Sir Richard Francis Burton was an English explorer, scholar, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, translator, cartographer, spy, linguist, poet, ethnologist, fencer and diplomat. He was born into a respectable and affluent family in Devonshire, England. His father was a British army officer and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy squire. Burton received his schooling from private tutors and a school in Surrey, before going to the Trinity College, Oxford University from where he was expelled. He joined the East India Company to fight in the first Afghan war, but was commissioned to the regiment of General Charles James Napier in Gujarat. In India, he developed his linguistic skills and performed many undercover operations for the Company. When an undercover investigation of a homosexual brothel went horribly wrong, he came back to Europe on a sick leave. His seven year stay in middle-Asia equipped him with all the tools he needed while treading on the forbidden (for non-Muslims) pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina which he wanted to undertake. He successfully completed the expedition and his memoir became world famous. Propelled by this success, he went on several other forbidden and exotic expeditions