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Robyn Davidson explains how she came to be attached for nearly two years, without speaking a common language, to one of the last bands of nomadic people roaming India as they have done for millennia.
Curator’s notes
There’s a terrible sadness at the heart of this story of unusual courage and tenacity. The sadness is for a people who are soon to lose their ancient way of life, and the regret of Robyn Davidson who feels unable to cross the cultural divide between herself and them.
With one billion people in India, this century will see the obliteration of the nomadic way of life. Deforestation has wreaked havoc so that the local farmers can barely manage their subsistence farms let alone allow nomads and their flocks to pass over their land.
Robyn Davidson had the courage to persist with her travels with these Robari people despite not having any means of communicating in their language. She was funded by National Geographic, as she was for her original journey across the middle of Australia for Tracks (1980). This time there was no romance in the desert, simply a gruelling trek as Robyn Davidson grappled with her otherness from these remarkable people. Her time in India stripped her of the picture postcard image of the country. It also brought her to the realisation that being poor is no fun, and that the beauty of the place and its people hides the unhappiness and powerlessness of terrible poverty.
