Category: My Favourite Places in the World

Pakistan – 2 Blokes With a Mortar and Pestle

I arrived quite late at night into Lahore, Pakistan coming from the Indian border. Dropped off by the bus it took me quite a while to work out where I was and what direction I had to go to get to the most popular (and possibly only?) backpacker hostel. Once I arrived at the hostel it was really late and I was dismayed to find it fully booked. Fortunately the owner was close by the reception area and invited me to stay at his family home. What followed was a great 2 days being integrated into a Pakistani  home. On one of these days he told me (as I remember he never seemed to ask, it was like I was a part of the family, do as you are told) that we were to go to a rural area outside of Lahore where he was building a new hotel that he hoped guests would visit to escape the hustle and bustle of Lahore. I spent the day taking photos of the surrounding area (and being warned not to take pictures of the girls) See pictures below. There can't be too many places in the world where you are walking along the road and get asked by 2 locals who are using a mortar and pestle if you can take their photo - see photo above (I especially was amazed by the guy on the left whose fingers were enameled by rings).

Ethiopia – Danakil Depression

I travelled through Ethiopia in January, 2013 as part of a East Africa jaunt. The highlight of the entire trip was my visit to the Danakil Depression region. The Danakil is said to be the most inhospitable inhabited place in the world. It has the world's highest average temperature (34°C) and much of it is situated over 100m below sea-level (luckily for us we had a chilly average of only 27°). The Afar people live in the region and use camel trains to move blocks of salt that are extracted by hand back to civilisation.

Once in the Danakil region we stayed in a small village called Hamadella. Everything was at the most basic level (no electricity) and the huts looked more likely to fall over than to make it through the night. Fortunately we could sleep under the stars as there were no mosquitos (or any other animal except a few of our standard companions we travel with around the world, flies).

Near Hamadella we visited the Dallol volcanic region which consists of brightly colored and oddly shaped mineral deposits. The area is devoid of plants or life which you would expect in a place where there are ponds of sulphuric acid. 

The next day we were travelling to my main reason I ventured to Eastern Africa to begin with (a big thanks to Austrian Klaus whom I met a few years before on the Italian island of Stromboli, thanks for giving me the lowdown mate). But before leaving we visited the Afar people plying their trade extracting the salt.

And after a very long (and at the end slow and bumpy) drive we arrived at one of my favourite places in the world, the volcano of Erta Ale. This volcano holds one of only 5 permanent lava lakes in the world.

We'd been there for about an hour and a half and then....

Not much sleep that night!! Couldn't help but wait expecting another and then another eruption. Saw about 6 over the night and what a night it was. One of the very best of my travelling experiences.