As the unpaved road winds up from Arba Minch, each turn reveals views of lush valleys, distant lakes, and the scattered tukuls – traditional huts – dotting the hillside like a living museum of an ancient way of life. I grip my seat as we bounce over rocks and ruts – the one-and-a-half-hour drive up is bumpy, to say the least. Workers labour to pave the road, a job that is said to be finished in around five years and will surely help make Dorze more accessible to more people and improve trade between the villages and the city. And, as they tell me later that week, a paved road is essential for transporting fresh milk down to Arba Minch before it churns into butter from the relentless jolts.
Located at the end of the road, at an altitude of 2,531 metres in the Guge Mountains of southern Ethiopia, the small but vibrant Dorze community is brimming with resilience, creativity, and culture. At the heart of it all lies Dorze Lodge, my home for the next few days, and the charismatic force behind it, owner Tsehai Bogale.
Bundled against the morning chill, I sit on a wooden sunchair on the veranda of my private hut and watch as the first hues of pink and gold bleed across the sky above Lake Abaya. To my right, the main building and restaurant are still drenched in darkness. From the path down, I see a figure walking down towards me. It is Tsehai, coming to wake us up and seize the day. Happy to see me already awake, he greets me. ‘This is a time not to be missed,’ he says. ‘The sunrise show is starting.’
Tsehai, a storyteller, an ambassador of tradition, and a man whose warm laughter is as much a part of the landscape as the rolling hills, was born in Jinka and raised in Arba Minch. Growing up in the city, he visited this land many times. Falling in love with the view over the valley at this spot, he started dreaming of a lodge here. He asked the locals for permission to build. In return, he would help them turn their traditional crafts – like architecture, weaving, and dancing – into opportunities for sustainable tourism. Now, about twenty staff members keep the lodge running, with additional locals joining seasonally.
Now made up of some ten separate comfortable and roomy huts along the cliff’s edge, the lodge is built using the same techniques as the traditional elephant houses found in Dorze villages. These towering huts, shaped like the head of an elephant, but also reminiscent of giant beehives, are constructed from bamboo and enset (false banana plant, unique to Ethiopia) leaves, their high-pitched roofs designed to withstand time and termites. Inside, families – and their livestock – sleep, cook, and weave, their daily lives unfolding beneath the thatched dome. In the village, these homes can last up to a hundred years, thanks to the indoor cooking fires that keep insects and moisture at bay.
Over time, as termites and moisture destroy the basement of the huts, the healthy part is cut from the rotten part of the basement, and the entire structure can be lifted and moved to another spot. This practice explains why the hut is built so high at first. The older the house, the shorter the height.
‘Some of these houses have lived longer than the people who built them,’ Tsehai says with a knowing smile.
A short walk from the lodge is Dorze Model Village, where a handful of elephant houses serve to showcase the traditions and skills of the Dorze people. The Dorze tribe is known not only for their beehive-shaped huts, but also for their fine hand-made cotton products, with the women spinning and the men doing the weaving.
In the heart of the village, a group of women gathers, their voices rising in layered harmonies as they move from compound to compound. They sing songs of celebration – birthdays, weddings, harvests – while their feet stamp in time to the rhythms of the kebero drum. In between, men in traditional white netela cloth wield spears and shields, reenacting the proud warrior dances of their ancestors.
Music here is a form of storytelling, a way to preserve history. The instruments themselves tell tales – masenqo, a one-stringed fiddle, sings of past glories and heartbreaks, while the krar, a lyre-like instrument, hums harmonies that weave past and present together.
Before we know it, we are all dressed up in traditional Dorze clothes. I’m wearing a netela wrapped around me like a toga, with a scarf around my shoulders and a headband, both in bright yellow, red and black, all made by hand. Dorze weavers, as we also witness a few days later at the Weaver’s Cooperative in nearby Tegecha, are known throughout Ethiopia for their intricate cotton textiles, their hands moving with the precision of generations of practice. The cloth they create is a language of colour: black represents African heritage and strength, yellow represents peace and honey wine, and red signifies sacrifice, recalling the raw meat of the Meskel festival and the ox slaughtering ceremonies.
‘We dye the fabrics naturally,’ explains our guide Seintu Rasta. ‘Yellow comes from meskel flowers, black from a mixture of smoke, honey, and butter, and red from the false banana flower.’
Spinning cotton is an art of its own, and when a woman hands me a spindle, I quickly realize I lack the skill. My thread breaks again and again, prompting laughter from the weavers. ‘It takes practice,’ they assure me.
