Thar Desert
The Thar Desert (also called the "Great Indian Desert") covers a large part of northwestern India and southeastern Pakistan. It is one of the most densely populated deserts in the world, with approx. 83 people per square kilometre. The Thar is famous for its colourful villages, its vibrant Rajasthani culture, the magnificent fort of Jaisalmer rising from the sand, and the surprising amount of wildlife it supports.
- Areaapprox. 200,000 km²About the size of the United Kingdom
- CountriesIndia and PakistanMostly in India (Rajasthan state)
- Hottest tempapprox. 50 °CIn summer
- Rainfall100 to 500 mm/yearVariable, falling mostly in summer monsoon
- Population densityapprox. 83 people/km²Most densely populated desert on Earth
- Famous fortJaisalmerHoney-coloured fort rising from sand
The Thar compared to other deserts
The Thar is small compared to the great deserts but vastly more populated. About 16 million people live in or near it.
What is the Thar?
The Thar Desert covers most of the Indian state of Rajasthan plus parts of Gujarat, Punjab and Haryana, and extends into Pakistan's Sindh and Punjab provinces. The desert is mostly sandy, with parallel sand dunes covering large areas. The terrain is generally flat with scattered low hills. Several rivers (the Indus to the west, the Luni in central Thar) cross or border the desert, and the small Sambhar Salt Lake is one of the largest in India.
A populated desert
The Thar is by far the most densely populated desert in the world, with about 83 people per square kilometre. Compare this with approx. 1 person per square kilometre in the Sahara. The high population is partly because the Thar gets more rain than most deserts (parts get up to 500 mm a year, on the boundary between true desert and semi-desert), partly because the desert has been settled for thousands of years, and partly because Indian communities have developed remarkable ways to harvest the small amounts of available water.
The desert is dotted with small villages of mud-and-thatch houses, often painted in bright pastel colours. The famous "Blue City" of Jodhpur sits on the desert's eastern edge, its old buildings traditionally painted indigo blue.
The fort of Jaisalmer
Rising out of the desert in western Rajasthan stands the spectacular Jaisalmer Fort, also called the "Golden Fort" or the "Sonar Quila". Built in 1156, it is one of the largest fully fortified cities in the world and one of the few "living forts" where people still live inside the walls. About 3,000 people still call the inside of the fort home. The fort is built of honey-coloured yellow sandstone and glows golden at sunrise and sunset, melting almost invisibly into the desert behind it.
Wildlife of the Thar
Despite being densely settled, the Thar supports a remarkable variety of wildlife. The Indian wild ass (called the kiang or khur) lives in the salt flats of the Rann of Kutch on the desert's southern edge. The endangered great Indian bustard, one of the heaviest flying birds in the world, has one of its last strongholds in the Thar. Blackbuck antelope, chinkara gazelles and desert foxes all live in the desert. The Bishnoi communities protect blackbuck so fiercely that the antelope are essentially tame in their villages.
Deeper dive: Indus Valley, Indian water harvesting and the future of the Thar
The Thar Desert sits on the eastern edge of the Indus Valley, the cradle of one of the world's earliest civilisations. The Indus Valley Civilisation (or Harappan Civilisation) flourished between approx. 2600 and 1900 BC across what is now Pakistan and northwestern India. At its peak, it included around 1,000 settlements and had populations comparable to ancient Egypt or Mesopotamia. Some of the most important Harappan sites (Mohenjo-daro, Harappa) lie just west of the Thar. The civilisation declined and disappeared around 1900 BC, possibly due to climate change that affected the Saraswati River (which once flowed through what is now the Thar) and the failure of the monsoons. The disappearance of the Saraswati River may itself have contributed to the formation of the modern Thar.
The communities of the Thar have developed some of the most sophisticated traditional water-harvesting techniques in the world. Step wells (called "baori" or "vav"), some over 1,000 years old, capture monsoon water and store it underground for the dry season. Rooftop catchment systems on most houses collect every drop of rainfall. "Khadin" systems (used since the 15th century) capture runoff water from hillsides in shallow earthen embankments to allow farming on the moisture-recharged soils. Long underground tunnels called "tankas" carry water from village wells to homes. Many of these systems are still working and are being studied as models for water management in other arid regions.
The future of the Thar is being shaped by major modern developments. The Indira Gandhi Canal (completed in stages between 1958 and the 2000s) brings water from the Sutlej and Beas Rivers in the Punjab to irrigate over 5,000 km² of formerly desert land in northern Rajasthan. The canal has dramatically increased agricultural production but has also caused waterlogging and salinity in some areas, and has changed the character of the formerly traditional desert region. The Thar is also one of India's main areas for solar power development; the Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan, completed in 2020, is one of the largest solar farms in the world. The combination of intense sunlight and large empty areas makes the Thar one of the best places for solar generation on Earth.
The country with most of the Thar is India. The neighbouring Asian desert is the Gobi.