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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.

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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”.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Happy New Year!

Published December 31, 2024 by Pelidoug

Happy New Year!

Bottoms up!

Pelican Yoga wishes you all a happy and honeyed 2025.

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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.

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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.

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