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Dallol
- Razengan 3y agoMan, imagine the sights awaiting to be discovered in the rest of the Universe.
- saretup 3y agoEven earth gets acid reflux sometimes
- justhw 3y agoOh wow! I visited the Afar region in 2018. It's an incredible place. Pictures don't do it justice. Go if you can. Feels like being on Mars (not that we know). There are plenty of tour and travel groups that still go there. You will also get to sleep next to an active volcano (Ertale) on night 2. Be ready to hike. AMA if you're curious.
- bugbuddy 3y agoImagine Earth but with human vision range extended much greater.
- leptoniscool 3y agoI'm genuinely intrigued! Any recommendations for tour companies? Do you have to bring your own tent? Any need for special masks/filters for volcanic gases?
- justhw 3y agoDefinitely do bring a mask and glasses. The volcanic acid is no joke. Everything else would be provided by the company. They usually have camels to carry your stuff as well. Check out a group called Ethio Hiking Community on Telegram. They go roughly once a month.
- merry_flame 3y agoMasks and glasses!!?? Went there, and such gear feels like it would be not only completely useless but even plain dangerous as it would probably contribute to make your body overheat even faster.
- justhw 3y agoI didn't need/have either but some people that had said it helped.
- maCDzP 3y agoI went to Ethiopia in 2015. Unfortunately we didn’t go to Dallol and the Danakil depression. I have added it to my bucket list since I find deserts to be a fascinating environment.
- lukan 3y ago"Go if you can" But maybe check, if you have to pass through a war zone to get there: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_civil_conflict_(2018%E2%80%93present) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_civil_conflict_(20... Things seem to have calmed down a bit again, but there was very brutal violence going on since 2018.
- weregiraffe 3y agoAnd the Daffuq formation nearby is even weirder!
- IamDaedalus 3y agoworld's edge
- Dibby053 3y agoOne of the hottest places on Earth, 120m under sea level, with lakes of sulphur and iron and apparent absence of life. Could this place had been the inspiration for our idea of Hell?
- ljm 3y agoIt sort of looks like Caelid in Elden Ring.
- serbrax 3y agoIt’s plausible, considering Ethiopia is precisely where early->modern humans evolved. Australopithecus Afarensis (“Lucy”) was discovered in the same region/province, not very far south of Dallol.
- andrewflnr 3y agoI'm not sure the lake of fire concept of hell existed before the book of Revelation, a couple decades AD. I don't think the Hebrew hell/afterlife is like that, for instance. And I don't know if any other religions that have it either.
- joveian 3y agoI think the Christian idea of hell also come out of the Jewish Gehenna, which it sounds like was the name of an actual valley near Jerusalem which was associated with a (condemned in Judaism) practice of child sacrifice via fire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gehenna Etheopia had one of the earliest Christian communities (that early on split from what became the larger group of Christians) so I could easily imagine Dallol being inspiration for the book of Revelation and/or otherwise influential in forming the Christian idea of hell.
- jayceedenton 3y agoSadly, visiting many parts of Ethiopia (including Dallol) is now not recommended unless essential, with large areas of the country having blanket 'Do not visit' advice due to violence and kidnapping. So think twice before booking, or recommending that others should go. Ten years ago things were very different, with huge growth in tourism. The famine of the early 80s finally receding into history. In the 2020s, war and starvation have returned.
- sillystuff 3y agoI visited a little before the pandemic locked things down. At that time, we were required to have an armed guard on our visit to Dallol. There had been some shootings and abductions in the area, but it wasn't common (I believe these violent incidents had been attributed to Eritrean cross-border excursions). The Afar region (where Dallol is) was the only area of Ethiopia we encountered such issues at that time. Violence was still extremely rare. We never felt threatened. I especially loved the Tigray region. The people were amazing. There was an innocence similar to that I encountered in Türkiye, decades ago. It is hard to reconcile the recent violence, and the universally kind and generous people we met there. We regularly saw young women and girls walking down dark alleyways alone after dark--the place felt safer than any place I've ever been.
- merry_flame 3y agoThe armed guard was actually the mafia you paid to visit. Some tourists got shot a few weeks before I went because they tagged along and hadn't paid the steep protection racket fee. Went a few years before you for something like 5 weeks, and violence was rife in the countryside. I saw dozens of refugee camps (people fleeing ethnic violence), a large number of torched cars or buses, got surrounded by hundreds of armed Tigrayan militia at one point, arrested by the Oromo militia, intimated or racketed more times than I can count, and even witnessed a village being emptied out by armed militias after a few hours notice in the midst of harvest season before being razed for the purposes of civil construction works (and razed it was…). Anything but a peaceful society. Safe at night… Yes, somewhat, but my father (who lived there) still got knocked unconscious and stripped to his knickers one night.
- EricRiese 3y agoYou would think a place like this would be used as a setting in some Sci-Fi movie and become instantly recognizable. Hell, you wouldn't even have to change the name.
- plq 3y agoPhotos remind me of Pamukkale[1], though Dallol seems to be more colorful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamukkale
- kinow 3y agoNot as impressive as Dallol, I think, but in Rotorua, New Zealand, there are similar hot springs with iron & sulfur that create similar colours and patterns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiotapu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiotapu
- LorenDB 3y agoThat looks a lot like the moon Pol from Kerbal Space Program.