Travel, it is said, expands the mind and broadens horizons. More accurately, it challenges the concept of personal hygiene and leaves your hair making rather grandiose statements about how much fun you are having in the twilight hours.
A couple of journeys on the back of a truck in Mexico doing dog-out-the-window impressions and the ubiquitous braiding of the hair in Brazil to save on shampoo will matte your hair to its full potential. A year of this type of bohemian behaviour will find you dreadlocked, whether you like it or not.
Whilst that just got out of bed “oh so tousled I could be on the front page of Vogue” look was not a bad one to be sporting, it did challenge all those nubile Latinos in the running fingers through the hair game. Not to mention that every time it rained, you ended up smelling rather potently of wet alpaca.
Obviously the more dishevelled the hair, the more hardened a traveller you appear to be, especially if you are beaded and poncho-ed to boot. But once you stop the backpacker style of travel and take on the more serious role of Tour Leader, first impressions begin to matter a little more.
Being sent off to India on my first assignment looking like the female version of a Holy Sadu, an aesthetic who rejects all material possessions, may have stood me in good stead for a few extra rupees had I sat on the edge of the street with my hand out, but probably didn’t enhance my chances as a reputable Tour Leader. It seemed I was destined for failure unless I attended to the situation with some kind of urgency. And what better place to deal with a hair crisis than in the home to ayeurvedic treatments, oils and hennas?
Navigating the maze-like alleyways of Jailsalmer, a town on the edge of the desert of Rajasthan, I found a woman who confidently stated that she was recommended by the Lonely Planet. In hindsight this really should have been warning enough, as I left three hours later shell-shocked, bemused and slightly violated…all possible in India.
My ‘consultation’ did little to prepare me for the bucket full of green slimey henna that was slapped on to my head, nor the in-depth interview on my sex life that went with it. I had slightly different visions of what letting a woman loose on my coiffure would entail. Nice images came to mind of relaxing music, gentle head massage, and copious cups of chai, preferably in a boudoir-type treatment room draped in lovely silks and tapestries.
What I actually got was a grilling on a roof top more reminiscent of a police interrogation than a beauty treatment. In between the slapping of slop, my beautician, Rashida, was generously splattering my white top with globules of henna, insisting that I shouldn’t worry because it would wash out. At the same time, she was cheerfully exclaiming how good the dying power of the henna was by showing me her rapidly oranging palms and swearing that because I didn’t have white hair the henna would not go bright orange on me.
This did little to console me. I was especially concerned as my camel driver from the day before had an unmistakably henna dyed beard and, though he was rather proud of it, I was less than enthusiastic about imitating. I was hoping to emerge with a head of luscious glossy locks that I could flick around with abandon like they do in shampoo advertisements. I had not said anything about the colour orange, although it seemed Rashida had, through the powers of osmosis, assumed, somewhat incorrectly.
After the application of henna I found that I was then compelled to sit for an hour and half with a rapidly solidifying mass on my head while she entertained her male friend downstairs. Eventually she got round to asking me if I wanted tea, and we sat on the steps to her roof and chatted – except that her choice of conversation topic was rather more personal that expected.
I happened to mention my boyfriend. She pounced on the subject with glinting eyes and a look of glee at a nice juicy topic and demanded, without a moment’s hesitation, whether the sex was good. This stunned me slightly – and halted the general flow of conversation.
She then went on to share her opinion of her husband’s conjugal rights. There I was, sitting on a random roof top in Rajasthan, my head covered in heavy green gunk, thinking I could maybe get an insight into the life of an Indian wife with a typical arranged marriage, and instead found myself in a Cosmo interview with a slant.
The next thing I knew, a huge bucket of tepid water was heaved onto the steps beside me and I was instructed to go onto the roof and wash my own hair in the bathroom.
I lugged the water up the stairs and attempted to wash the chunks of solidified henna out of my hair. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the necessary equipment to facilitate the latest task, and found myself bent over a stone trough dousing myself with my bucket of limited water, using the only implement to hand, a saucer.
It was at this point that I began to question my sanity and wonder what I was doing paying for this so-called beauty treatment. Once suitably de-hennaed, I was instructed to sit in the sun to let my hair dry whilst Rashida tried to convince me that I should call my boyfriend “my life moon” as a demonstration of my love and affection for him… “moon” implying the one, the only, the universe. I decided then and there that this was not going to become his new pet name.
Finally she agreed to oil my hair, which took all of twenty seconds of her valuable time and hardly filled me with confidence – as she poured it out of a tin can in her kitchen.
As a final gesture she handed me a comb and told me to brush my hair whilst informing me that Indian men have big penises and that perhaps I should consider having sex with Indians in exchange for camel safaris. Stunned into submission, I muttered something about not finding Indian men all that attractive, handed over a wad of hard earned rupees and slunk out with oily orange hair and a lot more insight into the sexual preferences of women in Jaisalmer than I thought possible.
