These include a green-eyed Sodha thakur whose ancestor brought the Rajput caste to this part of Thar in the 13th century an affluent trader who has no desire to travel out of the region or enter politics, despite the insistence of many nomadic jogis who believe that cobras never die natural deaths and can live for thousands of years, eventually shape-shifting into eagles or peacocks and a retired official of the Wildlife Department, who saved the Indian gazelle from extinction and helped create a wildlife sanctuary in the district. Salman Rashid looks at Thar beyond man-made borders, connecting theĭots between personal observation and historical sourcesĭuring his numerous visits to the district, the last of which was made in 2017, Rashid conducted a series of interviews with residents. In his research for the book, he refers to the limited material available, including the works of British administrators such as Stanley Napier Raikes (magistrate of “Thurr and Parkur” in 1847), gazetteers, folklore and the “collective inherited memory” of locals, some of whom had received eyewitness accounts of events from their grandparents. He would, over the course of four decades, keep returning to this remote region - including Mithi, the district’s largest town - and witness it transform. “It was like stepping into a country still in the 19th century,” he recalls.

The author first drove across Tharparkar district in 1984, wife and friend in tow. Rashid, however, provides the perspective of a local, carefully sifting through the accounts of colonial adventurers, highlighting their biases and handicaps and setting the record straight where necessary. Travel writing on South Asia has historically been dominated by the narrative voice of European colonialists. Rashid’s canon of work - especially his articles based on travels across Pakistan - has, over time, garnered something of a cult following and is widely viewed as a reliable source of history on the region. All travel from this point onwards was done either by camel, vintage Reo trucks from the Second World War - locally referred to as kekrra - or privately owned jeeps.īack then, the journey from Naukot to Nagarparkar, which lies at the easternmost edge of Tharparkar district - today, a five-hour drive - would take up to 14 hours, writes Salman Rashid in his new book, Mithi: Whispers in the Sand.

Up until the early 1990s, the portion of the Thar Desert that lies within Pakistan was largely devoid of blacktop roads, with the nearest one ending at the desert’s western periphery in Naukot.

Desert dawn book