The Danakil Depression

Leaving behind the gleaming salt plains of Lake Assale, after witnessing the sunrise, we begun the drive toward the heart of the Danakil Depression.

The ten of us who met just yesterday had formed a fellowship. Now we rolled out in a cheerful convoy of four sturdy 4x4s, rattling across the salt flat as the wind raged on.

The drivers and guides urged us to climb onto the rooftops. Each vehicle had a few of us seated atop. We rode above the dust — wind in our faces, laughter and shouts bouncing between vehicles, and phones held high to capture this absurd, exhilarating ride. It was part road trip, part circus, and wholly unforgettable.

For nearly an hour, we sped across the endless white of the vast salt plain. The 4x4s kicked up glittering dust as the horizon blurred.

But gradually, the pristine white began to shift. The salt turned reddish orange, like rust seeping through porcelain, and the uniformity gave way to fissures and ripples. Then, as if someone had flipped the switch, the flatness began to vanish.

On either side of the path, volcanic rocks and scattered boulders rose from the earth like jagged ancient ruins. The salt had been elegant in its stillness; this new terrain was wild and raw. The drive, once smooth and surreal, became bumpy and noisy.

As the convoy eased to a halt, suddenly, the heat arrived like a wall of flame. The high-speed dash across the salt flats had cloaked us in wind and motion, shielding our bodies from the heat.

The colored crust below radiated heat upward, and there was no breeze. We stepped down from our rooftop thrones, blinking in the brightness, beads of sweat already forming.

We continued on foot, water bottles in hand, threading our way through a landscape littered with jagged volcanic rock — sharp shards that demanded attention with every step.

Just ahead stood a white concrete block, humble yet proud, marking this site’s stature as a UNESCO World Heritage location. We paused, noticing the plaque’s lettering, once bold and assertive, was now barely legible, faded by years of wind, salt, and acid air. It was as if even the ink had surrendered to the landscape’s extremity.

We felt like we were entering another dimension — harsher, and more surreal. As the terrain grew more jagged, the path turned into a landscape stitched together by lava flows, sulfur vents, and cracked earth.

The colors of the desert deepened into reds, blacks, and yellows — the palette of a place born from fire. It seemed like a descent into the anatomy of the planet itself.

Danakil looked like a gallery of minerals, constantly reshaping itself with the effects of heat, time, and tectonic tension. As we ventured deeper, the ground came alive in colors that defied logic.

Sulfur bubbled in neon yellows, pooling around vents with a pungent tang that hung heavy in the air. Streaks of iron oxide bled rusty reds and burnt oranges across the earth. In quieter corners, copper salts tinged the pools green, while magnesium compounds lent violet shadows to certain ridges and rocks.

Everywhere I looked, the earth was erupting with color.

My co-travelers were scattered across the scene cameras in hand, awestruck, as if the land had cast a spell.

Pools shimmered in electric greens, sulfuric yellows, blood reds, so vivid they felt borrowed from another planet.

Steam curled from hidden vents, hissing softly like whispers from the molten core below. Crystals clung to every surface, forming brittle spires and paper-thin crusts that glowed with an inner light.

Even with the sun hammering overhead, I lingered by the edge of a steaming pond — not out of comfort, but compulsion. The sulfuric stench clung to my lungs, sharp and unforgiving, yet I stood, transfixed.

From the earth, the minerals thrust themselves upward, bubbling and hissing. Crusts blooming in real time from the cauldron of geothermal activity.

By now, two hours had passed in a haze of heat, color, and geological madness. We wandered through this corrosive wonderland, sidestepping pools of liquid acid with pH level of 1. The crust was fragile, the terrain unpredictable — some sections buckled beneath the weight of a single footstep, others hissed with unseen gas.

By the end, caution gave way to urgency. The sulfur stung our nostrils, our eyes burned from the glare and fumes, we almost ran back to the waiting 4x4s, weaving around jagged rock and steaming vents, careful not to slip or scrape ourselves on surfaces that could sear or slice.

We clambered in the vehicles, breathless and giddy — awed, intact, and still trying to comprehend what we’d just witnessed.

A few minutes further on, the landscape shifted yet again — this time into a realm sculpted almost entirely from salt itself. Rising from the arid ground were the salt mountains, strange and majestic.

They weren’t towering like highland peaks, but they bore the character of time’s chiseling hand. Once massive piles of minerals, they’d been slowly etched and eroded by wind, heat, and rare bursts of rain, their edges worn into curves and hollows.

Some had taken on bizarre, almost whimsical forms — mushroom-shaped obelisks, squat and wide like natural umbrellas. Others rose more sharply, resembling pyramidal spires, crusted in white and dusted with hues of ochre and ash.

