thirties. Tourists come here for its fantastic collection of 16th century castles, and we meditated in the grounds of a ruined keep before heading back to the hilltop hotel for a sundowner of Ethiopian sparkling wine, labelled "Shampagne". From the plane (driving is a dusty endurance test), sunbaked mountains loomed over the Rift Valley. These are the northern highlands, supporting a vast variety of birds and making Ethiopia a twitcher's magnet. Then we arrived in Lalibela, Ethiopia's holy city, to stay in another "Ghion", the governmentrun chain which is still the country's major player. Each one has a split-level dining room, swimming pool, and the best location in town.

At dawn, we awoke to a pack of colourfully saddled mules waiting to take us up to a monastery on a mountain and ambled up over rocky buttes and barley fields. At the 4,000-metre-high summit the air was thin, the horizon distant, and the senses tickled by bells and woodsmoke.

Lalibela's 12 churches go underground into the rock. No one knows how or why; locals tell you that "angels" built them. Several are being repaired and the spindly eucalyptus scaffolding is almost as miraculous as the churches themselves. Inside every church is a striplight, a plastic clock that doesn't work and a priest dressed in ceremonial robe for a photograph.

The single most holy place is Axum, the northern-most city, where the elusive Ark of the Covenant is supposedly kept. But less known are its remnants - of the pre-Christian Axumite civilisation, of which little remains, apart from numinous obelisks carved out of one piece of stone.

Back in Addis we went to the museum to see Lucy, who held the title of "earliest hominid skeleton" for several years until she was superseded by older bones.

That's another fact about Ethiopia: we can all claim to have started here, as it is the crucible of homo erectus. A museum worker told me he had witnessed a "fists and everything" fight between a Creationist and a Darwinist over these old bones.

Ethiopia is poor. The electricity and phones are unreliable, its roads are cratered, but it delivers a millennial punch that leaves you reeling. As for its tourism, its father of tourism, former minister Habte Selassie Tafesse, said: "We've hardly started."

Way to go
Oliver Bennett flew to Addis Ababa with British Airways (0845 7733377; www.ba.com), which flies thrice weekly, current returns from £433.40. Tim Best Travel (020 7591 0300; info@timbesttravel. com) specialises in tailor-made trips to Africa; a 12-night guided itinerary in Ethiopia costs from £2,075pp all-inclusive.