The old Indian spoke quietly, “it won’t be easy to find them, they keep to themselves, they do not mix with other tribes. They are to us ‘outside the way’ or, as the village children call them, ‘bhut, bhut’ (ghost ghost). You will need much luck to find them.”
It was early March 1998. I had come to Bhuj the largest town in Kutch, Gujarat, to look at the tattooing of a particular tribal group called the Rabari. For a week now I had been attempting to find them, occasionally seeing them in the main bazaar in Bhuj. I would approach them only to have the women disappear in seconds. I was starting to become disillusioned with my plans to find the Rabari people.
The Rabari tribes are probably one of the most tattooed tribes in Central Asia. They number some 250,000 people spread across the Indian states of Rajasthan and Gujarat, concentrated in the area known as the Rann of Kaach. This area is a barren stretch of saltpan desert just South of the Pakistan border and North of the Arabian Sea. The land is dry with temperatures reaching up to 50 degrees. During the monsoon or wet season the salt pans fill with water, effectively cutting the region off from the rest of India. This has also ensured both physical and cultural isolation, which is why the area retains so much of it’s old traditions.
The people of this region are a vast mix of culturally diverse Hindu and Muslim tribal groups. The majority live in fixed dwellings while others, like the Rabari, are travelling nomads. Traditionally the Rabari were nomadic camel herders. Due to the desert climate of the region, the camel is of high importance, thus elevating the status of the Rabari people amongst other nomadic shepherd groups. Today, alongside the customary camels, herds also consist of cattle and goats.
Here, as with the rest of India, the Caste system remains a strong belief and lifestyle. The Rabari believe that they are directly descended from the god Shiva. However, their patron god is Krishna. They trace their ancestry back to Shamal, a mythical camel herder who punished a thieving goddess by making off with her clothes. Shamal later married the goddess and their descendants lived in Haryana. Over the last 1,000 years the need for additional grazing areas forced the Rabari south through Rajasthan and the Sind in Pakistan before arriving in The Rann of Kaach.