The Bale Mountains

The Bale Mountains form one of Ethiopia’s most remarkable wilderness areas, a vast highland region in the country’s southeast built around the Sanetti Plateau, the largest stretch of Afro-alpine habitat anywhere in Africa. At over 4,000 metres, this otherworldly landscape of glacial lakes, volcanic ridges and giant lobelia is capped by Tullu Dimtu, Ethiopia’s second-highest peak.

The park is best known as the stronghold of the Ethiopian wolf, the world’s rarest canid and one of Africa’s great wildlife sightings, alongside the endemic mountain nyala and Menelik’s bushbuck. Descend from the plateau and the landscape shifts entirely into the Harenna Forest, a dense belt of cloud forest home to colobus and Bale monkeys, and one of the last of its kind left in the country.

Trekking is the best way to experience Bale, whether on a day walk through the Gaysay Grasslands near park headquarters or a multi-day route across the plateau itself. Birdwatchers are equally well rewarded, with Ethiopia home to close to 10% of the world’s bird species. Remote and rarely crowded, the Bale Mountains offer a genuinely off-the-beaten-track alternative to Ethiopia’s more visited highland parks.