Although hard to discern and despite the endless sand-swirling winds, there is life in this desert. In 1948, Al-Ghawar, the world's largest oil field, was discovered here. The most famous tourist gateway to this tract of accessible land is from the magical Arabian Nights city of Jaisalmer, on the western edge of India's Rajasthan and within a camel's trot of sand dunes. The traverse to the dunes is across variable terrain including sandy plains and low, sparsely vegetated hills. In typical fashion, warm days give way to comfortably cool star-filled evenings.
Small villages cluster around oases and thin seasonal waterways.
The interior of western Australia comprises three nominally distinct but geographically interconnected deserts. The Great Sandy Desert , in the northwest, is covered in salt marshes and Spinifex sand hills. Gibson Desert , just to its south, fills the central west. Most of this area is now the Gibson Desert Nature Reserve and protected home to many desert animals. Further to the south is the Great Victoria Desert , the eastern edge of which contains the Central and North West Aboriginal reserves.