Apparently dunes are the features that keep water on deserts like Sahara. This is because it rains very seldom and everywhere else the water dries up soon after, but but water that falls on sand goes down and seeps slowly at the bottom of the dune. This is exactly what happens at Hassi Labied in Moroccan Sahara. This is where these pictures are from.
It is a desert supposedly. I have to say I was surprised to see it so green, having seen before deserts like Sahara, where all you see is stones or sand.
Some more pics from Down Under, this time from the Top End.
It rains a lot there for three months in the year and not at all for nine.
When it does the rivers swell and the crocs wait for the drivers of cars who try to get out of their flooded cars.
When it doesn't the rivers become a string of billabongs where the crock still wait for tourists hiking too close to the water.
They say the land is useless there which is why the population is still mostly Aborigine (which of course means that not everybody thinks it is useless).
I guess not many people visiting Madrid notice the street art there. I did and I took some pics. These are of course street names which in Madrid are accompanied by illustrations. In the past they might have been there for the illiterate. Why nowadays I don't know, maybe just for tourists.
You know, in the Wild West even rain is extraordinary. All these pictures were taken in Arizona. Most of them in the Navajo Reservation, so it can be considered 'native American rain'.
This is the place where the Princes of Wales are crowned. In 1284 the English king Edward, who conquered Wales, promised the Welsh that the future Prince of Wales will e somebody born in Wales who does not speak English, and then presented his baby son, also Edward, who had been born in Caernafon only a few months earlier. The prince succeeded his father as the king of England and ever since there is the tradition of crowning the heir to the English throne as the Prince of Wales. The last of those coronations took place in 1969, when Prince Charles was crowned as one.
Being the place of coronations the castle is in good repair and a major tourist attraction. It certainly is photogenic, if one knows where to look.
A few pictures from Zanskar Valley in Indian Himalayas taken in early 1980s. Nothing special, just a hike in a valley about 4000 metres above sea level, a few Cashmere goats, peasants drying yak dung as a fuel for winter, innumerable stones with sutras and Buddhas etched on them, Buddhist monasteries built into a rock face, and children just being happy and playing in the sand as anywhere in the world.
That was in 1980s, of course. I haven't been there for a long time, possibly nowadays they play with their smart phones.
