Deserts are perhaps one of the most difficult places to live. The main characteristic of deserts is that they are extremely dry. Because humans need so much water, surviving in deserts is very difficult. Not only is it difficult for humans to survive in deserts - it is also hard for animals, plants, and other forms of life to live.

Despite the desert being so inhospitable, there are ethnic groups living in these places; they are groups of people that have to keep moving in caravans in search of places with water and food, defying the greatest risks: sandstorms, silted up wells and loss of bearings due to the lack of points of references.

Some of these peoples are the Berbers of North Africa, that include the Kabilis and the Tuaregs, the Bedouins of the Arabic deserts, the Bejas in Namibia, the Sans in the Kalahari Desert, and the Australian Aborigines.

The epitome of life in the desert are the Tuaregs, who for centuries have spent their lives riding their dromedaries along the Saharan tracks. Also called the “blue men” for the typical veils they wear to protect themselves from the sand and the heat, these people live in camps of tents built of dozens of goatskins painted in red ochre ad skilfully sown together by their women to guard all the items and tools of everyday life.

The Tuaregs mainly live on products derived from their animals. Their foods are curdled milk, fermented butter, dates and cereals (millet in particular) from which they make flour. They rarely eat meat, but when they have guests they just have to honour them so they kill a goat according to Muslim traditions. Water is carried in scooped-out and sun-dried pumpkins, whose decorated surfaces hint at the groups who produced them.

Originally, the Tuaregs were a nomadic people, but later, many of them to lead a sedentary life and the few nomadic ones that have been left live on the products of their animals and other foodstuffs they obtain through trade and breed horses and dromedaries. They produce handicrafts, for instance engraved silverware, they tan hides, make mats and produce rugs and textiles out of dromedary wool. Farming as well as high-level handicrafts are produced by lower castes, who live sedentarily in the oases. Today, some Tuaregs have found employment in the service sector, especially tourism: since they know the desert so well, they work as tour guides.

If the Tuaregs can be regarded as the “undisputed masters of the Sahara”, the Bejas have always inhabited the large expanses of the Nubian desert. Most Bejas (approximately 1.5 million overall) live in the north-east of Sudan. They are called “Fuzzy-Wuzzies” because of their frizzy hair. For over 4,000 years, the Bejas have been running through this hot country and the bleak hills of the Red Sea in search of pastures for their camels, cattle, sheep and goats. They were feared for the quick raids they made into the rich towns along the Nile. After sacking the town, they hid in the desert of which they knew every nook and cranny and the wells where they could find water, even the most secluded ones.

With both money and technology, desert areas can be developed to cater for modern lifestyles. Las Vegas, in the Mojave Desert, is one of the fastest-growing cities in the USA. The city of Las Vegas is lush and green in comparison with the surrounding desert.

This is possible because 90 per cent of the water Las Vegas needs is imported from the Colorado River. The remaining 10 per cent comes from ground water. The demand for water is not sustainable and the city has started to plan to reduce the demand for water. One way is that new homes have restrictions on the amount and type of lawns that they can have. The authority also recycles water where it can.