Smokin’ mountain

roads. We went from a broad, paved highway to a wide, gravel track before driving over the tortuous, bumpy lava fields.

Finally, it was even too much for our intrepid Land Cruisers and we reached a collection of round, stone huts that became a kind of base camp for trips by foot up the volcano. Here, camel drivers, soldiers and local militia members often hang out until expeditions like ours come for the final three-hour trek to the caldera.

With our cars left behind, it suddenly felt like we were in the true Thesiger territory from his 1930s diaries, in which he talked endlessly about the state of his camels and donkeys, and negotiations with their owners.

We hired three camels for the trip, one for our gear and the other two for anyone who grew tired during the hike. We also had a few militia members to accompany us.

While the Danakil today is nothing like it was in the time of Thesiger, when strangers were often killed on the spot and rival tribes were engaged in incessant raids against each other, it does have a bit of a lawless reputation, making armed accompaniment now an official requirement. In 2012, a group of tourists was attacked at the volcano by armed tribesmen. Five died and two were kidnapped. In 2007, another group that included British Embassy staffers was also briefly taken hostage. Since then, there has been a security post installed at the volcano, and embassies have gradually lifted travel restrictions.

It was a rare cloudy day, so we were able to start the trek in the late afternoon instead of dusk, which is the traditional tactic to escape the sun. We walked across a stark, beautiful landscape of dark-grey lava flows that contrasted sharply with tufts of strawcoloured grass. The three-hour trek on a slight incline isn’t challenging for someone in shape, and even my 7-year-old and the 9-year-old were able to make it, with the occasional stint riding high on a camel. The final hour, however, was in pitch black lit by our flashlights and the distant glow of the volcano.

At the summit, our guide led us down into the plain around the crater and we scrambled over lava flows that were just a day or two old. Once, you could camp right next to the crater. In the past year, though, Erta Ale has become quite active. We only made it within about 70 yards of the bubbling cauldron before the heat kept us back. We watched in awe as the lava leapt and fell back into the glowing bowl and made a strange hissing noise. Exhausted, we made our painstaking way back across the lava plain and up the cliff to watch the light show.

Later that evening, the lava overflowed the crater at several points. It was hard not to wonder if there was now fresh magma where we had just been standing. We awoke before dawn after a restless night. The bone-dry Danakil only gets seven inches of rain a year, but it all seemed to have fallen that night, resulting in a frantic scurry for the huts.

Thesiger often wrote about starting his treks at 5am, before the sun grew too hot, and so we too started the climb down in the predawn greyness. A last glimpse of the volcano showed it to be as active as ever, with red patches of lava, cooling in the plain.

A sweaty, three-hour trek later, we were back to the Land Cruisers. An astonishing four hours after that, we were in Mek’ele and at the airport, ready to rejoin the world after four days of peering into the crust of the Earth. – The Washington Post