What a difference a day makes!

It's amazing that one day's cycling can take you from a desert plateau to a well watered flood plain but that is precisely what Mark's efforts in the last 24 hours have achieved as revealed by his GPS tracher....Mark is now well into the valley of the mighty river Indus which, although it flows through present day Pakistan, gave India its name. There is a very good entry on the River Indus in Wikipedia and a NASA image which reveals the importance of this river system to the country as a whole. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the Indus is the lifeblood of Pakistan.
From its source in the glaciers of Tibet in the north to its delta on the Arabian Sea coast, the river covers a distance of 2000 miles and supports most of Pakistan's agriculture and industry. Compared to the aridity of the Balochistan plateau, the landscape which Mark is now cycling through could not be more different as shown by this photo taken along the road between Jacobabad and Sukkur ('borrowed' from the highly entertaining blog http://www.cyclingtoindia.com/ )