"White Gold" of Ethiopia

"White Gold" of Ethiopia

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A man walks across the brightly coloured crust of sulphur and mineral salt formations in the Danakil Depression – one of the hottest and harshest environments on earth.

Despite a searing average annual temperature of 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34.4 Celsius) centuries of merchants have travelled to this vast desert basin with caravans of camels in order to collect blocks of salt, once used as a form of currency and known as Ethiopia's "white gold".

. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Men walk with a long train of camels as they look for a suitable spot to collect salt from the desert surface. The pale mineral is extracted and shaped into slabs, then loaded onto the animals before being transported back across the Danakil Depression so that it can be sold around the country.

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Lights glow in the town of Berahile, a place two days trek from the salt flats, where caravans of camels and other pack animals come to drop off their cargo so that it can be transported to the rest of the country.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Lights glow in the town of Berahile, a place two days trek from the salt flats, where caravans of camels and other pack animals come to drop off their cargo so that it can be transported to the rest of the country.

Merchants and their pack animals rest in a canyon for the night during their long journey to extract salt from the desert.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Merchants and their pack animals rest in a canyon for the night during their long journey to extract salt from the desert.

Merchants pose for a photograph as they rest in the evening.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERSREUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Merchants pose for a photograph as they rest in the evening.

Residents of Hamad-Ile, a town on the edge of the salt pans, pump water out of a well. Many of the salt extractors live in this village and hire out their services to different caravans.
. HAMAD-ILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Residents of Hamad-Ile, a town on the edge of the salt pans, pump water out of a well. Many of the salt extractors live in this village and hire out their services to different caravans.

A camel caravan starts its journey to collect salt at dawn, before the heat of the day makes the trek too arduous.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A camel caravan starts its journey to collect salt at dawn, before the heat of the day makes the trek too arduous.

Camels march across the searing desert.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Camels march across the searing desert.

An Afar man carrying a gun crosses a river in the region, where banditry can be a problem. Some local clans offer armed security to protect the salt caravans.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

An Afar man carrying a gun crosses a river in the region, where banditry can be a problem. Some local clans offer armed security to protect the salt caravans.

A man walks with his camels through the desert to find a suitable place to mine salt.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A man walks with his camels through the desert to find a suitable place to mine salt.

Extractors use traditional hoes and axes to carve the "white gold" out of the ground.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Extractors use traditional hoes and axes to carve the "white gold" out of the ground.

Workers hack slabs from the earth's crust.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Workers hack slabs from the earth's crust.

Roughly hewn blocks of salt lie in the desert.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Roughly hewn blocks of salt lie in the desert.

A worker ties slabs of the mineral together.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A worker ties slabs of the mineral together.

Camels fuel up on dry grass at the start of the day.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Camels fuel up on dry grass at the start of the day.

A worker loads a camel with blocks of salt.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A worker loads a camel with blocks of salt.

A camel caravan treks across the horizon.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A camel caravan treks across the horizon.

Camels carrying their load of salt march back across the desert.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Camels carrying their load of salt march back across the desert.

Abdu Ibrahim Mohammed was 15 years old when he began travelling with the caravans to collect salt. He is now 51 and retired, and has passed his camels onto his son.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Abdu Ibrahim Mohammed was 15 years old when he began travelling with the caravans to collect salt. He is now 51 and retired, and has passed his camels onto his son.

Workers unload salt slabs in the town of Berahile. From here it will be transported by road to the rest of the country.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Workers unload salt slabs in the town of Berahile. From here it will be transported by road to the rest of the country.

Workers lift the salt slabs from the camels' backs.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Workers lift the salt slabs from the camels' backs.

A young man loads salt into a truck.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A young man loads salt into a truck.

Members of the Berahile Salt Association pay a merchant after purchasing salt. The head of the organisation says it pays around 17 birr ($0.91) for a roughly 7kg slab, before the mineral is sold on to merchants who transport it around the country.
. BERAHILE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

Members of the Berahile Salt Association pay a merchant after purchasing salt. The head of the organisation says it pays around 17 birr ($0.91) for a roughly 7kg slab, before the mineral is sold on to merchants who transport it around the country.

A man prepares bars of salt to be sold in a shop in the main market of Mekele, a city in the Ethiopian highlands.
. MEKELE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

A man prepares bars of salt to be sold in a shop in the main market of Mekele, a city in the Ethiopian highlands.

The salt blocks are sold across Ethiopia, many of them to farmers to provide their animals with essential minerals.
. MEKELE, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

The salt blocks are sold across Ethiopia, many of them to farmers to provide their animals with essential minerals.

Panorama:

Colourful sulphur and mineral salt formations encrust the desert surface. The salt from deposits like this is poisonous, and is not collected by the caravans.

Panorama Image
. Dallol, Ethiopia. Reuters/Siegfried Modola

Panorama:

The white expanse of the salt pans stretches out into the distance.

Panorama Image
. Berahile, Ethiopia. Reuters/Siegfried Modola
"The salt caravans moved in a slow but constant procession, cutting across the whiteness of the cracked desert."
Siegfried Modola, Reuters Photographer

To descend into the Danakil Depression is to step into another world.

