Dehradun, June 29 -- Encountering Armed Nomads

All Around the World with the Most Travelled Indian

As part of the fossil finding tour of ours in the deserts of Afar region, we had reached the famous Lucy fossil site (refer my last Sunday feature). But Lucy was not the only famous fossil there since the Afar region has the 4.4 million year old 'Ardi' found in 1994 and the 'Dikika Child', a 3.3 million year old Australopithecus hominid fossil of a 3 year old child (based on its size and maturity of its teeth). So the local Hadar chief, Abdullah and John & Dave (our tour guides) lead us to the Dikika Child site but warned that there had been some flash floods and it may be a bit of a challenge to reach there even in an SUV. We were in for ...