During the first seven days after their departure the females of their respective families held no intercourse with those belonging to another gang, lest the victims intended for their own friends should fall into the power of the others. The Thugs, themselves, for the like period abstained from animal food, and even from their favourite _ghee_, and partook of no other food than fish, _goor_, and _dal_ (a kind of pulse). Nor did they shave or allow their clothes to be washed, or indulge in alms'-giving--which, with personal abstinence, constitutes the Hindoo notion of practical religion. On the seventh day they had a grand feast, in which green vegetables of some kind made a prominent figure. If a victim, however, were obtained within these seven days of probation, all restraints were at once cancelled and abandoned. Should the expedition last no longer than one year, they frequently denied themselves the taste of milk throughout, and likewise refrained from brushing their teeth. Any bad omens encountered prior to the second halt sufficed to break off the expedition; after that point they could be averted by expiatory rites. It was considered unfortunate to hear any one lamenting the dead as they started, or to meet an inhabitant of their own village, or an oil-vender, carpenter, potter, dancing-master, a maimed or lame person, a fakir (Mussulmaun religious mendicant) with a brown waist-band, or a jogee (Hindoo religious mendicant) with long interwoven hair. But it promised well to fall in with a fair in any other village than their own, or a corpse, or to see a party of female friends weeping round a bride as she left her parents' house to go to her husband's.
As a general rule, the different divisions of a gang used to encamp near each other at the various halting grounds, and were always in frequent communication with one another. No sooner had one of them fallen in with a party of travellers than the intelligence was conveyed to all the others, and every one was on the alert. Their leaders, travelling as merchants, gentlemen, soldiers, or peasants, usually succeeded by their plausible manners in ingratiating themselves with the strangers. And there was nothing formidable or repulsive in their outward appearance. On the contrary, they are described as being mild and benevolent of aspect, and peculiarly courteous, gentle, and obliging. Unlike most of the natives of India, they travelled unarmed, with the exception of two or three who carried daggers. It was therefore an apparently reasonable request on their part to be allowed to proceed under the protection of those who made a grand display of their swords and spears and fire-arms.