Thar desert stretches all the way to Rajasthan, India, and is considered the most populous desert in the world. Its four hundred thousand square kilometres of emptiness is populated by a million people scattered throughout more than eight hundred villages. The name alone promises heat and death, but Thar is where Rajasthan, Sindhi, and Gujarati traditions began. Thar is the legendary desert praised in the Hindu holy scriptures, Ramayana and Mahabharata. A prominent Urdu poet, Mazhar-ul-Islam, once wrote, ‘Thar and my heart are two names of the same desert’.
Thar, Sindh, Pakistan, 2006