A local ecologist traveled to the Thar Desert in search of wildlife. Here's what he found

James W. Cornett
DESERT magazine
Blackbuck in India's Thar Desert

Submitting the dune, I came face to face with a boy not more than 10 years of age.  

“You want Pepsi?” he yelled as he held up a bottle. “It is hot, very hot,” he said with obvious pride.

Startling best describes his sudden appearance. I had been trudging up and down sand dunes in India’s Thar Desert for nearly two hours and had not seen a soul. Where had the boy come from? Why was he selling Pepsi here? 

“No thanks,” I automatically responded as I had to all the Indian vendors I encountered the previous two weeks. 

“Where did you come from?” I queried. He pointed to the east, to a big dune about 200 yards away.  

“You buy Pepsi, I show you,” he offered.

Thatched roofs and adobe walls in India's Thar Desert

I handed over a dollar’s worth of rupees and he gave me a bottle of Pepsi that was, indeed, warm to the touch. We followed his tracks towards the big dune. It was a warm day, probably 85 degrees, and winter in the Thar Desert. In direct sunlight, it felt closer to a 100. Both the boy and I were sweating by the time we reached the top of the dune. 


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At the summit, I was startled at what spread before me. People, dune buggies and camels were everywhere. There were hundreds of vehicles and twice as many big dromedaries. I eventually learned the people were Indian tourists from Delhi and other large cities to the east. They had come to the area around the desert city of Jaisalmer for fun and relaxation. Money was paid to ride camels, rent dune buggies and purchase food and drinks from dozens of vendors such as my young friend.  

Most people have never heard of, much less been to, the Thar Desert. At 85,000 square miles it is about half the size of California and the smallest of Earth’s nine great deserts. About two-thirds lies in western India, in the state of Rajasthan. The rest is in southeastern Pakistan. The Thar Desert is bounded on the north by the rising landscape of the Himalayas and on the south by the warm waters of the Indian Ocean. Northward-moving summer storms through central India prevent the desert from extending eastward. The western boundary lies in Pakistan, at the fertile Indus River valley.

I parted with my young guide but not before buying another warm Pepsi which I put in my backpack (and never drank). My preference for ice-cold soft drinks was apparently out of step with realities of life in India’s Thar Desert. 

An Indian participant flies a train of kites at the International Kite Festival at white sand in the Rann of Kutch, a seasonal salt marsh located in the Thar Desert in Dhordo, India. The International Kite Festival has become a highly popular event.
Dune fields in India's Thar Desert

Unlike our California deserts, mountains are not part of the Thar Desert landscape. Though my wife and I occasionally encountered low hills and salt playas, India’s desert is essentially a vast windswept plain. Parallel dune systems run southwest to northeast, mirroring the prevailing winds. For the most part, dunes are similar in height to those once covering the floor of the Coachella Valley, up to 50 feet. They never approach, however, the height or mass of Imperial County’s Algodones Dunes. Everywhere the sand is light-colored and largely unoxidized suggesting it is of recent origin. Completely absent from the Thar Desert are the lofty, tree-covered desert islands such as the Eagle Mountains in Joshua Tree National Park. Absent such features, I wondered if it might be difficult to match the varied flora and fauna found in our North American Desert.  

On average, the Thar Desert receives about the same annual precipitation as Palm Springs, about 5 inches. The season when the rain falls, however, is radically different. Our precipitation comes from winter storms that arrive in January and February. The Thar Desert receives most of its rain in July and August, with the onset of India’s notorious monsoon season. Whereas our winter rainfall has a chance to soak deep into the soil due to cool temperatures, most of the Thar Desert precipitation evaporates away in the hot summer air. This was another reason why I didn’t expect to encounter much in the way of flora and fauna. But then deserts seldom disappoint. To borrow from the late science fiction novelist Michael Crichton, life finds a way to survive even in the harshest of environments. 

Organ Euphorbia in India's Thar Desert

The Thar Desert is not barren as is the Gobi Desert of central Asia. There are scattered trees, shrubs and blooming wildflowers after rare summer downpours. Small, acacia-like trees, Senegali senegal, are among the largest and most widespread plants, particularly within the Thar’s dune areas. We have a closely related species known as catclaw (Senegali greggii) that is very common in washes and canyons throughout the Coachella Valley. All other things being equal, evolutionary biologists expect the more geographically separated two species are, the less likely it is they will be related. Despite this principle, I found two plants on opposite sides of the world that were as closely related as they can be without being the same species. 

