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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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"Just an hour ago, I was still in an unpleasant state of limbo. My indecisiveness haunted me throughout the afternoon. I have just been travelling a month in Northern Ethiopia. I was wondering what to do next. But now I am out of it. I think I will engage myself in a stout plan: I will go to Mekele, try to join a salt caravan and with them I want to go to the Danakil Depression.
I have put aside all my other ideas. I realize I have only visa for two months, without the possibility to extend. It means there is too less time.
Why have I chosen now to go to the Danakil Depression? Simply because the idea lies closest to my heart. I think this journey will inspire mostly, more than other ideas. Undoubtedly this journey will give me the most of satisfaction if I will be able to accomplish it, because it will be difficult to organize, to get into contact with a caravan, to communicate with the people. Because there is an element of risk involved, I will experience the mental and physical reality of the phenomenon heat. I am attempting to go to one of the most inhospitable places on earth. I feel I have to try this."

I wrote this words in my diary on 7 February 2003 in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. The idea to go there wasn't actually mine. The idea was inspired by National Geographic series about climatologic extremes, a documentary film depicting Nick Middleton going to the hottest, coldest, driest and wettest places on earth. In hot, Nick Middleton headed for northeast Ethiopia. There, in the Danakil Depression, lies presumably the hottest place on earth: Dallol. Every day in summer temperature tops 40 °C and more. Few outsiders ever visited the area, among them the famous traveller Wilfred Thesiger. Only one people have managed to survive here: the Afar.*

In his quest ...