At Jaisalmer, the skyline is pinned in place by the sand dunes of Sam on one side and the ethereal silhouette of the Sonar Qila on the other. Between the two, they define the spirit of this desert outpost, forged by the sword in a thousand bloody battles in the heat of the Thar.
Here, in the land of the Bhati Rajputs, where scrubland meets tawny-coloured hills lies one of the last habitats in India of the Great Indian Bustard, among the heaviest of the flying birds. Once also found in the grasslands of central India the godawan, as it is locally called, is critically endangered due to hunting over the decades — numbers are now in the hundreds. Local communities like the Bishnoi, for whom environmental protection is a key principle, have pitched in to save the bird.
