Kutch, India’s wild west, is a geographic phenomenon, full of rugged, fiery beauty. What appears an endless desert plain running dead straight for the horizon, is in fact a seasonal island. The tortoise-shaped land (kachbo means tortoise in Gujarati) is flat and dry, but the villages dotted throughout the dramatic, inhospitable landscape feel like pre-partition Pakistan, and the tribal villagers produce some of India’s finest folk textiles, glittering with exquisite embroidery and mirrorwork.
It’s edged by the Gulf of Kutch – a dangerous, swirling sea – and Great and Little Ranns. During the dry season, the Ranns are vast expanses of hard, dried mud. Then, with the start of the monsoon, they’re flooded first by seawater, then by fresh river water. The salt in the soil makes the low-lying marsh area almost completely barren. Only on scattered ‘islands’ above the salt level is there vegetation – coarse grass – which provides fodder for the region’s rich wildlife. These grasslands are under threat from the gando baval (crazy thorn tree), which is spreading across the Rann at an alarming rate, threatening to destroy fragile ecosystems.
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