The rolling hills

Soft and inviting to the eye, slowly rolling along the foothills of the black mountains that are parched and burnt, a landscape that is daunting and unforgiving. There is no sign of life or water. Every last blade of grass has died with the drought and the bushes litter the land like mini bonsai trees. As we run along the hills we are suddenly met with the largest eroded farmland you can imagine. From years of overgrazing and basic bad farming, the land has been eaten away, down to the bone, the erosion happens so easily, as the soil in the areas we are traveling through is really soft compact dust and fine sand until a depth of 120-150 meters, so you can imagine what havoc water can play with this.

80 % of the rain fall comes in the form of cloud bursts and flash floods, combine this with bad farming methods and you can guess the results. In some areas the erosion is so vast that the villages have resettled in the bottom of these eroded areas and are now carrying on with their farming, but 400m below the level of their homes.