From Dust to Dust
Danakil Depression - doesn't sound like the most cheery of places. Well it isn't. It's the hottest place on earth and venturing there with only one car, a very modest supply of water, and my loud mouth was, to say the least, risky business. Now that we were so well received in Aisha's house, I was less afraid of the Afar; however, I had no illusions that they’ll try to take us for all we have, that is if the elements won't rob us of our lives first.
The few tourists that do go to Danakil, do so with well organized special caravans of no less than three jeeps for as little as two tourists. Additional vehicles not only provide extra security, but are needed to accommodate all the mandatory Afar escorts: turbaned guides with rust colored beards and guards with old Kalashnikovs -- all them expecting to be supplied with everything from food to water to sleeping bags, a fact we've discovered much too late. Our car was already packed to the brim with gear and enough food barely for four. My only hope was that the Afar chief from who's village we begun our journey, will understand the potential of our project and will neither give us too much trouble nor too many of his men to babysit. Surprisingly, only a few hours of very diplomatic banter produced the coveted letter of approval with the purple stamp sporting two crossed jile daggers. Despite chief’s permission to pass, we spent another hour arguing with the militia chief (who wouldn't give his name as it was classified) until we were allowed to drive off with only two extra people, a guide and a guard.
We crammed the extra men in, and drove deeper into the Danakil to the next Afar village. It wasn't much to look at, at first glance: twigs and tarp, straw and rusty steel drums. It looked like one of those post-apocalyptic camps in the middle of nowhere. As we emerged from the car, so did the villagers from their weather-beaten shacks. Details came to focus - a goat trapped in a tepee-shaped cage of branches, an old woman wearing nothing but a semitransparent headscarf and a traditional fit-all wraparound skirt, curios children, and soldiers with machineguns. Nothing seemed out of place. The soldiers had a base there to protect Ethiopia's side of the border with Eritrea.
We dumped out our baggage and exchanged one scout armed with a rusty Kalashnikov for six commandos with rusty bazookas. Just in case the battalion we were taking with us didn't have enough deadly toys, the guide brought along our scout's Kalashnikov. On the other side of the salt lake the soldiers rushed out of the vehicle, took high positions (as high as you can take while being below the sea level) on the uneven plains surrounding the sulfuric hot springs bubbling with neon colors, and made sure no Eritreans lie in wait to kidnap us. I always feel safer when there is a man with a large weapon within reach. I think it's an Israeli thing.
The springs are on top of a giant bubble of salt in the middle of a semi-dry salt lake at the bottom of a rift valley. Oh yeah, and it is the lowest subaerial volcano as well. After seeing it, trying to describe it adequately seems a bit... futile. I never thought salt can be so beautiful! Some of it was like petrified snow. Other bits more like flan or lemon meringue with cinnamon sprinkled on top. "Scrambled eggs," said Vova passing by. I guess he had different culinary associations. I smiled at him and went back to my sweet delusions. Layers of marzipan with caramelized sugar on top in brown, orange, yellow, and white. Looks delicious. Until you smell it... And then you are back to the sulfur lake again - still stunning, but no longer mouth-watering.
We got back to the village just in time to see the camels come home. The hundreds of pounds of salt they were carrying is the Afar's main source of income - the thousands of dollars the tourists are bringing do not come even close to how much the salt does. In fact, it's the sole reason the men here can afford having four wives each - the maximum amount of wives a Muslim is allowed.
Our seventy-year-young guide was just telling us how his first wife recently picked out his fourth and final bride - a plump fifteen-year-old, when the wind picked up. Sand and salt whooshed around at first, and then, after this fair warning, gathered up speed, assaulting with all its might, and a deafening roar, us and the village, penetrating every shelter and stinging as if with millions of tiny needles. The night was hot and the wind didn't let down. Knowing the westerner's craving for comfort, and the ability to pay for it, the villagers attempted to charge us twenty bucks for a straw shack with nothing but sand in it, but we refused. It was unacceptable, protested the villagers, for us to be anywhere in their vicinity and not pay our dues, but we had no finances to spare and after much arguing ended up spending the night just like we wanted. We slept on the bare desert floor with only the outside shell of the tent protecting us from the wind. The wind howled though the night and the camels expressed their discontent.
Another morning brought us to another Afar village. Here we were supposed to be loaded up with thee more scouts and a guide we just didn't have the space or the supplies for, and I was prepared for war. We already had six people crammed into one LandCruiser without air conditioning and that was all we could take. Fortunately, the village chief turned out to be quite reasonable and quickly agreed to let us through with only one extra man. We stretched the steel and found room for him in the back, wedged between our backpacks, sitting on the few tuna cans we had left. Luckily, our new friend, Ali, was as thin as his Kalashnikov and didn't take much room.
