February 19, 2014

happy hump day!

camel india

It’s funny. You’d assume that after seeing about 30 camels a day, the novelty would wear off, but it doesn’t. I still smile each time I see one of the humped beasts roaming the streets. They’re all over. In the desert, used for work and tourists alike.

We’ve been told that camels are appropriately called, “the ship of the desert” as they’re a main source of transportation for desert dwellers.P1180492

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We’ve had a few unique experiences with them so far. The first as we were driving in the middle of the desert to our next destination, just 25 miles from the Pakistan border, and saw a huge herd(?) of camels. We pulled over and walked out to chat with the man with all the camels. There were 99 females and 1 male that are all used for work. He had a name for each of them.

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Another fun experience was at the Camel Research & Breeding Farm in Bikaner. We tasted camel milk coffee, camel milk ice cream and Ting was brave enough to have straight up camel’s milk. Not bad, kinda salty. While we were there we saw a baby camel, just hours old, trying to stand for the first time. His sweet mother dropped down to her knees to give the baby camel a gentle nudge. I melted.

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And on the topic of babies, we saw how that process starts. The male camel releases a HUGE (like a cantaloupe) sized gland out of his mouth and then loudly SLURPS it back into his mouth. The gland releases a specific scent. If a female likes the flavor he’s putting out, then she’ll make a noise to let him know she’s interested. National Geographic. Oh, and when we’re home or Skyping, you should ask Danny to imitate the camel-gland-mating thing because he’s got it down perfectly. Seriously.
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They all have such proud, pleasant faces with their big eyes and eyelashes.
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Lastly, our first camel ride was in the middle of the music festival we attended. Sure, it’s pretty interesting to ride a camel, but what makes this even more notable is that Danny’s never even ridden a HORSE, so I love that he’s ridden a camel before a horse. Ha! There was a kid, probably 10 years old, walking around with his beautifully decorated camel at the music festival looking for riders. He was a pretty good sales guy, so we told him that when we were ready to ride, we’d find him. So we did. And about half way through our leisurely sunset walk through the desert dunes, he asked if we wanted to go a little faster. Danny said sure, so before we knew it, our camels were dropping to their knees (which is pretty scary when you’re high on it’s back) so the kid-handlers could hop on behind us and then launch the camels into a full GALLOP across the dunes. I was screaming like a maniac through the music festival and everyone was staring, laughing and giving us the thumbs up!
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aaaannnddd just in case you’re interested in learning some fun facts about the camel:
BIKANER CAMEL FARM

 

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