Modern life intrudes on salt tradition

LAKE ASALE, Ethiopia - Every morning, hundreds of men converge on a dry lake bed in a remote corner of Ethiopia, where they cleave the ground open with handaxes to extract salt, just as their fathers and grandfathers once did.

They toil under the gaze of a caravan of camels who will carry their salt bricks to market, in a trek that historians estimate has gone on since the 6th century.

But with the Ethiopian government opening the isolated northern region to investors and tourists by cutting new roads through surrounding mountains, the laborers, traders and caravan drivers that make up the industry say their traditional way of life could soon be lost.