"Backpackbackpack! Workbookworkbookworkbook!" greeted us the children at the foot of the mountain. We were really close now - the top of Erta'Ale volcano and its lava lake were now only three hours of uphill hiking away. Trying to avoid more fees for desert use we set up kitchen away from the village in a shade of a dry tree and cooked lunch for seven, from supplies barely enough for four, while the Afars played Kalah with camel droppings.
In late afternoon we set off for the summit. Hopping on jagged porous volcanic rock I discussed sex, love, and marriage with Amin - our first scout. He obviously hasn't discussed such subjects with a woman before, but a Western woman automatically receives the status of a man, so Amin felt free to tell me everything. Amin was only twenty four, had only a few thousand camels, and only two wives. His first wife, whom he married at the tender age of fourteen (she was sixteen at the time), has taught him everything he needed to know to fulfill his husbandly duty. Though this first wife is his most beloved and is held in more respect than the second, the second wife was the one he was going to ravage upon his return from this expedition, he said. I asked why, and Amin replied it was because she always takes good care of him when he is tired.
Erta'Ale smoked in the back and we waited until nightfall at a safe distance trying to avoid toxic fumes. The darker it got, the angrier and more beautiful Erta'aAle's lava lake became. I inched to the edge, careful not to fall in, and photographed the exploding magma. Strong vinegary wind mercilessly whipped me, but I was completely under the spell of the volcano. It's clear to me now why people worshiped these fuming giants.
When morning came, I didn't want to leave and was kinda jealous of the camels who got to come back here tomorrow.
"Stay!" pleaded Ali when we dropped him back at his village, "I will slay a goat for you if you stay!" But we couldn't.
Ali's house was branches and straw like all the others we've seen in this desert. Inside the air was thick with desert dust, the occasional barn animal, shy relatives, and more desert dust. When I took pictures the dust stayed frozen by the flash like snowflakes. His wives and daughters were beautiful under their transparent headscarves which covered their hair but not their perfect breasts.
We left reluctantly. Moving cautiously through the scorching desert we could only hope our tires wouldn't melt. There was nobody around for miles to help us, and we were running out of water. Actually, scratch that. We had run out of drinking water the day before when we climbed the volcano. The water we were cautiously sipping now was from a mountain stream we passed a few days ago and had planed to use for cooking. It was so hot, I almost adopted the Afar dress code, and when we finally got to the next village we drained their supply of Coke that was cooling in a shaded pit covered by a wet rag. It's where I learned how to remove bottle caps with a magazine as well. Luckily, the desert sauna nature provided, was eventually followed by a cold shower as well - we found a wonderful little mountain waterfall to cool our heels in, and spent our last night in the Danakil catching frogs in puddles around it.
Danakil Depression Gallery
The few tourists that do go to Danakil, do so with well organized special caravans of no less than three jeeps for as little as two tourists. Additional vehicles not only provide extra security, but are needed to accommodate all the mandatory Afar escorts: turbaned guides with rust colored beards and guards with old Kalashnikovs -- all them expecting to be supplied with everything from food to water to sleeping bags, a fact we've discovered much too late. Our car was already packed to the brim with gear and enough food barely for four. My only hope was that the Afar chief from who's village we begun our journey, will understand the potential of our project and will neither give us too much trouble nor too many of his men to babysit. Surprisingly, only a few hours of very diplomatic banter produced the coveted letter of approval with the purple stamp sporting two crossed jile daggers. Despite chief’s permission to pass, we spent another hour arguing with the militia chief (who wouldn't give his name as it was classified) until we were allowed to drive off with only two extra people, a guide and a guard.
We crammed the extra men in, and drove deeper into the Danakil to the next Afar village. It wasn't much to look at, at first glance: twigs and tarp, straw and rusty steel drums. It looked like one of those post-apocalyptic camps in the middle of nowhere. As we emerged from the car, so did the villagers from their weather-beaten shacks. Details came to focus - a goat trapped in a tepee-shaped cage of branches, an old woman wearing nothing but a semitransparent headscarf and a traditional fit-all wraparound skirt, curios children, and soldiers with machineguns. Nothing seemed out of place. The soldiers had a base there to protect Ethiopia's side of the border with Eritrea.
We dumped out our baggage and exchanged one scout armed with a rusty Kalashnikov for six commandos with rusty bazookas. Just in case the battalion we were taking with us didn't have enough deadly toys, the guide brought along our scout's Kalashnikov. On the other side of the salt lake the soldiers rushed out of the vehicle, took high positions (as high as you can take while being below the sea level) on the uneven plains surrounding the sulfuric hot springs bubbling with neon colors, and made sure no Eritreans lie in wait to kidnap us. I always feel safer when there is a man with a large weapon within reach. I think it's an Israeli thing.
