Think back to a school geography class, flipping through an atlas. Rajasthan's Thar was often a broad yellow patch on the map, a vast stretch of desert that seemed almost empty.

For Sumer Singh Bhati, that same land can decide something far more immediate: whether a camel finds enough to eat that day.

Bhati is a traditional camel herder from Jaisalmer. He knows the Degrai Mata Oran through its grasses, its ponds, its grazing routes and the animals that depend on them.

“You can say these grasses are like ghee and milk for camels, extremely paushtik (nutritious),” he says of the native Sewan and Dhaman grasses that grow here.

That simple relationship between grass, animal and herder sits at the heart of a much bigger fight.

The Degrai Mata Oran stretches across nearly 10,000 hectares. Around 5,000 pastoral families and more than 50,000 livestock animals depend on these grazing grounds. The same landscape provides a home for wildlife, including the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard.

Yet parts of this land have remained differently classified in official records, leaving them vulnerable to other forms of land use.

For years, Bhati has been trying to protect what those records can fail to capture. He has gone from village to village, helped bring nearly 20 communities into the effort, walked hundreds of kilometres to take their concerns beyond the desert, and spoken out about threats to the grasslands.

Along the way, native grasses have returned, traditional water bodies have been revived, and grazing grounds have begun to recover.

His work has now earned him a place among the global awardees of the Rangeland Awards 2026.

But the question driving Bhati has always been much closer to home: what happens to a herder when the land that feeds his animals begins to disappear?

How a childhood memory became a lifelong fight 

That concern has roots going back much further than the marches, petitions and awards.

One of Bhati’s earliest memories goes back to when he was about five years old. He recalls watching his father confront a group of men to save a chinkara. He was too young to fully understand what was happening, but the moment stayed with him.

Years later, the threat came closer to the land his own community depended on.

In 2004, only 5,817 hectares of the Deg Rai Mata Oran were registered in the name of the temple trust. Bhati has said that the partial registration raised concerns. Those concerns grew as solar and wind energy projects began digging across parts of the sacred land.

By 2018, Bhati and other community members had begun organising more formally, taking their message from village to village through awareness campaigns, marches and parikramas around threatened orans.

At the centre of everything they were trying to protect was something deceptively simple: grass.

The grasses that keep the Thar alive

Ask Bhati why this land matters, and his answer begins with grass.

“See, the grasses are very important here. Sewan and Dhaman grass. These are vital for the Indian bustard or camels,” he tells The Better India.

Sewan (Lasiurus sindicus) is native to the........

© The Better India