PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRENNAN LINSLEY/AP
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| The Salt of Life Life is hard for the nomadic people of the Sahara Desert who live and work along the 450-mile salt road from Timbuktu
SALT OF THE EARTH:
Ibrahim Abdulahi stacks a newly cut 80-pound block of salt in the pit of his personal salt mine in Taoudenni, a makeshift mining settlement in the Sahara Desert about 430 miles north of Timbuktu, Mali. Abdulahi and a few hundred other men spend roughly half the year living on salty water and rice so they can earn a small living using only their hands and archaic tools to cut earthen salt from the rocky plain. The current salt road through the desert is one of the last, dying vestiges of a once lucrative and vital trans-Saharan trade route that supported these nomads and their nomadic lifestyle. 
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