Living in the desert... a village

Suddenly you see a couple of people in the middle of nowhere. What are they doing, why, how can they survive?

This seems to be a bare desert, but it is full of villages and it seems that during the Monsoon season a lot of this are irrigated fields producing crops and there are even rivers

Taking account of the number of people, it is surprising that there are trees or scrubs left, which were not yet used for fire-wood or cattle fodder

There seemed to be a strange atmosphere in this village. Our guides did not really like us to wander around and seemed to be quite uneasy even so we were brought into a house to have tea

Some of the traditional houses are beautifully painted. The houses are built from mud.

These little sheds outside the courtyards seems to be used for dried cow dung used as fuel

 The entrance to the courtyard is blocked... probably to prevent cattle of getting in and eat everything in reach

One of the inhabitants

Ellen, Duncan and a communicative member of the village community

We had tea in this rather modern looking house. We preferred to rather not touch the food being offered.

The kitchen in a separate corner of the court yard

The tea corner. The heavy iron screen is used to protect food.

Ellen gets her nails painted

and Duncan had a paint job too....