25 Apr At the gates of hell

This time I am going to try to surprise you by taking you to the lowest, hottest, driest and most inhospitable place on earth (and no, I am not talking about Hoyo de Manzanares in the middle of August).

It sounds good, but if I also tell you that it is home to mountains of salt, petrified seas, endless plains of burning salt and scorched sand, erupting volcanoes, and one of the most hostile tribes in Africa, then you will surely find this lure irresistible.

That's how Nesbitt felt, the first who ventured across and survived to tell the tale, then Rimbaud and then Thessiger, and that's how I felt a long time later. One after another, we all ended up there, nomadic souls drawn to a land of nomads. It is there, in the Danakil, where they say Ethiopia jealously guards the Gate of the Earth and the silence of the desert.

I was particularly obsessed with three jewels hidden in that desert, remote, inaccessible, demanding, safe from Simpson tourists, just for me: Lake Abbe, Lake Assal and above all, Dallol, the only volcano in the world below sea level and the hottest place on earth. As you can imagine, I went there, several times, I went through Ethiopia, Djibouti, all the roads, I had to get rid of this obsession, but not even for that. I went for that and for my collection, because I don't only collect deserts, I also have my own atlas of impossible places. In it are marked those places that are as spectacular as they are strange, where the real world and the world of dreams seem to be separated by a very thin line. And so is the Dallol, a lunar landscape, but almost as inaccessible, an impossible place.

Of those past explorations, I will remember that of Nesbitt, the first to cross it from north to south, who explored the area for three and a half months with a caravan of just over 20 camels. When he finished, he described the place as "a land of terror, hardship and death".. And I was not exaggerating, I myself could see how hard it was to cross these scorched lands in days of suffocating calm or whipped by strong winds full of dust. Fortunately, I didn't complain (almost) and at the end of the day, the military post of Ahmed Ela, at the foot of the Dallol, had a few beers, the cold kind that make you sweat... Going back to Nesbitt's expedition, which has me scattered, at that time, the Afar controlled all the desert routes to the north and were known for their savagery and aggressiveness, their favourite trophy being the testicles of their enemies. In fact the three expeditions that preceded him were slaughtered and according to Afar tradition their testicles became part of some beautiful, and very wearable, beaded necklace. Nesbitt succeeded, although on several occasions he endangered his potential offspring, losing several of his men to Afar attacks.

I admit that I am also attracted by the adventure of Rimbaud, the perpetual traveller. He wanted to trade with the Afar and for this he organised a caravan of more than 100 camels that crossed the desert to Tadjoura, in Djibouti. The only foreigner surrounded by a thousand dangers. That's how he felt, but he also succeeded. He set out from Harar, the holy city. Closed to foreigners until Richard Burton walked through its gates for the first time. Ninety-nine mosques, one for each of Allah's names. Impressive call to evening prayer. Harar, the market town, irresistible. The best time to get there is in April, when the jacaranda trees bloom and cover the city with a purple mantle, and a bougainvillea boulevard marks the exit to the desert. You have to go, in April...

If by any chance you don't have a hundred camels or a couple of months to travel the Danakil at your leisure, don't worry, there are less demanding and highly rewarding options. All you have to do is fly to Mekele and from there down to the town of Ahmed Ela. Before you get there you will see some mimosa forests or isolated dragon trees, but from Ahmed Ela onwards, the desert rules, some rickety acacia trees that death found standing and little else until you reach Dallol. There the earth boils, even more, and the steaming geysers have sculpted strange formations next to pools of unreal colours. A unique and indescribable spectacle.

Not far away is the salt mountain, with other formations as different as they are strange, and there are salt plains, and an oil lake and of course the salt pans, where the extractors and block carvers work. Every evening it is possible to see long caravans of camels transporting the salt extracted for sale at the Berahile market. There are few caravans like these left, a lost world that refuses to fade away... Another impressive spectacle.

Not far away, but on the worst track in the world is the Erta Ale volcano, one of the few in the world with a lava lake in the crater. Climb up and try sleeping just a few metres from the crater. This is the last spectacle I propose for today.

Nesbitt, Rimbaud and Thessiger each took more than 60 days to explore this desert, but only four days are enough to walk the Dallol, visit salt plains, climb an active volcano and see some of the last caravans crossing the desert.

It seems that lack of time is no longer going to be an excuse, find another one.