Located 95 kilometres away, Konso is one of UNESCO world heritage site designate. Konso makes a perfect day trip for those seeking to take in more of the cultures of Ethiopia’s southern region.
Konso is best known for its religious traditions, waga memorial culptures, cultural landscape, terraces, settlement and nearby fossil beds. A popular highlight of Konso Village is the aptly named New York. Created by erosion, these tall, narrow mud towers of red clay are named for how they resemble the skyscrapers of the Big Apple.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2011, the Konso Cultural Landscape is named after its agriculturist inhabitants, who have molded their 230km2 homeland of semi-arid hills into productive agricultural land. A striking feature of Konso is the ancient hilltop paleta (terrace and walled villages) – strange hobbit-warrens towered over by generation poles felled from a sacred forest, and studded with curvaceous thatched community houses. The Konso are also renowned for their waka grave-markers, anthropomorphic hardwood statues carved to mimic the deceased, and for their communally constructed reservoirs.
