The island of Lanzarote | Spain

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The Canary Islands are a Spanish archipelago located just off the coast of Morocco. Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote, Tenerife, La Palma, La Gomera and El Hierro are the largest islands.

Timanfaya National Park is a Spanish national park in the southwestern part of the island of Lanzarote. The Mars-like landscape of this park is entirely made up of volcanic soil. It offers some of the most spectacular views in the Canary Islands.

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Arabian Oryx | Qatar

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The Oryx is a species of antelope that lives in Africa and the Middle East. These animals have a striking appearance with long and pointy horns. These horns give Oryx the nickname spear antelope.

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The Curonian Spit | Lithuania

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The Curonian Spit is a 98 km long, thin, curved sand-dunespit that separates the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea coast. Its southern portion is located in Russia and its northern within Lithuania. 

It is aUNESCO World Heritage Site shared by the two countries.

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Coober Pedy | Australia

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Coober Pedy is an opal mining town in South Australia, located in an extremely inhospitable environment.

The town’s name is an anglicized version of Aboriginal words "kupa piti", meaning something like "white man in a hole". Half the population lives in underground dugouts to escape high temperatures in summer.

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A stamp to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II – the longest-reigning British monarch. Part of a set of five stamps.

Thx Steve!

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Tassili n'Ajjer | Algeria

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Tassili n'Ajjer is a mountain range in the Algerian part of the Sahara Desert. It is a vast plateau in south-east Algeria at the borders of Libya and Niger.

Located in a strange lunar landscape, this site has one of the most important groupings of prehistoric cave art in the world. More than 15,000 drawings and engravings record the climatic changes, the animal migrations and the evolution of human life on the edge of the Sahara from 6000 BC to the first centuries of the present era. 

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Mosques in Algeria, Al Atiq Mosque - Ghardaia

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Sand Dunes of Temet | Niger

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The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world. Covering large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia. Over 9 million square kilometers of desert! 

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A postcard from Niger

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Niger is a landlocked country in Western Africa bordered by Chad, Libya, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin and Nigeria. Almost 80 percent of the country is covered by the Sahara desert.

The Ténéré, meaning "desert" in Tuareg language, is a region in the south central Sahara. It comprises a vast plain of sand, occupying an area of over 400,000 square kilometers. 

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Australia week: opal mining in Coober Pedy

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Coober Pedy is an opal mining town in South Australia. Opal was first found in Coober Pedy on 1 February 1915. Since then, Coober Pedy has been supplying the world with the majority of gem quality opal.

The town is located in an extremely inhospitable environment. Half the population lives in underground dugouts to escape high temperatures in summer. Only in Coober Pedy will you find underground hotels, restaurants, bars and an underground church.

The town’s name is an anglicized version of Aboriginal words "kupa piti", meaning something like "white man in a hole".  Thx Steve!

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Australia week: The Outback

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The outback: Australia's desert landscapes with typical ‘red soil’.

Kata Tjuta, formerly known as The Olgas, is a group of large ancient rock formations approximately 30 kilometres away from Uluru in Australia’s Red Centre. Kata Tjuta is a sacred site in Aboriginal culture and many of the legends surrounding the site are kept secret.

Thx Steve!

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The Pyramids of Meroe in Begrawiya, Sudan

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Sudan is a country in Africa, bordered by Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan, CAR, Chad and Lybia. Sudan was the largest country in Africa until 2011, when South Sudan separated into an independent country.

The site of the city of Meroë is marked by more than two hundred Nubian-style pyramids in three groups, of which many are in ruins. This site is found 200 km or so north of Khartoum and it hosts the largest selection of pyramids found in Sudan. 

The site has been inscribed on the UNESCO Whs list: the archaeological sites of the island of Meroe. The pyramids near Begrawiya is one of the three separate sites that make up this inscription.  

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Vicuñas grazing in Puna Catamarqueña, Argentina

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Puna Catamarqueña is a desert high plateau at more than 3,000 meters height, located in Catamarca, a province in the Argentine Northwest, about 1.500 km away from the city of Buenos Aires. Its climate is arid and extreme, with less than 200 mm of annual rainfall.

The Vicuña is a wild South American camelid which live in the high alpine areas of the Andes. Vicuñas live exclusively in South America, primarily in the central Andes. They are native to Peru, northwestern Argentina, Bolivia, and northern Chili.

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Dromedary Camels from UAE

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The UAE is historically known for its attachment to camels which are of social and economic value in the region. There are two types of camels. The dromedary, an Arabian camel, is a large even-toed ungulate with has one hump while the Asian camel has two humps.

Historically, camels in the UAE were a dependable source of not only transport but also food and milk. Camel skin is used locally to make shoes, bags and water containers. Its wool, which is commonly considered of high quality, was commonly used in the Arab world for tent and rug-making, besides being fashioned into clothes.

Nowadays the camel is essentially used for racing that is held annually during the winter months.

