Lake Assale in Danakil

Lake Assale which is also known as Lake Karum lies in the heart of Ethiopia’s Danakil Depression, a region known for its otherworldly landscapes and extreme climate.

Its surface, often reflecting the sky in pale hues, creates a visual calm in an otherwise harsh environment despite temperatures that can soar above 50°C,

Situated at approximately 120 meters or 400 feet below the sea level, this hypersaline lake is surrounded by vast salt flats that stretch across the horizon.

Around 9AM, I started with my driver in a 4x4 vehicle from Aksum, 500 km away, on a multi-day visit to the Assale lake, the Danakil depression and its volcanoes.

The journey ahead stretched nearly nine hours, a ribbon of rugged road unfurling through Ethiopia’s dusty, sunbaked heartland. As the urban edges faded behind us, the desert landscape took over — vast and unforgiving.

We passed Abaala, a small town in the Afar Region, located at an elevation of about 5,000 feet. We were near the border with the Tigray region -- a key trading hub, especially for goats and salt.

In the recent years, Abaala has also been deeply affected by the Tigray conflict, leaving parts of the town damaged and its population displaced. It still is a notable waypoint for travelers heading into the Danakil Depression.

I was about to experience the repercussions of the civil war between Tigray region and the federal armies as my journey progressed during the day.

The desert landscape had magic in the emptiness, and vast forests of the Dracaena ombets or the Gabal Elba dragon trees. This area provides the rocky, mist-influenced habitats the tree prefers — typically at altitudes between 1000–1800 meters (3,000 - 6,000 feet).

They reminded me of similar looking Joshua trees found in the Mojave Desert of the southwestern United States, especially California and Nevada.

Surprisingly, we passed several meadows with cattle grazing in the backdrop of mountains in a matter of a 40km drive as we approached Erebti, a remote town in the Afar region.

The landscape soon changed and was full of a fascinating array of volcanic rocks. Erebti lies within one of the most geologically active zones on Earth — part of the Afar Triple Junction, where three tectonic plates slowly pull apart.

The 4x4 had some mechanical issues necessitating the driver to drive slowly. I was glad for it because the thought of being stuck in the unforgiving desert heat was the kind of adventure I could definitely do without.

Around 2pm, with five hours of desert behind us and the sun high and relentless, we reached the rustic roadside eatery — its walls open to the wind and light, its shade a welcome reprieve from the heat.

A few bare wooden cots lined its sides, without cushioning, but still seemed inviting. The kitchen offered what the land could — injera with lentils or shiro, grilled meat sizzling in the corner, and cold bottled drinks, their condensation a small miracle in the Danakil heat.

Local salt workers and Afar traders gathered in quiet camaraderie, sipping sodas and exchanging the desert gossip.

I had hoped for fellow travelers to share the moment, a laugh, a story. But my vehicle, slow and solitary, had ensured I arrived out of sync.

The plan had been to rendezvous with two fellow travelers — foreign tourists who, like me, were bound for the desert’s wonders. But patience, in the Danakil heat, wears thin. They’d grown weary of waiting and vanished down the road in another ride, leaving our 4x4 quiet and solitary.

The sun outside was a force. Even at rest, it pressed on you like a weight. Stepping out of the vehicle, walking just a few paces to the restaurant’s shaded cots, I felt my breath catch — not from exertion, but from the sheer blowtorch intensity of the air. At 130°F (50°C), my throat tightened, dry as the desert that surrounded us. The driver, seeing my struggle, draped a wet cloth across my window — not just for comfort, but seemingly for protecting me from vaporizing.

The wheels crunched over dusty earth, sometimes rolling smooth on flat paths, sometimes jostling as we crawled over roads littered with hulking boulders — so slow at points we barely managed half a kilometer an hour.

The land stretched wide and spare, but every so often we’d pass clusters of yurt-like huts, dome-shaped shelters that seemed to float in the heat haze, tethered to the desert by tradition and resilience.

Here and there, patches of asphalt sliced through the emptiness — not random but laid down by Chinese companies chasing minerals before the world paused for COVID.

Surprisingly, between stretches of rock and heat-sculpted silence, the landscape sometimes softened. We passed wide patches of desert trees, their twisted trunks and spiky crowns casting dappled shade on the sand — a rare sight in this scorched expanse.

Underneath, groups of camels lounged in languid clusters, legs tucked beneath them like folded tents, their eyes half-closed against the glare. It was a picture of desert leisure.

The landscape turned stark and elemental — gleaming black lava rock stretched endlessly, like the cooled bones of the earth exposed under the sun. Hardened waves of molten stone rose and dipped in eerie rhythm, cracked and brittle, with the occasional tenacious shrub clawing its way out of a crevice, defying logic and heat.

