Protected: Spice up your holidays with some paan

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Up with the sun, up with the cattle

Good day, cows

Village life in the deserts of Rajasthan.

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A dusty watering hole

Drying lake

The old water tank of Jaisalmer, Gadi Sagar. Now, in the middle of India’s dry season, it’s a shrinking lake and cracked spit of dusty earth.

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Tobacco for sale

Chewing tobacco, the scourge of India

Look at the ground. Drive behind any jeep or van or bus. Little bits of shiny litter.

India is overrun with the empty sachets tossed aside by its tobacco chewing masses. Those same masses have one of the highest rates of mouth cancer in the world.

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In Rajasthan, they chew the paan

Delicious but disgusting

A paanwallah prepares an order from a loyal customer.

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Caravans across the Rajasthani desert

Burning sun

OK, so more like tourists on a camel “safari.” But still, one hell of a day and night in the sand dunes outside Jaisalmer.

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Now that’s one ugly mug

Awww, snap. Someone call a dentist.

Camel drivers (yes, they’re occasionally children) ready a disgruntled beast of burden for his sunset trek in the Sam dunes outside Jaisalmer.

Don’t be fooled, though. These aren’t the caravanserai days of old, when traders crossed the deserts from village to city to palace to village. These people live primarily off tourism — the almighty firangi coin — and a bit of subsistence farming. And they’re still dirt (or perhaps dust) poor.

Now, get along little oont! (Oont, being Hindi for camel.)

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