Surreal Landscape And Unique Features Of Danakil Depression

In northern Ethiopia lies the Danakil Depression, with its surreal landscape and unique features.

- Bhavya Dore

The ground erupted like kernels of buttery popcorn, crunchy to the touch. A haze of crimson and orange dirt surrounded us. Pools, the colour of disco lights, shone in the distance and whistling sulphurous vapours escaped from the ground.

One weekday morning in May, I looked at this operatic rendition of nature, red and orange and yellow in tooth and claw, and couldn’t look away. I had taken an incorrectly booked flight, an 11-hour road journey, a stop at the wrong hotel, endless power cuts and myriad other travellers’ troubles to get here. But riding on the back of those traumas and mishaps we were here now, and Africa’s psychedelic Dallol lay in front of us.

It felt like Mars, with its unfamiliar shapes and shades. Indeed, a paper in the science journal Astrobiology in March called it “an excellent Mars analog environment”, likening its conditions to our neighbouring planet. Dallol is a volcanic crater in the Danakil Depression of northern Ethiopia, one of the hottest, lowest places on earth. “The region”, the paper said, “is notable for hosting environments at the very edge of natural physical-chemical extremities.”

Extremities is the right word. Even the microbes that survive here in these conditions are known as “extremophiles”. Superlatives attach themselves easily to Danakil: Land of the highest average year-round temperature, host to one of the most acidic natural systems, receiver of among the scantiest amounts of rainfall. To this I could add another: Unlikeliest place on my itinerary.