Lake Abbe
Interesting facts
- In the Afar language the name is usually translated as 'rotten' or 'stinking lake', after the smell of hydrogen sulphide escaping from the chimneys.
- The largest chimney, As Bahalto, stands about 60 metres high and measures around 90 metres across.
- More than 10,000 years ago, in the wet era known as the African Humid Period, the lake spread over as much as 6,000 square kilometres.
- The chimneys grew where hot, calcium-rich springs rose through faults in the floor of an older lake and deposited travertine as they met the cold water.
- Many of the chimneys have a layered internal structure resembling stromatolites, built up band by band around the vents.
- For all its size the lake is shallow, averaging about 8.6 metres deep and reaching only around 37 metres at most.
- The British explorer Wilfred Thesiger reached the lake in 1934 while tracing the Awash River to the place where it disappears.
- In spring 2023 scientists drilled sediment cores from the lake bed to reconstruct the past climate of the region.
- Apart from flamingos, the wild animals most often seen around the lake are dorcas gazelles.
Why it is worth it
Hundreds of limestone chimneys rise from the salt flats around Lake Abbe, some as tall as 50 metres, and a few of them still breathe steam into the desert air. The lake lies on the border between Ethiopia and Djibouti, deep in the Afar Depression, and the landscape around it — pale crusts of salt, smoking towers, flamingos wading in shallow brine — is often compared to another planet.
The setting explains the strangeness. Lake Abbe sits at the Afar triple junction, the point where three pieces of the Earth's crust are slowly pulling away from one another. Hot geothermal fluid rising from below mixes with the lake water, and the carbonate it deposits has built the chimneys over time. The lake is also the end of a river: the Awash, which rises in the Ethiopian highlands, never reaches the sea but drains into a chain of six linked lakes, of which Abbe is the last. With no outlet, water leaves only by evaporation, so the lake is hypersaline, and its level swings sharply with small shifts in climate and with the water drawn from the Awash for irrigation upstream. Between 1940 and 1984 it lost about a third of its surface area, and broad salt flats now spread along its southern and southwestern shores.
On the northwest shore stands Mount Dama Ali, a dormant volcano a little over 1,000 metres high. Afar herders live near the lake, and greater flamingos gather on the open water. Rainfall is minimal and summer temperatures commonly reach 30 to 40 °C, which keeps the scene stark and the light hard for most of the year. The town of Asaita, historically known as Aussa and the capital of the Afar Region until 2007, lies on the Awash to the northwest, at the edge of the cluster of salt lakes that ends here.
Getting there
The nearest town on the Ethiopian side is Asaita, about 58 km northwest of the lake in a straight line. Semera Airport (SZE), serving the capital of the Afar Region, lies roughly 110 km to the northwest. The lake is also approached from Djibouti, where the town of Dikhil lies some 65 km to the east and Djibouti–Ambouli Airport (JIB) about 156 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Lake Abbe, also known as Lake Abhe Bad, is a salt lake, lying on the Ethiopia-Djibouti border. It is one of a chain of six connected lakes, which also includes lakes Gargori, Laitali, Gummare, Bario and Afambo. The lake is the ultimate destination of the Awash River, which is at the center of the Afar Triangle. Lake Abbe is considered one of the most inaccessible areas of the earth. The water itself is known for its flamingos.
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