Camel Beauty Contest

What I had imagined I was going to see.

I got an email from a local tour company about a Camel Beauty Contest about 300 km outside of Riyadh, and I visualized ‘Dog Show,’ but with camels instead.  I forwarded the email to Spencer, and we in turn discussed it at Christmas and we found out the Wacaser’s were going at the same day as us.  We planned on car pooling.  I felt bad because we have a huge Expedition that was empty, and every seat was filled with their kids.  But if we would have offered, the kids might not have been happy being with us. 

I wondered how they got the camels from the trucks.

 We received GPS coordinates of the location from the email. This brought us to the general area but come to find out later when the tour group came that the beauty contest itself wasn’t where we were but several km from here.  What we initially found was a camel market, there was a main drag and on either side was camels or camel wears.  This dirt drag had cars, trucks, camels, camel owners coming in every direction.  A few camel owners had their camels tied to their cars and led them slowly along the drag.  Some camel owners didn’t quite have control over their herds, so the cars had to slow down or get plowed by the camels. 

We drove for several miles on the dirt track with no end in sight, it was like a mirage. Just when you thought you researched the end of the road, it would go to the horizon again.  People were very friendly, smiling, following our cars, chatting to Spencer and me because our windows were unrolled. Everyone here really likes America. When you say United States, the response I generally get is, where. Then I say America.  Oh, yeah, I like America.  Then they ask where, LA, Washington, New York (all meaning the cities)?  There was a group of youngsters who came up several times in their car trying to get Spencer and me to have coffee with them, even though they spoke little English.

We did stop after we had turned around.  People gathered around us, camel owners offered us to hop on their camel. The kids were afraid, so Spencer got on and waved his hand to the crowd. They loved it; it was like he was a celebrity.   But the owner kept yanking the camel around, so it became angry and you could see the anger in the camel’s face.  I refused to get on the back of an angry camel.

Once we found the tour bus, we actually got hooked up because Tiffany knew the tour director. So we got ushered with the police escort along with the tour buses. The day became much more interesting once we connected with the tour bus.

The Beauty Contest itself wasn’t like I imagined.  They would herd the camels in a group, not individually, back and forth past a group of judges. I guess at the contest they are separated in colors, and judged in groups by their color, behave, and obedience to the owners.  We watched a couple rounds before we were directed to a camp.  The two busloads of people became double that amount.  Dates, cookies, dried fruit, coffee was passed around.  A dog hunt (for a rodent), and a falcon were brought to the tent which we got to see a demonstration.  Spencer held the falcon.  

Then we feasted. There was so much food.  I have to say that not being on the tour but receiving the benefits of the tour was really nice, free falcon and hunting dog demonstration, and lunch really made the day. 

We drove back to Riyadh as the sun was setting, and waved to the Wacaser’s as we parted ways.