The springs are on top of a giant bubble of salt in the middle of a semi-dry salt lake at the bottom of a rift valley. Oh yeah, and it is the lowest subaerial volcano as well. After seeing it, trying to describe it adequately seems a bit... futile. I never thought salt can be so beautiful! Some of it was like petrified snow. Other bits more like flan or lemon meringue with cinnamon sprinkled on top. "Scrambled eggs," said Vova passing by. I guess he had different culinary associations. I smiled at him and went back to my sweet delusions. Layers of marzipan with caramelized sugar on top in brown, orange, yellow, and white. Looks delicious. Until you smell it... And then you are back to the sulfur lake again - still stunning, but no longer mouth-watering.
We got back to the village just in time to see the camels come home. The hundreds of pounds of salt they were carrying is the Afar's main source of income - the thousands of dollars the tourists are bringing do not come even close to how much the salt does. In fact, it's the sole reason the men here can afford having four wives each - the maximum amount of wives a Muslim is allowed.
Our seventy-year-young guide was just telling us how his first wife recently picked out his fourth and final bride - a plump fifteen-year-old, when the wind picked up. Sand and salt whooshed around at first, and then, after this fair warning, gathered up speed, assaulting with all its might, and a deafening roar, us and the village, penetrating every shelter and stinging as if with millions of tiny needles. The night was hot and the wind didn't let down. Knowing the westerner's craving for comfort, and the ability to pay for it, the villagers attempted to charge us twenty bucks for a straw shack with nothing but sand in it, but we refused. It was unacceptable, protested the villagers, for us to be anywhere in their vicinity and not pay our dues, but we had no finances to spare and after much arguing ended up spending the night just like we wanted. We slept on the bare desert floor with only the outside shell of the tent protecting us from the wind. The wind howled though the night and the camels expressed their discontent.
Another morning brought us to another Afar village. Here we were supposed to be loaded up with thee more scouts and a guide we just didn't have the space or the supplies for, and I was prepared for war. We already had six people crammed into one LandCruiser without air conditioning and that was all we could take. Fortunately, the village chief turned out to be quite reasonable and quickly agreed to let us through with only one extra man. We stretched the steel and found room for him in the back, wedged between our backpacks, sitting on the few tuna cans we had left. Luckily, our new friend, Ali, was as thin as his Kalashnikov and didn't take much room.
"Backpackbackpack! Workbookworkbookworkbook!" greeted us the children at the foot of the mountain. We were really close now - the top of Erta'Ale volcano and its lava lake were now only three hours of uphill hiking away. Trying to avoid more fees for desert use we set up kitchen away from the village in a shade of a dry tree and cooked lunch for seven, from supplies barely enough for four, while the Afars played Kalah with camel droppings.
In late afternoon we set off for the summit. Hopping on jagged porous volcanic rock I discussed sex, love, and marriage with Amin - our first scout. He obviously hasn't discussed such subjects with a woman before, but a Western woman automatically receives the status of a man, so Amin felt free to tell me everything. Amin was only twenty four, had only a few thousand camels, and only two wives. His first wife, whom he married at the tender age of fourteen (she was sixteen at the time), has taught him everything he needed to know to fulfill his husbandly duty. Though this first wife is his most beloved and is held in more respect than the second, the second wife was the one he was going to ravage upon his return from this expedition, he said. I asked why, and Amin replied it was because she always takes good care of him when he is tired.
Erta'Ale smoked in the back and we waited until nightfall at a safe distance trying to avoid toxic fumes. The darker it got, the angrier and more beautiful Erta'aAle's lava lake became. I inched to the edge, careful not to fall in, and photographed the exploding magma. Strong vinegary wind mercilessly whipped me, but I was completely under the spell of the volcano. It's clear to me now why people worshiped these fuming giants.
When morning came, I didn't want to leave and was kinda jealous of the camels who got to come back here tomorrow.
"Stay!" pleaded Ali when we dropped him back at his village, "I will slay a goat for you if you stay!" But we couldn't.
Ali's house was branches and straw like all the others we've seen in this desert. Inside the air was thick with desert dust, the occasional barn animal, shy relatives, and more desert dust. When I took pictures the dust stayed frozen by the flash like snowflakes. His wives and daughters were beautiful under their transparent headscarves which covered their hair but not their perfect breasts.
We left reluctantly. Moving cautiously through the scorching desert we could only hope our tires wouldn't melt. There was nobody around for miles to help us, and we were running out of water. Actually, scratch that. We had run out of drinking water the day before when we climbed the volcano. The water we were cautiously sipping now was from a mountain stream we passed a few days ago and had planed to use for cooking. It was so hot, I almost adopted the Afar dress code, and when we finally got to the next village we drained their supply of Coke that was cooling in a shaded pit covered by a wet rag. It's where I learned how to remove bottle caps with a magazine as well. Luckily, the desert sauna nature provided, was eventually followed by a cold shower as well - we found a wonderful little mountain waterfall to cool our heels in, and spent our last night in the Danakil catching frogs in puddles around it.
Danakil Depression Gallery