Their surfaces sparkled where the sun struck them just right.

We dismounted again, stepping gingerly amid the brittle salt and marveling at some spans which were wet.

The guide kept tossing the question playfully: “Ready for a swim?” We all chuckled, assuming it was just desert humor. A swimming pool? Here? In the salt-scorched belly of the Danakil Depression? It felt unlikely.

But sure enough, after a brisk 15-minute drive, the convoy pulled over — and there it was. A heart shaped pool naturally carved out of the Salt Lake, its sharp edges flaked with crystal, filled with deep green, brine-heavy water.

The surface was calm, dense and luminous, holding the kind of buoyancy that could lift your spirit in the desert as easily as your limbs.

We stood at its edge, marveling at the absurdity and wonder of it all — a natural float tank hidden in one of the harshest places on Earth. The guide grinned as if to say, “Told you so,” and the desert, once again, proved it was never done surprising us.

At first, I stood at the edge with resisting as I am deathly afraid of water. I dipped a leg in cautiously, but the others urged gently, and so I slid in, gingerly.

It was astonishing. The saline density lifted me, every limb buoyed with ease. Floating there felt like giving in to gravity’s kinder cousin.

But the day’s most unexpected delight was still to come — our guide, a maestro of moments, produced slices of fresh watermelon, chilled and ready. My hands, coated in salt, couldn’t touch them. So, he fed me, grinning as he leaned in — a gesture so simple and generous, it lodged itself in my memory like a gift.

The day had brimmed with otherworldly sights — salt lakes, sculpted minerals, pools so surreal they felt dreamt.

By the time we pulled into the night camp, we rested with strong, dark Ethiopian coffee. But the respite was brief. Just thirty minutes before sunset, we began rallying for one final hike up the hill, with a promise of a glimpse of live volcanoes.

We set off as a group, the terrain steep and composed of hardened flowing lava. At a distance we could see the burning volcano.

Surprisingly, the path led us directly to the volcano, close enough to feel the heat of mother earth on our faces. There were no distant safety barriers or telescopic views; just raw earth and us, a hole yawned wide through the crater, revealing a pit of molten lava, incandescent and restless.

The magma churned below, rising in fiery folds from the bowels of the earth, glowing orange and red with violent rhythm.

It was hot, frothing, and deafening that pulsed without pause. We all watched silently and filming — all spellbound.

The walk back to camp was satisfying. We arrived at the comfort of warm food and shared stories. Dinner was hearty and we recounted stories of volcanoes and salt pools. Sleep came easy, wrapped in starlight.

The next morning, we rose into the darkness — sleepy as we retraced our path toward the volcano’s mouth. This time, we were chasing the sunrise.

The first rays of sunrise licked the horizon, touching the rim of the crater, casting long shadows across our faces as the sun traversed its daily path.

The ridge revealed a field of fury — multiple volcanoes stretching across the horizon, each belching plumes of smoke, bursts of lava, and gales of acrid sulfur gases. The air rippled with heat and the scent of minerals.

We stood and watched, wide-eyed and silent, but truth be told, most of us nursed sore throats for the next week, our vocal cords humbled by time spent too close to Earth’s volcanic breath.

We could see the lava flow frozen mid-motion, now a sweeping river of black stone, twisted and ridged like petrified waves. It carved across the landscape its hardened edges curling and folding.

We traced its path with our eyes, it led directly to the twin volcanoes ahead, their craters still belching heat and smoke, their flanks coated in ash.

From our high perch, the crater spread wide beneath us. The guide told us that the lava had risen 17 meters within the past few months, a relentless, glowing tide from the planet's core.

We could see it all from where we stood — the full depth and breadth of the caldera laid bare, and we saw how much it seemed filled to the brim and how close it had come to spilling over.

By 10am, we reluctantly turned away from the volcanoes, the convoy rolled out once more, this time pointing toward the Mekele Airport — a six-hour journey.

The terrain began to shift yet again. Amid the starkness, we spotted pockets of unexpected vegetation — scraggly bushes and hardy trees.

Then came the stretches of half-completed concrete roads, laid out by Chinese construction crews, seemingly abandoned.

We had to stop for goats on the way.

And we had to stop for camels crossing the roads.

After one last test of nerves — a nail-biting drive that stretched into seven hours and fifteen minutes, defying the promised six — we stopped at Mekele Airport with minutes to spare.

The desert had thrown everything at us: heat, salt, smoke, goats, camels and a sense of wonder. As we screeched to a halt outside the terminal, we sprinted past baggage carts and made it to our Addis Ababa flight. It was the kind of finale that reminded us: in the Danakil, even the exit refuses to be ordinary.