Djibouti

Djibouti sits at the Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow strait where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. Whoever controlled this water controlled the route between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean, and the coast has been part of that traffic since antiquity.

The Afar and Somali Issa peoples shaped its inland history, while the port towns of Tadjoura and Zeila carried Islam and trade goods across the Horn of Africa from the earliest Islamic centuries.

The modern state took form around the port and the railway to Ethiopia, and independence came in 1977.

Lake Assal lies 155 metres below sea level — the lowest point in Africa — ringed by a blinding crust of salt. Nearby, Lake Abbe is a field of limestone chimneys venting steam across a plain that looks like another planet.

This is the Afar Triangle, where three tectonic plates are pulling apart. The Ardoukoba volcano erupted here as recently as 1978, and the Gulf of Tadjoura cuts deep into the coast, drawing whale sharks each winter.

Djibouti's culture is built on two great oral traditions, Afar and Somali, in which poetry carries news, law, argument and memory. Both are sustained by pastoral life across a hard landscape.

Caravans still carry salt cut from Lake Assal into the interior, and the coffee, incense and spice trades of the Red Sea remain part of daily life in the markets.

Djibouti City is a working port at the centre of Red Sea shipping, with a European quarter, the covered markets of the Quartier 1, and a waterfront that faces the busiest sea lane in the region.

Tadjoura, on the northern shore of the gulf, is one of the oldest towns on this coast and is known for its whitewashed mosques above the water.