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Parasitic Broomrape in Thar Desert

There were more botanical similarities. Here in the Coachella Valley, whether at the edges of your yard or in the nearest vacant lot, one can easily find Croton or Sand-mat plants. Both species are placed in the Spurge Family, a family known technically as Euphorbiaceae. Croton is a small, spindly shrub and Sand-mat is a tiny perennial herb that grows flat against the ground. Euphorbias occur in the Thar Desert as well, but one I encountered was radically different in size and appearance. The Organ Euphorbia (Euphorbiacaducifolia) is a giant succulent shrub reaching twelve feet in height, with more than a thousand stems and known to exceed a ton in weight. It was one of the most impressive desert plants I encountered during my journey.

The most curious as well as beautiful plant was a parasite that invaded and attached itself to the root systems of other plants. Its magnificent inflorescence rose nearly 3 feet above the ground and, because it obtained water and nutrients from its host plant, had no leaves or green chlorophyll cells whatsoever – a true parasitic plant. In the Thar Desert it is known to parasitize many trees including Tamarisk, a notorious invasive plant here in the Coachella Valley. Despite my being 12,000 miles from home, the parasite looked vaguely familiar. When I returned to the U.S., I showed a photograph of the plant to Andy Sanders, Curator of Plants at the University of California Herbarium in Riverside. He identified it as Cistanche tinctoria and validated why it was familiar to me. Two years before my trip I had encountered a similar looking but much smaller plant in the Coachella Valley, the burro-weed strangler, Orobanche cooperi. Plant taxonomists place both species in the Broomrape Family. 

Desert aficionados are aware of numerous exotic plant species that have invaded Coachella Valley environments, often crowding out more attractive and important native species in the process. Invasion, however, is a two-way street. The Thar Desert, indeed much of western and central India, has experienced an invasion of our own Southwestern mesquite (Prosopis) that is currently replacing many shrub and tree species native to India. 

Bull camel in rut showing the dulla

With one-half million camels, India and the Thar Desert have the largest population of dromedary or “one-humped” camels (Camelus dromedarious) in Asia. Camels in India are used to plow fields, transport humans and pull cargo wagons. Their impressive physiological and anatomical adaptations for arid-land living make them the best draft animal available. Camels also provide milk, fiber (camel hair) and meat for the human population. Even dried camel dung is used as fuel for cooking and home heating. 

The significance of camels in Rajasthan is best exemplified at annual camel fairs where thousands of dromedaries are on display. My wife and I attended the Pushkar Camel Fair which reminded me of an American car show. Attendees admired the camels which were bought, sold, or traded by participants. There were booths where colorful accessories could be purchased. In place of chrome wheels and ornamental knobs, however, were saddle blankets, decorated reins and flashy camel nose rings (used for steering the beasts when riding). Camel fairs have become popular not only among locals but among international tourists as well. 

Camel vendor at Pushkar Fair

At this juncture, I must provide some cautionary notes should you travel to India and be inclined to attend a camel festival. Bull camels will be in rut and generating unearthly noises that are a horrific cross between a snarl and roar. More unsettling is the displaying of the dulla, an inflatable balloon-like membrane protruded out the side of the mouth. It is fleshy pink, the size and shape of a very large eggplant and drips with white, bubbly saliva. I have nothing against camels but by human standards a male in rut is just plain gross. Also, if you go, plan on wearing shoes that can be easily washed after visiting the fair. Camel urine and dung cover the ground and even if you somehow avoid stepping in recent waste, the pervasive odor of the fair will stay on your clothes for days and in your memory even longer.  

It is said there are a few feral camels roaming parts of the Thar Desert. I never saw feral camels but did observe two other cloven-hoofed species: the chinkara (Gazella bennettii) and blackbuck (Antilope cervicapra). At 51 and 84 pounds respectively, these two antelopes are the largest native animals that roam the Thar Desert.