The thick warm air, the hazy sky and the rugged empty mountains that gradually give way to the immensity of a white, shimmering salt desert all leave the traveller in awe of this cruel yet fascinating landscape.

Overlapping the Afar region of northeastern Ethiopia, Eritrea and Djibouti, this is the lowest point in Africa and one of the hottest places on Earth.

Venturing deep into this inhospitable land requires a well organised plan. Getting stuck with no back-up vehicle, no satellite communication or simply not enough water could become life threatening within a matter of hours.

I started my trip from the city of Mekele in the northern Tigray region of Ethiopia. I had not come to explore the area as a tourist. Instead, I was there to document the caravans of thousands of camels which for centuries have descended deep into the depression to extract salt.

Mekele was the place where I had to find a good 4x4 vehicle, a driver and enough water and food to be on the road for six days. Most importantly, I had to find a reliable fixer, someone who knew the region well and spoke the local language but who also had to be familiar with the salt trade and could manoeuvre well within complex Afar clan dynamics.

I had briefly met Mohammed on a previous trip some years back, and we stayed in touch ever since. His company for this assignment proved to be invaluable as he translated interviews, and negotiated with government officials and clan elders.

After a four-hour ride from Mekele, we arrived in the small but fast expanding desert town of Berahile in the Afar territory in the afternoon. This is where the camel caravans drop their loads of salt after marching for days across the depression.

From Berahile, trucks collect the mineral and transport it to the city of Mekele from where it is distributed to the rest of the country.

On the way, I was astonished at how far the construction of a new paved road had come along. Just a few years back in 2010, most of the journey to Berahile was on a rough steep route, but now I travelled on freshly laid tarmac for half the way.

I couldn’t help thinking about how this new road would affect the region. Surely it will bring some much needed development, helping with the transit of goods, businesses and infrastructure. But what about the thousands of Muslim Afar and Christian Tigrayans from the highlands who depend on the old ways of the salt trade? Would trucks one day replace camels, mules and donkeys and be part of a new, more efficient way of transporting salt from the desert to the highland?

As thoughts became questions, Mohammed explained that he believed this would never happen. All aspects of society in this region come down to clan politics; everything is decided by clan leaders and the local administration. For this reason, Mohammed believed that the community would never allow the caravan trade to disappear, as that would affect the thousands of people who depend on it.

After meeting and introducing myself to the clan elders and administrators in the town, it was decided that I would depart by foot with the caravans the next morning.

For protection against possible bandit attacks and for assistance on the way, I was introduced to Hussein, my guide for the next few days and to Mussa, an armed police reservist who in his younger days was a rebel fighter with the Afar Liberation Front.

We walked with countless caravans of camels through the day across vast dried valleys and canyons.

Hussein explained the vital importance of the river that we followed through the afternoon, saying it was the lifeline of the region. Once you leave it and head into the salt plains, drinking water is impossible to find.

That evening we made camp in the company of a caravan by the banks of the river. We shared coffee and a quick dinner of pitta bread and noodles, then were quickly carried off to sleep by our exhaustion.

At 6a.m. we were back on the road, taking advantage of the cool temperatures to cover as much distance as possible. Luckily for us, a car was waiting at the end of the valley for the last 20km of rocky, flat terrain before reaching the great salt plains of the depression.

I felt that having been on the road with the caravans for a day and a half was enough to be able to understand the difficulties of the journey that the salt merchants faced on a daily basis.

We reached Hamad-Ile in the afternoon, a small village on the edge of the desert, which is the last outpost for water and food before proceeding east into the depression. This was going to be a comfortable base to spend the night compared to the rocky terrain where we had woken up the previous morning.

At dusk the next day, we witnessed a spectacular scene of thousands of camels, mules, donkeys, herders, salt merchants, salt shapers and extractors venturing together into the vast, endless plains. They were all trying to reach a suitable spot where the salt was compact enough to be extracted. It was a march of several hours deep in the desert.

The sooner they reached the spot, the more time they had to extract as many slabs of salt as possible, load them onto their animals and start the two days’ journey back to the town of Berahile.

The landscape here was incredibly different from when I had started my trip a couple of days back.

It was a shimmering white expanse, with water mirages on the horizon playing tricks with your mind. The white hazy sky melted with the whiteness of the desert, giving a surreal feeling that sky and earth had touched and become one reality, indistinguishable from one another.

Amidst this feeling of spectacular emptiness, the salt caravans moved in a slow but constant procession, cutting across the whiteness of the cracked desert.

It was hard to imagine that they would stop somewhere in the desolate plains and work through the day in temperatures sometimes exceeding 50 degrees centigrade.

The price: thousands of slabs of salt to sell and to transport to the four corners of the country in a matter of days. This is the “white gold” of Ethiopia, as it used to be called when salt was used as a form of currency throughout the region.

. DALLOL, Ethiopia. REUTERS/Siegfried Modola

With its vast salt flats, volcanos and eerily coloured mineral formations, the Danakil Depression was once described as "a land of death" by the famous British desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger.