The road north from Gondar is charming: you pass through big, placid, fertile landscapes (vivid green and yellow in the rainy season) with occasional glimpses ahead and to the west of outposts of the arid mountains that await you. The gateway to the Simien Mountains National Park is Debark, a sprawling market town which does not suggect you are entering one of the best places to visit in the country. If you are going to stay at Limolino Lodge you pass the road into the national park on your right and carry on a few km before turning right to the lodge. Here, on open close- cropped dry grass, you may well come across a huge troop of placidly feeding Gelada monkeys. Stop and walk slowly up to them… they are fairly tame. Contemporary Limolino Lodge, opened 2016, perched on its cliff top, can claim to be one of the features of the national park. It opened in 2016 and we think it ranks along with Gheralta Lodge and Bale Mountain Lodge as one of the three accommodation highlights of Ethiopia: wonderfully improbable places to stay in astonishing settings: worth hanging out in them for their own sake, but with the bonus of an extra dimension – marvellous wildlife and outdoor activities. Walking or trekking in the Simien National Park may well turn out to be the highlight of your travels in Ethiopia. You need to be prepared: expect high altitude breathlessness and dehydration – perhaps a mild headache – ideally, acclimatize for two days doing short walks from the lodge.

To walk in the national park you must be accompanied by a local guide and a militia man, who will carry a gun. Local officials say that the gun does not imply danger. Militia men carry them anyway, and the authorities like them to go along with walkers for employment. Our guide was top quality: charming, gentle, bright and no mangled English. He took us along the park’s main escarpment with its stupendous views of the park’s eroded, gaspworthy ochre mountains, changing endlessly with the light. Our section of this magnificent path was undemanding, mainly level and in four hours with a break for lunch we felt that we had got to grips with the place, absorbing not only the landscape but its wildlife – two pretty species of antelope; another troop of enchanting Gelada monkeys and some birds. Of course there are many more walking options, much more strenuous., with overnight camping.

The mountains are dotted with farmers’ straw roofed huts. One tiny settlement is huddled in a bowl thousands of feet below the escarpment, so cut off that the farmers have had to build a 60-metre ladder up the sheer cliff face above them. To carry produce for market, they scale this ladder, then walk for five hours to Debark – and back – in the same day.

Simien Lodge, inside the park, on the escarpment walking route, is now looking very traditional compared with Limolimo. What really sets the latter – Ethiopia’s newest lodge – apart from the rest are its strikingly contemporary looks. The 11 bedrooms, set in eight individual buildings with bare rammed earth walls (the North African building technique is a first for Ethiopia) and ‘living’ roofs are soothing, but it’s the main building, perched on the very edge of the Simien escarpment, where the svelte and sexy design may well set a new standard for Ethiopia’s lodges. The bird’s eye view of the mountains from the expansive terrace, with dining tables and firepits, stretch out as far as you can see.