Desert Place by Robyn Davidson (1997, 288 pages, author of Tracks -Open Road Publishing)

 

Last year I read and posted on Robyn Davidson's international best seller about her trek across the Australian outback.  I greatly enjoyed this book, as did everyone else, for its vivid account of life in the Outback and the amazing very individualized people who make it there home.  She made the trek with camels and I learned a lot about camels from her book.  

Desert Places is fascinating travel book set in India that will take you way out of your cultural comfort zone.  In 1992 Davidson got an assignment from The National Geographic to do an article on the nomadic Rabari people of the Punjab and Harayan regions of North West 

India.  Upon arrival in India, Davidson contacted a friend from a wealthy once royal Indian family to seek advice on the trip.  The Rabari culture and migration depends to a great extent on their camels.  Much of their income comes from selling camel milk.  Davidson wanted to accompany them on the migration with only her photographer.  Her friend would not permit this, insisting she be accompanied by a small entourage to protect and serve her and the photographer.  

There were two big interconnected issues the prince had with her proposed trip.  A woman traveling 

 alone without male protection would be a cultural anomaly to the Rabari so she had to have bodyguards.   Of course the issue in the back of our and her minds was will she be safe from the protectors.  Also, and this is really central, to me at least, to the themes of the book, a Western cacausian person is for better or worse perceived as wealthy and needs servants.  If she has no servants ths would reflect badly on her, on the magazine, and even her friend the prince.  She would not so much be seen  as not rich but as unfairly not providing employment to a crew of helpers.  It was a lot of fun following her struggles to accept an entourage while sticking to her wish to travel with the Rubarji as if she were as close to one of them as possible. 

There were many potential cultural conflicts.  Rabari, devout Hindus, culture dictates women dress very modestly.  A woman who violates this by something as simple as wearing knee length shorts could be seen as soliciting male attention in a scandalous fashion.  Of course the Rabari are part of the modern world but they seek to keep their tribal ways intact and to prevent cultural pollution of the young.  

As the journey begins Davidson does her best to live life just as the Rubari do.  She eats to her very unappealing food and drinks unclean water.  Davidson is tough but she endures very real hardships, terrible loneliness, sleeps among thousands of sheep, learns more about camels, and ponders some of her own received truths.  She comes to know and have great respect for Rubari women.  We see the Rubari also learning about and becoming accepting of a woman from a culture very alien to theirs.

Davidson does not sugar coat her observations.  She shows us up close the desperate poverty of rural  India, the pervasive poverty and the sense of the end of a very old way of life.  

There is an India beyond the call centers, the super universities and the high rises.  Davidson lets us see the beauty and horror of India. 

Desert Places is a perfect "arm chair travel" book and much more.  For one thing, you will come away with a whole new respect for camels.  Anyone interested in Asian tribal cultures needs to read this book.

From the web page of Open Road Publishers

Robyn Davidson

Robyn Davidson was born on a cattle property in Queensland, Australia. She went to Sydney in the late sixties, then spent time studying in Brisbane before moving to Alice Springs, where the events of this book begin. Since then, she has traveled extensively, living in London, New York, and India. In the early 1990s, she migrated with and wrote about nomads in northwestern India. She is now based in Melbourne, but spends several months a year in the Indian Himalayas.

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