Skip to content →

Category: nature and travel

Grand sands (#24 in series: Thar Desert’s underground “celebrity”)

Published January 8, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#24 in series: Thar Desert’s underground “celebrity”)

 

The mammalian world’s biggest family – the rodents – includes six genera which (collectively) contain at least 110 living species of “gerbil”

Some of them – on their own turf, at least – are more commonly known as “jirds”.

Jirds are members of the genus Meriones.

As is generally true of gerbils, jirds live in deserts, and other “arid” or “semi-arid” places.

Unsurprisingly, most are nocturnal; but not the Indian desert jird, Meriones hurrianae.

One Indian blogger has described this post’s highly atypical hero as the tiny musketeer of Rajasthan’s Thar Desert.

read moreGrand sands (#24 in series: Thar Desert’s underground “celebrity”)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#23 in series: “The Great Indian Desert”)

Published January 7, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#23 in series: “The Great Indian Desert”)

 

The Thar Desert’s other name accords with reality: it is India’s biggest desert, although 15% of it is in Pakistan.

Most of it – around 60% – is in Rajasthan; the Thar Desert occupies a little more than 60% of India’s largest state, by area

According to most sources, around 40% of Rajasthan’s human population live within the Thar Desert.

Rajasthan is far from India’s most populous state, but it is currently home to more than 80 million humans.

Unsurprisingly,  the Thar Desert is “our” planet’s most densely populated desert, by a large margin.

It is also remarkably rich in wildlife.

read moreGrand sands (#23 in series: “The Great Indian Desert”)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#22 in series: on Sandfly Bay’s “snoozable” sand)

Published January 6, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#22 in series: on Sandfly Bay’s “snoozable” sand)

Sandfly Bay is also seal-approved – one species of fur seal does like to slumber there – but the pictured individual belongs to a much rarer species, of sea lion.

New Zealand’s sandflies are deservedly infamous, globally.

However the name of this spectacular Otago Peninsula ocean beach does not “honour” sandflies; it refers to the fact that on a windy day this is a place where sand really does fly!

On a milder, sunny day – such as 23 March, 2019 – Sandfly Bay loses its “sting”, and its sandy beach provides a warm, perfectly form-fitting, easily-adjustable “mattress”.

read moreGrand sands (#22 in series: on Sandfly Bay’s “snoozable” sand)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands: (#21 in series: Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand)

Published January 5, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands: (#21 in series: Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand)

 

 

Wet sand is often attractive in its own right.

Arguably, however, its greatest “talent” is its ability to enhance the beauty of whatever objects happen to be present within, atop, or above it…be they clouds, islands, shells, seaweed, crustaceans, birds, pebbles…or – in this instance – some wonderfully weird boulders on the Otago coast of New Zealand’s South Island.

 

 

read moreGrand sands: (#21 in series: Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#20 in series: Aldinga Beach – “suburban” strand, but grand)

Published January 3, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#20 in series: Aldinga Beach – “suburban” strand, but grand)

 

 

By car or bus, the pictured location is circa 45 kilometres south of Adelaide’s CBD.

If you avoid rush hours, a car trip from the heart of Adelaide to Aldinga Beach can take just 45 minutes.

Aldinga Beach is definitely not “just yet more of Adelaide’s dispiriting, seemingly never-ending sprawl”; it has well-protected natural bushland, a large number of resident ‘roos, reefs onto which one can walk, at low tide…and glorious beaches.

read moreGrand sands (#20 in series: Aldinga Beach – “suburban” strand, but grand)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#19 in series: just east of Anvil Beach)

Published January 2, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#19 in series: just east of Anvil Beach)

 

Anvil Beach sits at the end of the Nullaki Peninsula, just east of where Irwin Inlet (sometimes) meets Southern Ocean.

It is one of the more “choice” of many wild and wonderful beaches on Western Australia’s south coast.

The proverbial crow – flying in from Denmark, not many kilometres distant, to the northwest – could reach Anvil Beach in just a few minutes.

read moreGrand sands (#19 in series: just east of Anvil Beach)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#18 in series: lively exoskeleton, on the Skeleton Coast)

Published January 1, 2025 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#18 in series: lively exoskeleton, on the Skeleton Coast)

 

 

Today’s chapter in this series’  “wet sands” section features a fast-scuttling crab, on a northern Namibian beach,

Here,  rain hardly ever falls, but fogs often roll in from the cold Atlantic Ocean, and thence into the western section  of the Namib Desert.

Q: a terrible place to be shipwrecked?

A: yes…but this shoreline is far from “lifeless”.

The waters that lap it teem with life; human population density is among the lowest on “our” planet, but the local seafood is abundant and excellent.

read moreGrand sands (#18 in series: lively exoskeleton, on the Skeleton Coast)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#17 in series: fresh, clean, but “stained”)

Published December 30, 2024 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#17 in series: fresh, clean, but “stained”)

 

After taking in the panoramic view across Thistle Cove – as featured in this series’ previous chapter – we walked down to the beach.

This post’s photos offer a closer view of the “stained” water and sand that were visible in the bottom right side of #16’s photo.

You are looking at a freshwater spring’s waters flowing onto the beach at Thistle Cove.

read moreGrand sands (#17 in series: fresh, clean, but “stained”)
Leave a Comment

Grand sands (#16 in series: “next door” to “the best beach in the world”)

Published December 29, 2024 by Pelidoug

Grand sands (#16 in series: “next door” to “the best beach in the world”)

 

By the shortest, sensible road route,  Esperance is a whisker under 700 kilometres southeast of Perth, and just under 400 ks south of Kalgoorlie.

A further, easy 50 kilometres drive, east of Esperance, will take you to “the best beach in the world”, according a 2023 list of “The World’s 50 Best Beaches”.

You are not looking at it!

This post’s photo shows the very next beach, westward; my beloved and I are not alone in liking it rather more than we do the adjacent, “best” one.

read moreGrand sands (#16 in series: “next door” to “the best beach in the world”)
Leave a Comment