Oromia Sightseeing: Bale and Crater Lakes

Travel advisory, November 2026: The US State Department rates Ethiopia Level 3, Reconsider Travel, and tells Americans not to travel anywhere in the Oromia region except Bishoftu and Bale Mountains National Park. The UK Foreign Office (FCDO) advises against all travel to the Wollega zones, parts of North and West Shewa and the strip along the Kenya border, and against all but essential travel to most of East Shewa outside the Addis Ababa to Adama Expressway, the rest of North Shewa and the Guji zones. It reports kidnappings in Oromia, including in the Adama special zone, and advises against driving after dark outside Addis Ababa. Fighting resumed in northern Ethiopia in late September 2026. Read the UK FCDO advice and the US State Department advisory before you book and again before you travel. This page sticks to Bishoftu and Bale Mountains National Park.

Oromia holds two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, a string of Rift Valley lakes and some of Africa’s highest ground. Under the current advice, the sights you can plan around are those in Bale Mountains National Park and in Bishoftu near Addis Ababa. A few others are listed further down with the advisory that applies to them.

Bale Mountains National Park

Inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 2023, the park covers more than 2,000 square kilometres about 400 kilometres southeast of Addis Ababa. It holds Africa’s largest area of Afroalpine habitat above 3,000 metres, shaped by old volcanoes and glaciers into ridges, valleys and small glacial lakes. You enter at the headquarters just north of Dinsho, where you pay the per-day fee in birr.

What to see:

  • Sanetti Plateau: a high, open plain at about 4,000 metres, crossed by a gravel road from Goba often described as Africa’s highest all-weather road. This is the best place to see the Ethiopian wolf; the Bale Mountains hold more than half of the fewer than about 500 left anywhere.
  • Tullu Dimtu: the park’s highest point at 4,377 metres, 4 kilometres off the plateau road, with a summit walk of under an hour.
  • Harenna escarpment and forest: the road drops more than 2,000 metres in about 8 kilometres to Rira, into montane forest where the Bale monkey and black-and-white colobus live and wild coffee grows.
  • Web Valley and Finch Habera waterfall: reached by a rough track from headquarters; the waterfall flows strongly from June to November.
  • Gaysay grasslands: 7 kilometres from headquarters, with mountain nyala and bushbuck commonly seen.

More than 280 bird species have been recorded in the park. Lion, leopard and wild dog live in the Harenna forest but are rarely seen. The UNESCO listing explains why the park was inscribed.

Bishoftu crater lakes

Bishoftu, about 48 kilometres from Addis Ababa on the toll expressway, is built around volcanic crater lakes: Lake Bishoftu, Lake Hora, Lake Bishoftu Guda, Lake Kuriftu and the seasonal Lake Cheleklaka. Lake Hora, also called Hora Arsadi, is where the Oromo gather each year in late September or early October for Irreecha, the thanksgiving, carrying fresh grass and flowers to the water. In 2016 at least 52 people died there in a stampede after security forces fired tear gas, and the lakeshore is remembered for it. Visit with respect, and ask before photographing people at any ceremony. The town is also home to Ethiopia’s main air force base, so avoid photographing military sites. For a room near the lakes, see a Bishoftu hotel search .

Sights under stronger advisories

These places are real and well known, but the US advises against travel to them and the routes in run through areas the UK flags. Check both before considering a visit, and go only with a licensed operator.

  • Melka Kunture and Balchit: a World Heritage Site since 2024 in the upper Awash valley about 50 kilometres south of Addis, with deposits spanning more than 1.7 million years, thousands of stone tools and obsidian from Balchit.
  • Abijatta-Shalla Lakes National Park: Lake Shalla is the deepest of the Rift Valley lakes at 266 metres, ringed by boiling hot springs, with great white pelicans on its islands.
  • Sof Omar Caves: in East Bale zone, outside the national park, a 15.1 kilometre cave system cut by the Web River and sacred to both Muslims and followers of Oromo traditional religion.

Practical notes

Pay in Ethiopian birr, at about 160 to 165 to the US dollar in October 2026. Fly to Robe for Bale and do not drive outside Addis after dark.

Read more: walking routes in Bale and Oromia day trips .