subject: Is Common Salt White Gold? [print this page] Camel trains still make the 700-kilometre death defying journey, across the Sahara Desert to the Timbuktu salt mines, in order to pick up the white gold, salt, an unsung hero of our everyday life.
Salt has become just one of the building blocks of civilization which we now take for granted, yet it is hotly debated as a health issue. Modern technology has made salt mundane and unbelievably inexpensive, even though it was formerly worth its weight in gold.
Many health professionals proclaim salt should never be added to anything you consume, while others argue that to use it in small quantities is beneficial.
Sailors survived at sea for extended periods of time through curing and bringing their food. This led to longer and longer journeys, enabling them to make more exotic discoveries. Our ancestors learned to preserve their foods with salt, enabling them to make it through long hard winters and hot, bacteria-ridden summers. Processing foods with salt kept people from dying from starvation, before the advent of canning and refrigeration.
Many salt related foods are in high demand, such as ham, bacon, salmon, salt cod, fish sauce and briny pickles. Many command astronomical prices, considering they originate from lowly beginnings.
Salt (NaCl) has a history of intrigue, human innovation and even violence. Salt has been involved in numerous wars, the establishment of trade routes and empire building. The Silk Road traversed over one of the largest salt-producing regions in the world.
Getting rid of the tyranny of the unreasonable salt taxation was the momentum for India's civil rights movement. Gandhi chose salt to galvanize public support for change. He stated: "Next to air and water, salt is perhaps the greatest necessity of life."
For the adventurous traveler, the landscapes that produce salt are eerily beautiful: from below-sea-level salt flats, high-altitude salt lakes, hypersaline coastal pans and deep crystal-encrusted caverns and mines, to the terraced salt pans of Peru.
Whether it's viewing the 3000 seat underground salt cathedral of Zipaquira, which has been formed out of a salt mountain, or the salt lakes of Argentina, America and Tunisia, or the Dead Sea in Israel, to joining a camel train in Africa, following the salt trail can create an extraordinary holiday.
