Ethiopia is Rough Guides' top country to visit in 2014

Ethiopia has been named as Rough Guides’ number one country to visit in 2014, beating the likes of Madagascar (#2), Brazil (#3) and Turkey (#4). Rwanda in East Africa got ranked 6th on the travel guidebook publisher's list.

Rough Guides says that the main reasons for selecting Ethiopia as the number one country to visit in 2014 are the following:

• independent travel around Ethiopia is becoming easier thanks to a boom in small hotels and restaurants
• the untouched national parks
• the ancient cities of Axum, Harar and Lalibela
• the world’s first coffee plantations, the largest cave in Africa at Sof Omar
• the continent’s largest concentration of UNESCO sites.

Rough Guides’ main reasons for selecting Madagascar as one the Top 10 Countries in 2014 are the following:

• over ninety percent of Madagascar's wildlife is found nowhere else on the plane
• blissfully untouched forests and empty beaches
• the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park

Rough Guides’ main reasons for selecting Rwanda as one the Top 10 Countries in 2014 are the following:

• 20 years after the Rwandan genocide, the economy has rebounded and peace has, by and large, been restored
• the mountain gorillas in the Volcanoes National Park
• the rainforests of the Nyungwe National Park
• the wildlife of the Akagera National Park