It takes a certain leap of faith to book a holiday and send lots of money to someone you don’t know. In our case we knew Eskinder was vetted by Responsible Tourism.

We drew some reassurance from his speedy and intelligent responses to our numerous and varied queries, and eventually took the leap.

Anyway, he met us in the airport on arrival, and he and his affiliates looked after us perfectly, and we had a wonderful holiday in Ethiopia.

The country has much more to offer than I realised. In the end, it was the countryside which made the greatest impression on me – but that’s not to demean the history and /or the churches.