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The Danakil Part Four: The Gateway to Hell

The Danakil Part Four: The Gateway to Hell

If you were woken up and told that today, was the day you would be heading to the Gateway to Hell, what would your choice of breakfast be?  A Full English perhaps? Or maybe a giant stack of pancakes complete with all the toppings?  I tell you what it probably wouldn’t be: a packet of banana cream biscuits!  Yes, remarkably someone has actually created this monstrosity, and they are, as you can imagine, absolutely terrible!  This was the reality we faced as we waited outside a small police check point, deep in the Ethiopian desert, for our paperwork to be signed, before we could continue our journey; fortunately, we had been given some excellent coffee to offset the taste of the biscuits, and we both agreed that this was a journey well worth enduring any number of banana creams for.

The Danakil Part One: Bridge Over Salty Waters

The Danakil Part One: Bridge Over Salty Waters

The Danakil depression in Northern Ethiopia is one of the most geographically unique places in the world.  Remote and truly hostile, the Danakil can lay claim to being one of the hottest and driest places on the planet, with daytime temperatures surpassing 50°C and less than an inch of rain falling in the region each year; it is also one of the lowest parts of Africa, and one of the most tectonically active, with steaming acid lakes, rivers of lava, and clouds of volcanic gases creating an almost extra-terrestrial environment.  It is little wonder then, that the Danakil and its features have inspired such enigmatic nicknames as ‘The cruellest place on earth’ or ‘Gateway to Hell’.