El Sod Crater

El Sod, the house of salt, is a crater about a kilometre and a half across with sides dropping several hundred metres to a lake of dense black brine at the bottom. Borana men walk down a steep path each morning, wade and dive into the water to cut and haul out black salt from the bed, load it onto donkeys and drive them back up, a round trip of hours done daily. The salt is traded across southern Ethiopia and into Kenya, mostly for livestock. The descent for visitors takes forty minutes or so and the climb back considerably longer, in heat and with no shade. Whether to go down at all is a fair question: it is hard work being done for a living, not a demonstration.

What you'll find

• The black lake - dense dark brine at the bottom of the crater.
• Salt cutting - men working in the water and loading donkeys.
• The crater path - the steep descent used every day by the workers.
• Borana pastoral country - the dry rangeland surrounding the crater.

When to go

October to March for the roads. Work goes on daily and starts early. Midday heat in the crater is severe and the climb out is much harder then, so morning is the only sensible time.

Practical notes

The climb out is genuinely hard: several hundred metres of ascent in heat. This is dangerous work done by people for very little money, and treating it as a photo opportunity is not appropriate; payment to guides and workers is expected and fair. Facilities are none.

Nearby

Yabelo lies north; the Kenyan border is south.

Key facts