Top Ten Deserts

Camel trekking in the Thar Desert (Ethan Gelber)

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The wide 77,000-square-mile strip of rolling sand hills bridging the sensitive (often army-patrolled) southern Indian-Pakistani border is called the Thar (from "t'hul," the word describing the sand ridges typical of the area) or Great Indian Desert. The most famous tourist gateway to this tract of accessible land is from the magical Arabian Nights city of Jaisalmer, on the western edge of India's Rajasthan and within a camel's trot of sand dunes. The traverse to the dunes is across variable terrain including sandy plains and low, sparsely vegetated hills. In typical fashion, warm days give way to comfortably cool star-filled evenings. Small villages cluster around oases and thin seasonal waterways.