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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

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Although the day's journey there was beautiful and memorable, it was unsuccessful. We had returned with a sprinkle of hope, but it was not to be.
During the process I had given up my original plan to embark with a caravan from Mekele. So I went to Bera Ale to start from there.

I wrote in my diary:
"It took a long time, but in the end I have certainty. I know what to do. I have no other option left but going to Assaita tomorrow. I am happy with this certainty, because today it looked I would be kept on lingering, not knowing what to do. I will be in Assaita on Saturday. It will take till Monday to be able to make the application. Hopefully I will be able to travel back the same day."

The next day I took a bus to Dessie in the early morning. That evening the bus arrived a few hours after sunset. While approaching Dessie, although I was pretty exhausted, suddenly my mind became free. I experienced a moment where I renewed my motivation for the journey. It was a kind of natural meditation. That moment it became crystal-clear to me how important it is to live out these ideas. To have been one day in a library, gazing at a map, but more important to get out of that library and come to the places you've once pointed out with your finger on a piece of paper. At that point, more than ever I was determined to go to the Danakil Depression. I wanted to fail, but not without exhausting every possibility to succeed.

The next morning I was on my way to Assaita. It was a spectacular ride, down the highlands to Ethiopia's deserts. If you descend the highlands eastwards, you come on the tarred road to Assab in Eritrea, but to go to Assaita, at a certain point you leave that road, to proceed on a rough track seemingly leading to no man's land. Though there is no sign of any human settlement along that road, it does lead to Assaita, the capital of Afar-land. A rustic backwater, an oasis in the desert, a place that charmed me considerably. ...