The Danakil Depression, which sits below sea level, in Northern Ethiopia lead us to the Afar desert; the gateway to hell. Here we came across extraordinary salt miners of the Afar tribe.
Labouring in temperatures that would most people would struggle with, cutting slabs of salt straight out of the earths crust using wooden poles and levering great wedges of dry salt which, are cut into manageable tiles and loaded onto camel trains ready for transportation and a walk of three days to reach those that will purchase the salt.
A 4kg slab will earn only 20 cents. It dawned upon me that this dying trade will in time disappear as the modern truck already making tracks in the desert seek to eradicate a histories old trade that has sustained this tribe for centuries.
