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Ethiopia is truly a tourist paradise-beautiful, mysterious and extraordinary. Above all things, it is a country of wonderful and varying climate.

A tankwa at Tana lake

Prople waking in the Afar area

The Mountains Simein N.P

The cool zone

Tropical monsoon and topographically- induced variation makes Ethiopia one of the best places to visit. Massive highland complexes of mountains and dissected plateaus, divided by Great Rift Valley, running generally in a northeast-southwest direction through Ethiopia and south into Kenya, Tanzania and beyond, and surrounded by lowlands, steppes, or semi-desert planes make the land a curiosity to behold.

Diverse rainfall and temperature patterns are largely the result of Ethiopian's location in Africa's tropical zone and the country's varied topography. Altitude-induced climatic conditions form the basis for three environmental zones--cool, temperate and hot--known to Ethiopians since antiquity as the dega, weinadega, and qolla, respectively.

The main rainy season is usually preceded in parts of March, the whole of April and parts of May by converging northeast and southeast winds that produce a brief period of light rains, known as belg (technically known as "the little rains"). These rains are followed by a short period of hot, dry weather, and beginning with the end of June and the beginning of July, violent thunderstorms occur almost daily, until, at least, the middle of September. In the southwest, precipitation is more evenly distributed and also more abundant. The relative humidity and rainfall decrease generally from south to north and also in the eastern lowlands. Annual precipitation is heaviest in the southwest, scant in the Great Rift Valley and the Ogaden, and negligible in the Danakil Depression.