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Falconry is an integral part of desert life which has been practiced in the UAE for centuries. Originally, falcons were used for hunting, to supplement the Bedouin diet with some meat

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Jaisalmer Desert Festival, Rajastan

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The Jaisalmer desert festival is a three-day long extravaganza of dances, music, handicraft fairs and interesting competitions- including really unusual ones like a 'Mr Desert' pageant and a 'best moustache' contest. It's a fantastic showcase of all things Rajasthani.

Besides the food, the music and the cultural performances, there are camel rides, processions, camel polo, and even a camel tug-of-war.

Rajasthan is the largest state of the Republic of India. And it is one of the most popular tourist destination in India for its historical forts, palaces, art and culture.

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(left) Indira Gandhi (1917 – 1984) was the third Prime Minister of India and a central figure in Indian politics during the second half of the 20th century.

(right) Sir Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman, (1888 – 1970) was an Indian physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1930).

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Desierto de Atacama | The Blooming Atacama Desert from Chile

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Nov 8, 2011  “VALLENAR, Chile — The world's driest desert is covered in flowers after the wettest winter in decades. Some 200 species of flowers are bursting from the sand after five times the annual rainfall in just one month “

The Atacama Desert is a plateau in South America, covering a 600-mile (1,000 km) strip of land on the Pacific coast, west of the Andes mountains. It is one of the driest deserts in the world.

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200 Bicentennial group: Free and United.

The Bicentennial Group is a multilateral body created to promote and organize the joint commemoration of the independence process developed in the Americas 200 years ago.

Chile celebrates 200 years since start of independence drive.

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White Sands National Park, New Mexico USA

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Rising from the heart of the Tularosa Basin is one of the world's great natural wonders - the glistening white sands of New Mexico. In White Sands National Monument, great wave-like dunes of gypsum sand have engulfed 275 square miles of desert and created the world's largest gypsum dune field.

The pure gypsum (hydrous calcium sulfate) that forms these unusual dunes originates in the western portion of the monument from an ephemeral lake or playa with a very high mineral content. As the water evaporates (theoretically as much as 80" per year!), the minerals are left behind to form gypsum deposits that eventually are wind-transported to form these white sand dunes.

Many species of plants and animals have developed very specialized means of surviving in this area of cold winters, hot summers, with very little surface water and highly mineralized ground water.

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A postcard from Ethiopia

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Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants. Ethiopia is bordered by Eritrea to the north, Djibouti and Somalia to the east, Sudan and South Sudan to the west, and Kenya to the south.

The country is a land of natural contrasts, with waterfalls and volcanic hot springs. Ethiopia has some of Africa's highest mountains as well as some of the world's lowest points below sea level. It has the largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Africa.

Want to know more about or travel to Ethiopia, go visit http://www.holiday-to-ethiopia.com/.

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A Menelik’s Bushbuck and a Black Rhinoceros (The species overall is classified as critically endangered, and one subspecies, the Western Black Rhinoceros, was declared extinct by the IUCN in 2011).

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Mongolian nomads

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On the edge of the 21st century, Mongolia remains one of the only countries to retain its ancient culture and traditions. The extreme climate and geography as well as the landlocked condition greatly influenced the Mongol's way of life who have always lived close to their animals and the land.

The Mongolian nomads are often called "Five-animal people" because the nomadic society is based on the five principal animals traditionally herded: horses, camels, cattle, sheep and goats. They also keep Tibetan yaks, used for producing milk and cheese.

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From a set of 4 stamps: Wild Animals, the Yak (2011). 

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Dunes de Merzouga, Morocco | Maroc

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Merzouga is a small village in southeastern Morocco about 50 kilometers from the Algerian border.

The dunes are a scene of constant change and fascination as sunlight transforms them from pink to gold to red. The largest dunes are near the villages of Merzouga and Hassi Labied.

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A poscard from Namibia: Dunes near Sesriem, Namib desert

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Sesriem gets its name from early pioneers, who wanted to get water from the canyon. They had to tie six leather thongs to the handle of their buckets, in order to draw water from pools that were inaccessible to their livestock. These thongs were called 'leer riems' in Afrikaans, 'ses' being six in the same language. The area soon became known as 'Ses Rieme' or Sesriem.

The Namib Desert is a desert in Namibia and southwest Angola that forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest game reserve in Africa. The name "Namib" is of Nama origin and means "vast place". Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for at least 55 million years, it is considered to be the oldest desert in the world. (source: Wikipedia)

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From a set of three stamps: Aloes of Namibia.

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Algerie – Les Touaregs

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The Touareg live in what is known as the central Sahara, which includes a big chunk of Algeria. The Sahara is huge – it’s nine million square kilometres. That’s as big as the United States.

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(on the left) Silver brooches from Saoura, a valley in southwestern Algeria.

(on the right) Commemorating the basketball world championship in Indianapolis 2002.

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