Danakil Depression
Hamed Ela and Lake Asale
A small village entirely depending on salt winning from the lake, and transport of the salt slabs.
Dodom
Another village, spring board for visiting the Erta Ale volcano, in some of the most desolate landscape you’ll ever see.
Lake Afrera
A large lake, and associated salt works, and corrugated-iron villages, in the middle of the desert.
57. Danakil Depression
This trip was expected to have many highlights, but one of them, standing out among the highlights, must be the Danakil Depression. It is not only the lowest point on the African continent (in places 116 m below sea level), not only the hottest place on earth (34-35 oC, on average (!), and hottest temperature ever … Read more
53. Afar country
Afar country – including the Danakil Depression, or Danakil Desert, it goes by several names – has been described as a pretty lawless region. Banditry is rife. In the 1930s, when Wilfred Thesiger became the first Westerner to enter the Aussa Sultanate in the heart of the Afar area, the survival rate of Westerners (in … Read more
51. Wilfred Thesiger
The reason Wilfred Thesiger enters this blog is that he made a significant contribution to the knowledge of the Afar region, in the northernmost part of Ethiopia (and extending into Eritrea and Djibouti). He is, or rather was (he died in 2003), a very interesting guy, possibly one of the last real explorers. On the one … Read more