No visit to Dorze is complete without a deep dive into its culinary traditions. After closely observing the technique, I’m invited to try my hands at scraping the pulp out of false banana stems with a stone. This plant, also known as enset, is the backbone of Dorze cuisine; its fibrous pulp is scraped, buried for three months underground to ferment, and later transformed into kocho, a dense, pancake-like bread. The matriarch of the house demonstrates the process with practised hands, kneading and flattening the dough, wrapping it in leaves and baking it over a fire, as children peek in through the doorway.
A few minutes later, she tears off a steaming piece, serving it with a side of spicy red berbere sauce and fresh honey. The flavours explode on my tongue – a perfect balance of tangy, spicy, and sweet. In her hands, she also holds areke, a local homemade alcoholic drink, pouring it into a shared gourd. ‘Areke,’ guide Senta explains, ‘serves as an internal blanket, it warms from the inside and is used as a welcome drink, a drink to offer peace after misunderstandings, a drink to connect. Yo yo yo yo!’ We gather in a circle and raise our glass, repeating the cheer, Yo yo yo yo yo!’
The following morning, we set out on horseback toward Chencha (at 2,732 m, the highest point in the Dorze kingdom), a neighbouring village known for its hidden waterfall. My horse, a small but sturdy animal with slender legs, snorts and bucks as if protesting the early start. I hold tight, feeling every muscle in my legs strain as we begin the climb.
The trail winds through eucalyptus forests and open fields where farmers tend to their plots, the scent of damp earth rising with each hoofbeat. We pass villagers carrying water jugs, children in school uniforms waving as we ride by, men in two-piece Sunday suits and monkeys playing in a technicolour green riverside field reminiscent of Tolkien’s Shire.
My horse is becoming moodier by the minute, shaking his head with force and kicking left and right at anyone who wants to pass by. After ascending a hill, the rocky road winds steeply down now, I decide to continue on foot before it throws me off.
Our colourful procession of horses and people grows with each village we pass, with children running around us and locals joining in curiously. We pass fields of golden oats and forests of false banana plants, white churches on hilltops, and farmers ploughing their lands by hand and with oxen. One of the teenage boys who accompany us races by, casually barefoot atop the fastest horse, his sandals dangling from the reins.
As we arrive in Chencha we leave our horses and continue the last part of our way on foot. There is no real path, so we cross fields and follow the river deeper into the valley, where women are doing their laundry, their clothes scattered to dry across the river's edge.
At the edge of a ravine, the Dorsso waterfall roars—a silver ribbon slicing through the green. The cool mist caresses my face as I stand at the base, watching the water crash onto the rocks and into the pond below.
Curious what it feels like to be there? Watch our Dorze video and ride through colours, markets, and mountain light.
On the main road, tuk-tuks are waiting to drive us to Dorze, where the local market is in full swing. Bouncing through potholes and over large chunks of gravel, we descend. The market is a vibrant display of cotton, grains, and even old, worn-out football tables where boys play with fierce enthusiasm. All kinds of vegetables and potatoes are sold alongside rows of colourful plastic dishware. Women, dressed in bright headscarves and shaded by umbrellas, move gracefully through the crowd, while goats and donkeys wander freely among the stalls.
We sit down to a meal of beer, injera (fermented flatbread), lentil stew, a spinach-like vegetable called moringa, elbow macaroni, and a yellow pea purée—plus raw meat, which I politely decline, wary of the physical consequences and the less-than-ideal local sanitary facilities. After our meal, the owner of this little snack bar on the edge of the market serves us tej, a honey-based drink infused with dogwood, which is said to have mild hallucinogenic properties.
Giggly and somewhat dizzy – I can’t tell if this is from the hike, the beers, the food, the atmosphere, the sun, the tej, or all of it combined – we return to Dorze Lodge. As we prepare to leave, Tsehai clasps my hand. ‘You will come back,’ he says, not as a question, but as a certainty. I know he is right.
Experience the magic of Dorze for yourself and help support and preserve Dorze’s cultural and natural heritage. Stay at Dorze Lodge to take it all in. Their experienced guides offer a plethora of tours and activities.
Love what we do? Help us keep sharing the world’s most inspiring travel stories. At WideOyster, we believe in adventure, authentic storytelling, and capturing the world – raw, real, and breathtaking.
We travel far and wide to bring you stunning photography, in-depth travel journalism, and immersive stories that inspire and inform. But this doesn’t come free. It takes time, passion, and resources to keep WideOyster running without paywalls or clickbait – just pure, high-quality travel content.
If you love what we do, please consider supporting us with a one-time contribution.
Click below to support us and be part of the adventure.
©WideOyster, 2026. Every journey we share is protected by copyright. Please explore and enjoy, but remember: all rights reserved.
WideOyster Media BV
Jacobsgasthuissteeg 11
Utrecht
The Netherlands
Just like every trip needs snacks, our website needs cookies to function. Accept our cookies and let the adventure begin! Read our Privacy Policy.