I stepped out of the vehicle, boots crunching onto the uneven crust, and ventured a few paces. The texture underfoot was jagged, sharp as broken glass, each stone a relic of fire and fury. One misstep could tear through boot or skin — the terrain didn’t tolerate carelessness. It was a place that demanded respect, a living museum of geology frozen in time.

The road ahead unraveled like a ribbon laid across sand dunes, curving and dipping with the contours of the desert. I marveled at the road stitched into shifting ground, flanked by mountains layered in blues and ochres, rising in staggered altitudes like a geological symphony.

Camels roamed freely, their silhouettes grazing against the light, dispersed across the dunes like punctuation in the empty landscape.

Around 6pm, the sun slung low and golden, we rolled into a tiny settlement. Beyond them, through the shimmering haze, I spotted with my phone’s 25x zoom a clutch of white 4x4s, not unlike ours, clustered in the distance. A handful of people moved around them.

After nine long hours of desert rhythm — heat, dust, and mirages — we arrived. The salt lake, luminous and still, waited like a blank canvas at the edge of the horizon. I stepped down from the vehicle onto what looked, from afar, like a perfectly smooth and pearly-white expanse.

But each footfall revealed its secrets — uneven crusts that crackled underfoot, ridges and shallow dips that caught the low sun and threw back dazzling reflections.

The surface was dry and brittle in parts, damp and gleaming in others, whispering of ancient waters trapped beneath layers of salt and time.

It was a humongous, vast space about 1200 sq km, at 400 feet below the sea level. The silence was eerie.

The lake itself is part water and part salt pan, with salt deposits reaching over 20 meters deep in some areas due to repeated flooding and evaporation from the Red Sea over the millennia.

Its surface is often covered by a thick salt crust that can support vehicles, and the surrounding salt flats stretch far beyond the lake’s visible boundaries.

At first glance, the lake seemed like a vast field of dry salt — a landscape of smooth uniformity broken only by the glare of sunlight and the crunch beneath my boots. But as I wandered hundreds of meters in each direction, I saw the surface had patches of wet salt flats, gleaming underfoot like freshly laid ice.

I stepped into them, curious, and felt the cool briny water lap against my bare feet, the crystallized salt crackling softly below. It was oddly textured — brittle yet yielding, slick yet firm — like walking across a frozen ocean made of minerals.

A day earlier, I’d nicked my toe, an injury that had faded in my mind. But the salt remembered. As I dipped my foot into the shallow brine, a sudden sting shot upward — sharp and oddly invigorating, like the lake was reminding me of its potency.

The sun drifted low, brushing the horizon with hues of amber and yellow, and the lake's countless watery pockets shimmering like scattered mirrors.

The reflections were casting a surreal glow across the salt-crusted expanse, both serene and strange in its quiet majesty.

With every passing minute, the intensity softened. The heat began to loosen its grip, and the air turned more and more pleasant. It was a moment suspended between light and stillness.

The wind had picked up across the unbroken salt expanse, rustling my clothes. By now, I’d made my introduction to the other travelers gathered at this surreal place. They’d come from Taiwan, Japan, Australia, South Korea, Poland and the USA — each with a different path that somehow converged here.

Despite our varied itineraries, there was a shared sense of wonder among us, a quiet camaraderie that was strengthened as we shared ice-cold beers provided by our respective guides, sat on folding chairs on the Salt Lake, taking selfies or taking individual and group pictures.

Soon it was getting dark, and we started on the hourlong drive on the salt pan to our camp for the night.

The lake plays a key role in traditional salt mining, where Afar pastoralists still extract salt slabs by hand and transport them via camel caravans — a practice unchanged for generations. We saw the more modern extraction groups in huge trucks working at night.

We were fed a healthy meal and across the 5 vehicles and the 10 of us, we had one official guide. He was very knowledgeable and friendly. Each of us had a cot, similar to the one in the restaurant I visited in the afternoon. Stories were shared and before long each of us drifted to sleep, but not before we all tried to take a picture of the pitch-black dark night sky, devoid of light pollution.

All awake by 5am the following morning, we were off to see the sunrise at the lake flats.

The silhouette of the sun was visible initially painting the lake surface in an orange glow.

It was windy and the glow intensified. Over the next half hour, we could see the full round shape of the sun slowly rising from the horizon and growing in size and intensity.

Lake Assale draws geologists, photographers, and travelers alike, all seeking a glimpse of nature’s extremes weaved in a quiet, captivating harmony.

As the horizon blushed with the colors of sunrise — soft amber, pale rose, and the promise of a new desert day — we enjoyed breakfast, then packed up, letting the stillness linger.

A few kilometers ahead, our next chapter waited: the salt mountains, jagged and gleaming, rising like frozen waves from the scorched earth.