Rajasthan, the region to the west of Delhi which runs up to the borders of Pakistan, is one of the hottest places on the planet - take it from me, I’ve just got back. How the human race copes with heat is of increasing interest to us northerners who, as the icecap melts and the planet warms up, are likely to find our island kingdom, well, camel-country.
One can get used to camels, particularly when attempting to cross the sandy bits of the earth. Camels are, as it happens, a speciality of the desert kingdoms of Rajistan, of which the really empty part is known as the Marwar, the land of death, a reputation which keeps the population low and the ratio of people to camels unusually high. As you might imagine, there’s not much to eat and still less to drink. For the villagers of the Marwar, mostly vegetarian Hindus, everything depends on the monsoon rains. When the rains come, crops flourish and everyone eats. When they fail, the government provides famine-rations and one person in every family has to go out to work on the roads.
