Keren sits in a bowl of granite hills, and climbing one of the surrounding outcrops gives you a view that explains the city's character immediately: a compact settlement in a rocky basin, surrounded by hills that kept it defensible for centuries and made it so difficult to take in 1941. The granite is dramatic — rounded boulders and steep faces — and the climbs, while none of them are technical, require some scrambling.
Sunset is the best time to go up. The light turns the granite orange and the city below becomes a pattern of rooftops and minarets. Any of the western hills will do; ask in town about which are currently accessible. The views north and west toward the more arid lowlands give some sense of the landscape the Bilen and Tigre herders cross to reach the Monday market — country that looks empty from above but sustains pastoral communities that have worked these hills for a very long time.