Home » Ethiopia » One Year Africa: Maybe the Hot Season

I will go to Mekele, try to join a salt caravan and with them I want to go to the Danakil Depression.

One Year Africa: Maybe the Hot Season

Maarten de Boeck
2006-05-01 17:15:05

Displayed times (last time: )

to reach Dallol and the Danakil Depression, Middleton depicts the ordeals of life in extreme heat. He visits the Bedouins, a famous desert people and lives a couple of days in an Afar community. Ultimately he sets out to reach his final goal: Dallol. In the village of Bera Ale, he joins a salt caravan heading to the salt mines in the very heart of the Danakil Depression, one of the most extreme and inhospitable places on earth, a place were it ought to be stupidly hot.

Middleton undertakes the tough and punishing journey, probably the first European doing so. Finally, after a three days journey on foot, defying the extreme heat and the gara or fire-wind, he reaches the salt mines in the heart of the Depression, a place about a hundred metres below sea level. The temperature almost tops 50°C. His physical resources are shattered, but still he had not reached Dallol. It appeared to be impossible to reach the place on foot. From Hamed Ela it was too far for the camels and they couldn't carry enough water to survive. The only way they could get there was to be dropped in by air.*

Dallol isn't actually an inhabited village. It's the former site of an American company mining phosphate. Now it's not more than an abandoned desolate ghost town. Middleton described the place as 'weird', a place were Mother Nature accepts visitors but no permanent settlers. Therefore, he gave the honour of being the hottest inhabited settlement on earth to Hamed Ela, the village at the edge of the Depression, where the miners live.*

Because I am not as rich as National Geographic I never intended to reach Dallol. I had in mind to join the salt caravan as well, from the highland town of Mekele, passed Bera Ale down to the salt mines. I had seen it on television. Now I wanted to be there by myself, because on television you can't feel the heat!
The reason why I had come here was to experience the heat and hardship. That's ...