Last Salt caravan Ethiopia (54 images)

Last salt caravans on earth

Ethiopian's Danakil desert is the cruelest place on earth. More than 300 feet below sea level, the salt lake and plains of this Afar region are one of the lowest points in Africa and temperatures can soar to 50 degrees degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). The area's vast salt flats are the last remnants of an enormous long-evaporated inland sea that was once part of the Red Sea. It was in this hostile terrain that five European tourists and eight...
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Last salt caravans on earth

Ethiopian's Danakil desert is the cruelest place on earth. More than 300 feet below sea level, the salt lake and plains of this Afar region are one of the lowest points in Africa and temperatures can soar to 50 degrees degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). The area's vast salt flats are the last remnants of an enormous long-evaporated inland sea that was once part of the Red Sea. It was in this hostile terrain that five European tourists and eight Ethiopians working as guides, translators and drivers were kidnapped in 2007 spring by an unidentified armed band.
But for the Afars, the salt left behind through the ages in the desert by the ocean floods is a a real treasure and the salt trade itself remains their main livelihood. For centuries, teams of Muslim Afar and Christian Tigrayans from the Ethiopian highlands gather daily to mine the salt and ferry it by camel, mule, and donkey to markets in Ethiopia's mountains and beyond into Sudan. In the past the salt blocks (called amolé) were used through-out Ethiopia as money. Caravans travel a salt route between the mines near Lake Asele and the town of Berahile, where the caravans unload their haul.
Every day, thousands of camels linked nose-to-tail,crunched in a long line across the salty surface of the Lake Asele in the heart of the northern Danakil. "It is a good business," salt merchants say. The blocks of salt are bought from the salt lake 1.5 Ethiopian birr (0,1EUR) each. After walking through the desert and up barren mountains into the Tigray, it is sold between heigt and 10 birr each. And each camel is able to carry up to 30 of the slabs.
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