You 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.
Dallol
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Dallol
#22Photos remind me of Pamukkale[1], though Dallol seems to be more colorful.
Re: Dallol
#23One 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?
I'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.
I 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
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.
Re: Dallol
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'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?
Definitely 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.
Masks 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.
Re: Dallol
#25Sadly, 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 an…
I 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. Violen…
The 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.
Re: Dallol
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Definitely 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.
Masks 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.
I didn't need/have either but some people that had said it helped.
Re: Dallol
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I 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. Violen…
The 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…
That is interesting. We traveled by minibus throughout our trip, so traveled through rural areas, and only in Afar encountered lots of men with guns (one group of whom wanted to hang out, and shared their Khat [a stimulant plant]). Even with lots of men with guns, I never felt threatened (nor was a threat ever made nor implied).
The people we met in Tigray were amazing. The folks we encountered there were probably not affiliated with militias. I imagine (possibly wrongly) that militia members would make up a small fraction of the population? And that an ethnic militia would probably be more likely to contain folks who subscribe to ethnic hatreds etc. than the general population. Similar to white supremacist militias in the US-- they exist, but they are a marginal group who's viewpoint does not represent the majority of society (even among ethnic groups identifying as "white").
I've met people like you describe, just not in Ethiopia. I'm glad my path somehow avoided that. My memories of Ethiopia are 100% good/happy ones.
Per wikivoyage, the guards in Afar are guards. The wikivoyage article attributes the attacks on tourists to Afari rebels in the talk section, but not in the main text (I remember reading in a travel wiki that the attackers were Eritrean; but that could have been un-sourced BS). There are no references listed for any claims made in wikivoyage about the attacks.
Refusing guards and getting shot sounds like it supports it being a mafia protection racket, but rephrased, "the people shot were tagging along a bit behind, but not within the group ahead with the guard," just makes them sound more vulnerable to attack. Both descriptions are consistent with what you described. Seems like attacks would be greater in number, and more frequent than two attacks, 5 years apart (2012 and 2017), if it were a protection racket. Perhaps the wikivoyage list of tourist attacks is incomplete, but if attacks were common, it seems there would be more than two in over 10 years recorded.
Re: Dallol
#28Not 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
Re: Dallol
#29That looks a lot like the moon Pol from Kerbal Space Program.
Re: Dallol
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
The 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…
That is interesting. We traveled by minibus throughout our trip, so traveled through rural areas, and only in Afar encountered lots of men with guns (one group of whom wanted to hang out, and shared their Khat [a stimulant plant]). Even with lots of men with guns, I never felt threatened (nor was a threat ever made nor implied). The people we met in Tigray were amazing. The folks we encountered there were probably no…
> That is interesting.
The word is "horrible".