During our travels, I found two small animals of particular interest because of their similarity to species found in our valley. The first was a rodent, a ground squirrel to be precise. Away from the dunes it was common and conspicuous, in large part because of the white stripes on its sides. Stripes should ring a bell with Coachella Valley hikers because we, too, have a squirrel with side stripes that is common and conspicuous away from dunes. Ours is the white-tailed antelope squirrel with the tongue twisting scientific name of Ammospermophilus leucurus. The Thar’s side-striped squirrel is called the five-striped squirrel, Funambulus pennantii. At first glance it would be easy to confuse the two except they are separated by 12,000 miles including a vast ocean. 

Seemingly more familiar than the squirrel were two Thar Desert lizard species that possessed fringed scales on their toes: the toad-headed lizard (Bufoniceps laungwalansis) and Indian fringe-toed lizard (Acanthodactylus cantoris). Both also are known to escape predators by disappearing head first into the sand. These attributes made them familiar to me because the Coachella Valley also has a lizard with fringed scales on its toes; the Coachella Valley fringe-toed lizard, Uma inornata. It also dives head first into the sand to escape predators. But unlike the related plant species discussed earlier, all three of these lizards are in completely different families. In short, other than being lizards, they are as taxonomically different as lizards can be. I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that I encountered lizards with fringed scales on their toes. Most of the world’s nine great deserts have one or more lizard species with this same characteristic. I couldn’t help but wonder what is it about biological evolution in sandy deserts that routinely result in the presence of fringed-toad lizards? It’s as if one could predict the lizard’s presence without ever having visited the desert. Perhaps the path of evolution is less chance and more prediction than scientists once believed. 

Five-lined Ground Squirrel

While driving through the desert west of Jaisalmer, I couldn’t help but notice a four-inch metal pipe that rested along the road shoulder. It ran from Jaisalmer for dozens of miles far into the desert. When we saw a dripping spigot coming out of the pipe I had my driver and guide, Ambar, stop the vehicle. I got out and walked over to the spigot and turned the handle. Water flowed onto the sand immediately.

“The government put the water pipe here for desert people,” Ambar announced. 

As I returned to the car, I saw a woman with a large container strapped to her back. She was coming out of the desert towards us. I got into our vehicle but asked Ambar to wait for her to reach the highway. 

“She is coming to get water,” Ambar said. 

Walls of ancient city of Jaisalmer

She passed us, removed the container from her back placed it under the spigot. It took a few minutes to fill the container which I estimated to hold about 10 gallons. I asked Ambar to find out how far she had walked to get water. 

“The lady lives 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) away and makes trip three times a week. Sometimes every day in summer. She takes water to her home.”

The woman, of around 30 years, placed the container in a harness and lifted it onto her back to begin the long trek home. I estimated the filled container weighed around 80 pounds. 

As I would learn from Ambar and others, the central government installed such water lines so that people would stay in the desert and not flock to cities, most of which are already severely overcrowded. With water, bureaucrats reasoned, desert inhabitants could maintain small herds of sheep, goats, camels and occasionally cattle. They might also farm small plots. But herders in the Thar Desert had historically been nomadic and took advantage of spotty rainfall, temporary ponds and local patches of vegetation. Once these resources were exhausted, the herders would move on to new areas. The spigot, along with less predictable climatic conditions, enticed people to stay close to a reliable source of water. This, in turn, resulted in rapid overgrazing in the immediate area and an inability to raise livestock. The evidence was seen often along the road in the form of malnourished livestock carcasses. To make matters worse, the promise of abundant irrigation water from the Indira Gandhi Canal has not materialized for those living in the central or southern Thar Desert. Recent satellite imagery shows thousands of small agricultural plots that lay fallow even during the rainy season.

The attempt to keep, much less expand, the numbers of humans living in the desert as herders and farmers appears to be no longer viable. Warmer temperatures coupled with recurring drought have pushed more and more people into already crowded cities in search of an alternative livelihood. 

There is, however, a burgeoning new economy in the Thar Desert that may change the tide of human exodus. Increasing numbers of tourists, from all over the world, are being drawn into the Thar Desert for recreation and to view the magnificent and well-preserved fortresses scattered across the desert. This promises to be a new economic base that may keep Indians in the desert around popular resort cities such as Jaisalmer, Jodhpur and many others.  

Perhaps my young soft drink vendor was a sign of a new, tourist-based economy.