Frankly, I was not sure what I was going to see once in the mine. I can visualize what the walls of a coal mine might look like but could not quite visualize a salt mine. In my mind, you get salt by evaporating ocean water.

I understand this particular part of the world was under water some 14 million years back. When the ocean evaporated, it left all the salt in the ground.

This is how it looks. You might mistake it to be granite or some kind of rock from inside. Till you try tasting a bit of it. (Yes, I did!!). It is much cooler to touch. Apparently, that is how miners would recognize salt deposits while digging. They would check how cool it was to touch. I guess going around licking after every swing of the pick axe would have been impractical and perhaps dangerous.

We were informed that wood was always used inside the mine instead of metal since metal would corrode from the effect of salt. Plus, I suspect wood was cheaper in this part of the country.

Everything around us was salt rock like this. Even the floor – which looked like marbled floors you see at home was salt.