The Danakil Depression is found in the Danakil Desert, along the borders of Eritrea and Djibouti. With average temperatures of 35°C – there are days when temperatures exceed 48°C – and an average annual rainfall of between 100 and 200m, it is rightly considered one of the most inhospitable places on earth. The National Geographic went so far as to call it the cruelest.

Situated at the head of the African Rift Valley, in the Afar Triangle, on the so-called triple point, the Danakil Depression constitutes one of the lowest places on earth; it’s 100 below sea level depression, the direct result of the retreating actions of the Arabian and (two halves of) the African plate. Located thus, the area is especially volatile.

The earth’s crust here is especially thin, the resultant volcanic activity the explanation for the depressions extraordinary landscape – cones, shields, lava, geysers and salt pans.

Home to the nomadic Afar, its one main industry the mining, transport and sale of salt or amor, the Danakil Depression and wider desert is the preserve of a civilization that occupies the borderlands of Eritrea and Djibouti – as well as Ethiopia. Their language a part of the Cushitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic, Muslim and traditionally divided between the noble Asmara and the desert-dwelling Adaemara, Afar society breaks down into clans, the desert divided into territories.

Wealth is measured by livestock, prowess – and with it, rights to marriage – by warrior capabilities. The trade of salt, the taxes levied, are the Afar’s major source of revenue. They are, in every respect, an amazing people.

Given the desert climate, the Danakil Depression is best visited between November and March, when temperatures drop to a sweltering average of 25 °C.

Dallol and Ert Ale

It’s been called one of the most alien places on earth — a “gateway to hell” and, in the words of British explorer Wilfred Thesiger, a veritable “land of death.”

The sulfurous hot springs, acid pools, steaming fissures and salt mountains of the Danakil Depression resemble scenes from a science fiction movie. But the area is very real — and it’s one of Ethiopia’s top attractions.

One of the hottest places on earth (by average daily temperature) as well as one of the lowest (over 116m below sea level), the Danakil Depression entices three main types of people to the area: salt miners, scientists and travelers.

As they have done for centuries, miners travel hours — often by camel caravans — to extract salt slabs from the flat pans around Lake Karum. Salt is the region’s “white gold” and was a form of currency in Ethiopia until the 20th century.

Scientists are attracted to the conditions. In the 1960s, the area was used to study plate tectonics, but more recently astrobiological exploration is the larger scientific draw.

In the spring of 2016, researchers from the University of Bologna, Italy’s International Research School of Planetary Sciences and Ethiopia’s Mekelle University studied whether microbes can withstand Danakil’s scorchingly inhospitable environment (it turned out they can). Scientists wonder whether if extremophiles, as they are known, can survive there, they can survive on Mars too.

Travelers are lured to the Danakil Depression for an altogether different reason. It’s a sweltering, foul-smelling, punitive place, which is exactly why people cross continents to see it.

The sulfur springs of Dallol are a particular draw, with its stupefying shades of neon green and yellow that hiss forth from the rocky terrain. Ethiopia’s most active volcano, Erta Ale (which means “Smoking Mountain” in the local Afar language) is another, with its cartoon-like molten center, one of only eight lava lakes in the world.

When to go

The Danakil Depression’s high season runs from November to March, when temperatures — though still in the 90s F — are slightly more bearable.