Bahir Dar

Bahir Dar is a young city in an old landscape. Its name means, roughly, sea shore, and for centuries the site was a cluster of fishing and farming villages at the point where the Blue Nile leaves Lake Tana, overshadowed by the monasteries on the lake's islands and by the imperial capital at Gondar to the north. European travellers in the 19th century described it variously as a village or a small town, but no place of any size grew up.

The modern city dates from May 1936, when the Italians occupied it, gave it its first modern urban features and made it the administrative centre of the southern Lake Tana territories. In the early 1950s it was considered the best site for an alternative national capital, and it was provided with a water supply, hydroelectric power, better lake-port facilities, the Abbay bridge over the Blue Nile, textile mills, a hospital and the colleges that grew into Bahir Dar University, while German experts drew up a comprehensive master plan with new zoning. The hydroelectric scheme on the river brought power and industry, and since 2003 it has taken much of the water out of the falls downstream.

After the fall of the Derg Bahir Dar became the capital of the Amhara region, and it has grown very fast since, with a large university, an airport and a tourist trade built on the lake and the falls. In 2002 UNESCO awarded the city its Cities for Peace Prize. The fighting in Amhara since 2023 has brought disruption and a sharp fall in visitor numbers.

Lake Tana is the centre of the city's cultural life. Its islands and peninsulas hold monasteries founded from the 14th century onwards, some of them older still in tradition, where monks keep illuminated manuscripts on parchment, silver crosses and crowns said to have belonged to emperors. The round churches, with their conical roofs and painted inner drums, are among the best examples of the Ethiopian religious painting tradition, and several remain closed to women by long-standing rule.

On the water the tankwa, a canoe made by binding papyrus stems, is still used for fishing and for carrying firewood and reeds, though motorboats now do the longer work. Reed and basket weaving, cotton weaving and the coffee grown in the shade of the Zege forest are the traditional crafts of the lake villages, and the shade coffee forest is itself treated as something to be protected.

City culture is Amhara and Orthodox, with the same festival calendar as the rest of the highlands: Timkat processions, Meskel bonfires, night services at Genna and Fasika. The university keeps a young, mixed population in town, and evenings in the bars belong to the azmari and to Ethio-jazz and modern Amharic music. Bahir Dar has a reputation within Ethiopia as a relaxed, orderly city, and its avenues of palms and jacarandas are a local point of pride.

The 2007 census counted about 222,000 people in the Bahir Dar special zone, and the city has grown by more than five per cent a year since, one of the fastest rates in Ethiopia. The centre is a grid of wide avenues with mid-rise blocks, banks and shops; older single-storey compounds and newer condominium estates spread inland, and lakeside plots hold hotels and gardens. As the regional capital it is full of government offices, and the university, spread over several campuses, is among the largest employers.

Work on the lake and the plain around it — fishing, farming teff, rice, maize and chickpeas, and trading what comes in — supports much of the population, alongside textiles, food processing, construction and the tourist trade. Bicycles are more common here than in most Ethiopian cities because the ground is flat, and bajaj taxis fill the avenues from early morning.

The rhythm is unhurried: church before dawn for many, offices and markets through the morning, a long coffee break in the afternoon, and evenings spent walking the lakeshore or sitting in the garden bars. The war in Amhara has made itself felt in displaced families, periods of curfew, closed roads and cuts to internet and banking services, and inflation has pushed up the cost of food and fuel.

Fish makes Bahir Dar different from the rest of the highlands. Tilapia and catfish from Lake Tana are fried whole, grilled over charcoal, or cooked as asa wat, a stew with berbere and onion; asa lebleb, fish sautéed with chilli, onion and tomato, is the dish most often ordered by the water, and a thin fish soup is served as a starter in many places. Because fish is permitted on Orthodox fasting days, these dishes are eaten year-round.

Everything else is classic Amhara cooking. Injera of fermented teff carries doro wat, the chicken stew of feast days, tibs of lamb or beef fried with onion and rosemary, and the fasting platter beyaynetu, in which shiro, lentils, split peas, greens, cabbage and beetroot are set out in small mounds. Kitfo, minced beef warmed in spiced butter with mitmita chilli, is eaten with injera or with the crumbly cheese ayib.

The lake and its forests supply the drinks as well. Zege's shade-grown coffee is roasted and brewed in a jebena in the standard three rounds; honey from the lake plain becomes tej, the wine served in a rounded berele; tella, the cloudy barley beer, is brewed at home with gesho leaves. Fresh juices layered in tall glasses — avocado, mango, guava and papaya — are a speciality of the cafés.