saltlake – rene bauer photography

„There must be a place to access the Dead Sea, isn’t it?“ I asked the nice young lady at the entrance of En Gedi. I had that experience of floating in the highly saturated salty sea twice when i traveled Jordan in 2014 (click here). Since i’m so close to that unique waters, i wanted have at least another short dip on this side of the sea.

„There’s a spa at seaside nearby, but it costs a fortune to get in“ she replied. „Better drive south to En Bokek. There’s a public beach without an entrance fee.“ she advised me. Thankfully i drove along the coast. The sun already was near the horizon when i arrived at that beach. The town provides changing rooms and fresh water shower at the sandy beach. Behind the beach are a few big, modern hotels and even a shopping mall. People enjoying to float on the water or sunbathing in the late afternoon sun.

Quickly i got myself into the water, and once again felt that strange sensation of the strong buoyancy. Literally lying on the water surface and looking over to the reddish mountains of Jordan, it felt like being on another planet, where gravity is different and light shines from an another sun. That thought carried on when i traveled into the night, followed by a cloud shaped like a space ship.

April 5, 2023März 30, 2023 by Rene Bauer Categories: humansofplanetearth, Middle East, nature, reportage, roadtrip, travel, waterTags: beach, beachlife, deadsea, Desert, enbokek, holiday, hotel, israel, jordan, landscape, middleeast, mountain, nature, people, renebauerphotography, reportage, saltlake, saltysea, saltywater, sea, Travel Hinterlasse einen Kommentar

Katwe is a village at northern end of Lake Edward. Along a dusty, bumpy road are some shops and gloomy bars. Most of people living in the houses scattered in the neighborhood or next to the huge lake. At first glimpse just another quite village somewhere in Uganda. But there is something special. Just next to this village, beyond a low crater rim, a small lake appears. At the shore are many ponds in different sizes and colors, mostly dark reddish to almost black. The high quantity of salt makes it worth to collect it. This business grew over generations, and the trade system is still the same. There is no big company who owns the salt, but families taking care for their own plot. A plot usually get inherited to the next generation of the family. Beside the plots, there are also men who walking in the middle of the shallow lake. With iron sticks they break the salty rocks from the ground of the lake and bring it on rafts on land. The salt, crystalline or as rocky plates, get shifted on shore, protected by plastic sheets or covered with dry grass, till they sold and moved by trucks.