As we have seen, Burton, even before he had left Sind, had burned to visit Mecca. Four years had since elapsed, and his eyes still turned towards "Allah's holy house." Having obtained another twelve months' furlough, in order that he "might pursue his Arabic studies in lands where the language is best learned," he formed the bold plan of crossing Arabia from Mecca to the Persian Gulf. Ultimately, however, he decided, in emulation of Burckhardt, the great traveler, to visit Medina and Mecca in the disguise of a pilgrim, a feat that only the most temerarious of men would have dared even to dream of. He made every conceivable preparation, learning among other usefulnesses how to forge horse shoes and to shoe a horse. To his parents and Lady Stisted and her daughters, who were then residing at Bath, he paid several visits, but when he last parted from them with his usual "Adieu, sans adieu," it did not occur to them that he was about to leave for good; for he could not—he never could—muster up sufficient courage to say a final "Good-bye." Shortly after his departure his mother found a letter addressed to her and in his handwriting. It contained, besides an outline of his dangerous plans, the instruction that, in case he should be killed, his "small stock of valuables" was to be divided between her and his sister.

Once more Burton had the keen pleasure of putting on disguise. Richard F. Burton ceased to be, and a muscular and powerful Mirza Abdullah, of Bushire, took his place. "I have always wished to see," he explained to a friend, "what others have been content to hear of." He wore long hair and Oriental costume, and his face and limbs were stained with henna. Accompanied by Captain Henry Grindlay of the Bengal Cavalry, he left London for Southampton, 3rd April 1853, and thence took steamer for Egypt, without ever a thought of Isabel Arundell's blue eye or Rapunzel hair, and utterly unconscious of the sighs he had evoked. At Alexandria he was the guest of Mr. John Thurburn and his son-in-law, Mr. John Larking 108, at their residence "The Sycamores," but he slept in an outhouse in order the better to delude the servants. He read the Koran sedulously, howled his prayers with a local shaykh who imparted to him the niceties of the faith, purified himself, made an ostentatious display of piety, and gave out that he was a hakim or doctor preparing to be a dervish. As he had some knowledge of medicine, this role was an easy one, and his keen sense of humour made the experience enjoyable enough. On the steamer that carried him to Cairo, he fraternized with two of his fellow-passengers, a Hindu named Khudabakhsh and an Alexandrian merchant named Haji Wali. Haji Wali, whose connection with Burton lasted some thirty years 109, was a middle-aged man with a large round head closely shaven, a bull neck, a thin red beard, handsome features which beamed with benevolence, and a reputation for wiliness and cupidity. Upon their arrival at Boulak, the port of Cairo. Khudabakhsh, who lived there, invited Burton to stay with him. Hindu-like, Khudabakhsh wanted his guest to sit, talk, smoke, and sip sherbet all day. But this Burton could not endure. Nothing, as he says, suits the English less than perpetual society, "an utter want of solitude, when one cannot retire into one self an instant without being asked some puerile questions by a companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one's shoulder." At last, losing all patience, he left his host and went to a khan, where he once more met Haji Wali. They smoked together the forbidden weed hashish, and grew confidential. Following Haji Wali's advice, Burton, having changed his dress, now posed as an Afghan doctor, and by giving his patients plenty for their money and by prescribing rough measures which acted beneficially upon their imaginations, he gained a coveted reputation. He always commenced his prescriptions piously with: "In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, and blessings and peace be upon our Lord the Apostle"; and Haji Wali vaunted him as "the very phoenix of physicians." According to his wont, he never lost an opportunity of learning the ways and customs of the various people among whom he was thrown, or of foisting himself on any company in which he thought he could increase his knowledge. His whole life indeed was a preparation for "The Arabian Nights." Thus at Cairo he had the good fortune to cure some Abyssinian slave-girls of various complaints, including the "price-lowering habit of snoring," and in return he made the slave dealer take him about the town and unfold the mysteries of his craft. He also visited the resting-place of his hero, Burckhardt; 110 indeed, in whatever town he sojourned, he sought out the places associated with the illustrious dead. It was now the Ramazan, and he observed it by fasting, reading the Koran, and saying countless prayers with his face turned devoutly to the Kiblah. 111 He heartily rejoiced, however, with the multitude when the dreary month was over, and he describes 112 amusingly the scenes on the first day following it: "Most people," he says, "were in fresh suits of finery; and so strong is personal vanity in the breast of Orientals... that from Cairo to Calcutta it would be difficult to find a sad heart under a handsome coat. The men swaggered, the women minced their steps, rolled their eyes, and were eternally arranging, and coquetting with their head-veils." In the house of a friend he saw an Armenian wedding. For servant he now took a cowardly and thievish lad named Nur, and, subsequently, he made the acquaintance of a Meccan youth, Mohammed, who was to become his companion throughout the pilgrimage. Mohammed was 18, chocolate brown, short, obese, hypocritical, cowardly, astute, selfish and affectionate. Burton not only purchased the ordinary pilgrim garb, but he also took the precaution to attach to his person "a star sapphire," the sight of which inspired his companions with "an almost reverential awe," and even led them to ascribe to him thaumaturgic power. 113 His further preparations for the sacred pilgrimage reads rather like a page out of Charles Lever, for the rollicking Irishman was as much in evidence as the holy devotee. They culminated in a drinking bout with an Albanian captain, whom he left, so to speak, under the table; and this having got noised abroad, Burton, with his reputation for sanctity forfeited, found it expedient to set off at once for Mecca. He sent the boy Nur on to Suez with his baggage and followed him soon after on a camel through a "haggard land infested with wild beasts and wilder men." At Suez he made the acquaintance of some Medina and Mecca folk, who were to be his fellow-travellers; including "Sa'ad the Demon," a negro who had two boxes of handsome apparel for his three Medina wives and was resolved to "travel free;" and Shaykh Hamid, a "lank Arab foul with sweat," who never said his prayers because of the trouble of taking clean clothes out of his box. "All these persons," says Burton, "lost no time in opening the question of a loan. It was a lesson in Oriental metaphysics to see their condition. They had a twelve days' voyage and a four days' journey before them; boxes to carry, custom houses to face, and stomachs to fill; yet the whole party could scarcely, I believe, muster two dollars of ready money. Their boxes were full of valuables, arms, clothes, pipes, slippers, sweetmeats, and other 'notions,' but nothing short of starvation would have induced them to pledge the smallest article." 114 Foreseeing the advantage of their company, Burton sagaciously lent each of them a little money at high interest, not for the sake of profit, but with a view to becoming a Hatim Tai, 115 by a "never mind" on settling day. This piece of policy made "the Father of Moustaches," as they called him, a person of importance among them. During the delay before starting, he employed himself first in doctoring, and then in flirting with a party of Egyptian women the most seductive of whom was one Fattumah, 116 a plump lady of thirty "fond of flattery and possessing, like all her people, a voluble tongue." The refrain of every conversation was "Marry me, O Fattumah! O daughter! O female pilgrim." To which the lady would reply coquettishly, "with a toss of the head and a flirting manipulation of her head veil," "I am mated, O young man." Sometimes he imitated her Egyptian accent and deprecated her country women, causing her to get angry and bid him begone. Then, instead of "marry me, O Fattumah," he would say, "O old woman and decrepit, fit only to carry wood to market." This would bring a torrent of angry words, but when they met again all was forgotten and the flirtations of the day before were repeated.