Afar threshold — hot springs, oryx herds, and the Rift Valley on fire
Awash town sits at the northern edge of the Ethiopian Rift Valley — the geological crack in the earth that splits East Africa from the Afar Depression down toward Tanzania. The Awash National Park just across the Awash River holds the largest population of Beisa oryx in Ethiopia, along with Soemmerring's gazelle, Cape buffalo, and cheetah. The Filwoha hot springs inside the park are a series of natural thermal pools (40–42°C) surrounded by desert palms — one of the more surreal swimming spots in Africa.
The Awash River Valley is one of the most archaeologically significant landscapes in the world — the 1974 discovery of 'Lucy' (Australopithecus afarensis, 3.2 million years old) in the Awash basin established Ethiopia as the probable origin point of bipedal hominins. The town of Awash itself grew around the railway junction of the Franco-Ethiopian Railway (Djibouti to Addis Ababa, completed 1917), and the surrounding lowlands have been Afar pastoralist territory for thousands of years.