At times, Dan and I feel like animals in a zoo without bars. Some of the villages we enter have not seen foreigners before. When word gets out of our arrival, a crowd quickly gathers. The response is similar to what a movie star must experience. I also appreciate why celebrities get tired of all the attention. Having a group of 10 to 100 people encircling you while you eat, write, cook, pack, change clothes, or try to go to the bathroom is unnerving. Sometimes they sit quietly, just staring. Other times they talk amongst themselves, laughing at some private joke they have made about us.

To get the crowds to leave, we have a variety of tactics, most of them ineffective. We have politely asked them to leave, they stand there. We try staring back, no effect. We ignore them, they don't ignore us. I've even reached under one of our packs and then in a startled voice, yelled "Bitu", which means scorpion in Hindi and pretended to throw the scorpion into the crowd. This is good for a momentary break. Our fans are hard-core and quickly regroup around us. One of these fans was particularly annoying.

We were in the middle of the desert at twilight preparing to go to sleep when a wandering goat-herder discovered us. He watched us unpack, roll out our ground sheets, and stretch out to sleep. He took a particular interest in Dan and went to stand over him, staring down. This makes it a little hard to fall asleep. Dan tried a variety of tactics to make him leave, but his admirer just stood there. Finally, in frustration, Dan removed his clothes, stood up facing the goat herder, and muttered like a crazy person. Reluctantly the goat-herder left. Dan seemed quite pleased with his solution, but I mentioned it might not work as well on big crowds in the city.

After some rough nights on the road, we are now staying in a 200-year-old Maharajah's fort. It turns out that Bubbles Singh, who befriended us in Bikaner, is descended from a maharajah. He kindly offered us a place to stay along our route. The castle we are staying in has towers and gun slots for the defenders on the battlement walls. Stables once housed military horses and camels to protect the surrounding area. Our balcony looks out on the pyramidal shape of a Hindu temple.

In our next entry, we will tell you about an adventurer fact that few people think about, but which can spell the difference between success and disaster on an expedition. Something we have to constantly deal with.