Before our expedition, I made a list of over 100 goals I wanted to accomplish on the trip. One of those goals was to wear a turban. Before the trip, I thought of a turban as just a piece of traditional clothing. I have learned that it serves many practical purposes. The turban was first introduced to India by invading tribes. The mushroom-shaped wrapping of cloth around the head may have originally served as a soft helmet to protect the head of fighters. Over time, local people adopted the turban as traditional headwear. There are many kinds of wrapping patterns for affixing the 8 feet or more of cloth to the head. But, especially for local villagers, the turban is more than a fashion statement. We've been taught a variety of uses for our turbans.

Depending on your wrap, a flap of cloth can cover the face or back of the neck. In sandstorms, we've used the face covering to filter the air we breathe and the weave of the cloth is thin enough that you can see through it like a pair of goggles, keeping the dust out of your eyes. The back flap keeps sun and flies off your neck.

The unwrapped turban is used as a ground cloth to lie on. It also serves as a light blanket to keep away the midnight chill, a use I appreciate every night. In a pinch, you can use it to filter debris out of drinking water.

A unique use for the turban, that Dan and I discovered, is that we are not as noticeable at a distance. We blend in by wearing local clothing, which means we are less likely to attract crowds. From previous journal entries, you know this is one of our concerns. A question for you. How else could we use our turbans?

Lara Skibbie, from New Zealand, asked questions about local food, cooking utensils, and fuel for fires. In the State of Rajasthan, farmers subsist on a vegetarian diet of dal beans, bazra (a grain used to make tortilla-like chappatti), saag (a spinach-like plant), watermelons, and cucumbers. Occasionally, mutton and chickens are eaten. When using meat, they eat every part of the animal, including the internal organs. The lungs are particularly interesting when you pull them out of a stew. Dan and I rely on local foods. We prefer buying directly from farmers rather than food stands. Food stands are often swarming with flies and close to open sewers. Farmers' fields are quite clean.

Cooking utensils in a village home are simple. Pottery or brass pots are used to carry water from wells. Village women balancing a pot of water on their head as they make their way home is a common sight. A saucepan is reserved for making tea, a staple that includes camel, goat, cow, or water buffalo milk. We are partial to camel milk in our tea. Then there are a few pots for boiling and a skillet for making dal and chappatti pancakes. Hands are used for eating. A single cup is dipped in a pot of drinking water and the water is poured into the mouth without touching it to your lips, a skill that takes some practice, beginners often pouring the contents down the front of a shirt. (Dan and I don't drink local water without purification, but if we share a bottle of purified water, we might try the no-lip-touch-to-the-bottle technique.) The fireplaces we have been invited to cook on have two low mud walls for supporting pots with the fire directly underneath.

To clean up, villagers scour pots and pans with sand. This sand also has the droppings of various animals mixed in, one reason for declining food unless it is hot from the skillet and dropped directly on our plates. We also clean with sand, preferably from a clean dune rather than a villager's front yard. We then rinse with heavily chlorinated water that we make.

Concerning cooking fuel, one day I noticed two boys playing in the sand near where our camels were tethered the night before. Then I realized they weren't playing. They were collecting camel poop. Dried camel dung is used for fires, as are other livestock droppings. We've used cow dung when wood fuel is not available. It makes a smoky low heat fire. We prefer wood which has a hot clean flame. Good questions, Lara.