Word: desertic
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...Aukhaider ammunition dump sits next to an old mud fort in the desert, about 100 miles outside Baghdad, with only camels for company--unless U.N. weapons inspectors come calling. On their second visit, last week, the inspectors found 11 rocket warheads, which, portable X-ray machines revealed, were designed to deliver chemical weapons. (Sources say they may have been designed to carry nerve gas.) The warheads, which sources tell TIME were in good condition but had probably never been loaded with chemicals, appear to have been imported into Iraq in the 1980s but had been moved only recently to their...
...such conveniences as electricity and phones makes Mongolia a challenge, but that's part of the attraction. A growing number of outfitters supply amenities that range from adequate to near opulent for adventures like hiking and fly-fishing in the Altai Mountains, traversing the moonscape of the Gobi Desert by Range Rover and exploring the Flaming Cliffs, one of the world's premier dinosaur-fossil sites, in the company of a paleontologist...
...visitor to the Indian desert fortress-city of Jaisalmer will tell you, it's a good deal easier to explore the 12th century citadel these days. Your path might still be barred by curly horned cows, spotted pigs or women goatherds. You might still fall victim to silver-tongued shopkeepers who spring from tiny medieval doorways while you gaze, speechless, at magnificent sandstone palaces, ornate Jain temples or the finely wrought manors of the palace ?lite. But now you're less likely to find yourself ankle-deep in what used to be Jaisalmer's main impediment: human waste. Gone...
...although it no longer smells like a barbarian outhouse, it will take a lot more than a serious scrub to save the ancient fortress. Time has finally caught up with the jewel of Rajasthan. The great, golden sand castle shimmering across the Thar Desert is on the brink of collapse. For centuries its sandstone walls have housed what is still one of the world's few inhabited forts, and is home to some 2,000 people. But since its heyday in the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was the last filling station for colossal caravans traveling the Silk Route...
...irony, for a desert city in its fifth consecutive year of drought, is that it is water that's killing Jaisalmer. The city was built of dry stone in 1156, before the advent of piped water and underground sewers. In those days, residents collected their water from a nearby lake and stored it in clay urns. Today the gallons piped in daily to meet the demands of a growing population and its shower-needy visitors are overwhelming the ancient plumbing. "Seepage into the foundations has left many structures unstable," says Sue Carpenter, founder of a charity called Jaisalmer in Jeopardy...