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My mule stumbled and went down to her knees. Suddenly, I was nose-to-stone with a black volcanic boulder; only my oversized tennis shoes, stuck in the stirrups, kept me from flipping over the beast's head and smashing into the dry creek-bed below.

"Hij, hij!" The mule-driver's lash stung the mule's flanks as she struggled back to her feet. His voice sounded both annoyed and slightly panicky: haunted, no doubt, by visions of a fat tip slipping from his grasp due to this misstep.

'This (expletive) trail is too rough for a (expletive) mule!' I muttered under my breath. "Excuse me, Dawit, can you get my feet out of the stirrups?"

"No, no. Not far now. Ride mule!" He grinned in an oily, would-be ingratiating way, and lashed the mule again.

"I'm getting off there," I replied sternly, turning sideways in the saddle to lock eyes with the driver and pointing a short distance ahead, "There at the wide part!" My hands flew back onto the pommel in a white-knuckled death-grip.

Dawit nodded glumly, his eyes going sad and far-away. I wondered which is harder to deal with: mules, or western tourists?

We were picking our way down the cliff-side path from Asheten Maryam, a mountain monastery and church above Lalibela, Ethiopia. On this day, the trail swarmed with pilgrims and local worshippers dressed in startlingly white wraps, along with the occasional farenji gawker such as myself. It was the Festival of Saint Mary, and this was the trail to her church.

Asheten Maryam is a modest 12th century church, partially hewn into the bedrock of a mountain ridge at an altitude topping 10,300 feet. At the trail's end, worshippers scrambled down a stone staircase into a narrow defile to one side of the church, then walked around to the doorway. Inside the church the small amount of natural light that makes its way into the canyon and seeps in through the door was supplemented only by a handful of guttering candles. On this feast day, women prostrated themselves over and over again before a brightly painted icon of the Virgin and Child propped against the rough-hewn wall that divides the sanctuary from the Holy of Holies within. Perhaps forty people at a time can fit into the space, if they aren't too particular about niceties such as moving. Or breathing. Their white clothing seemed to glow in the dim light, like snow under moonlit skies.

This is my travel experience.It was so fun. So folks, sometimes we deserve to have fun and enjoy life away from the noisy and overcrowded cities.

Learn more about this author, Reynard Delos Santos.
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