Word: caravans
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...lest the demos degenerate into rioting as did a red protest last year. The overall mood was one of fortress Bangkok being surrounded by alien beings. Then the unexpected happened. As tens of thousands of red-shirt vehicles wound through Bangkok streets on March 20 in a miles-long caravan, members of the city's lower and middle classes emerged to cheer on the crimson convoy. Short-order cooks waved their toques, teeth-whitening technicians handed out spears of green mango and Starbucks baristas clapped in unison. A gaggle of mini-skirted ladies from the Eros Lounge even shook their...
...intensifying demands for a new state of Gorkhaland that would better address the needs of the area's ethnic Nepalese population. More than 100 activists have begun what they call a "fast-unto-death." On the other side of the country, in the vast desert state of Rajasthan, a caravan of some 5,000 demonstrators and 500 camels paraded into the capital of Jaipur on Friday, agitating for the formation of Maru Pradesh, a state that would be carved out of some of Rajasthan's poorest districts. "Rajasthan is huge. It is not easy to keep track...
Many adventurers, particularly in the 19th century, sought to find proof of their passing, plying the traditional caravan routes through the desert in the hope that the Persians had succumbed to the sandstorm and perished somewhere along the way. In the 1930s, the most famous man who searched for the army was László Almásy, a Hungarian aristocrat who, in his wanderings, claimed to find the mythical oasis of Zerzura - "the oasis of little birds" - and became the subject of Michael Ondaatje's best-selling novel, The English Patient. (Read about Egypt's pyramids in danger...
...Castiglionis reckoned that Cambyses' army must have taken a different route from Thebes into the desert than the one explored by earlier generations of archaeologists. Geological surveys they conducted over a new stretch of terrain further afield from the old caravan track revealed dried-up wells and pieces of earthenware pottery from Persian water pots. The army may have taken this alternative path through the desert in order to surprise the defenders of the Amon temple, but were stopped short by the unforgiving Saharan khamsin wind, which triggered sandstorms that scattered and eventually destroyed the attacking troops. The Castiglionis' team...
...Kimanjo, deep in Laikipia. From there it was a Land Cruiser ride to our first camp, set beneath acacia and a vast sycamore fig. Here we met the troop in its full glory: 19 camels and 15 Samburu, Turkana and Masai tribesmen. The sense of joining an ancient caravan heading into the bush was heightened by the fact that there would be almost no contact with the outside world for several days...