Camel beauty contest in the desert
Learning about beautiful camels in Madinat Zayed while wondering if a Toyota Land cruiser wouldn't be the best form of transport after all.
The noise grows louder and we hesitate. “Do you really think we can go in?” Tim whispers, squinting in the bright sunlight. “I guess they’ll throw us out if not”, I say, not feeling remotely as confident as I sound.
I peer around a pillar covered in red velvet. In the middle of an arena are hundreds of men, head to toe dressed in white, cheering, rocking rhythmically and waving thin sticks in the air.
We’re in Madinat Zayed at the annual Al Dhafra Festival in the Western Region of the United Arab Emirates and every man and his camel is here. Over 20,000 camels take part in the festival to celebrate UAE culture and heritage and, more importantly, to be in with a chance of winning the camel beauty contest.
“Please, sit, have coffee and I will come back soon”, the young Emirati guide we ran into at the entrance disappears as quickly as he appeared. We sit down on two gilded throne-like chairs in the grandstand.
The cardamom flavoured coffee is bitter and gritty, my cup has brown stains around the rim and I swallow quickly.
Suddenly the cheering stops. The men scramble to the front of the grandstand, kick off their shoes and throw themselves onto mats. It is prayer time and even the most reluctant looking teenage boy at the back has slowly sauntered down to join in.
“Do you know how to judge the Majahims now?” Our guide is back, eyes glittering behind his Ray-Bans. He leads us through the sweating mass of white robes and into the camel pens while chatting in Arabic on his diamond encrusted mobile. I giggle and shake my head. I haven’t even opened the judging guidelines he gave us.
We’re in a sea of camels, golden brown Asayel camels from the UAE and Oman to our left and dark Majahims from Saudi Arabia to our right. Our guide points at a big dark camel. “See how long the back is behind the hump?” he continues. We nod silently. “The longer the back the better”, he continues.
He moves on to describe the shape of the nose, the firmness of the ears, and, very importantly, the hump shape and position. “This is one of the finest Majahim camels here”, he says, and then returns to his phone conversation.
Winning the beauty contest or one of the camel races that take place during the festival can make you rich, or the proud owner of a Toyota Land cruiser. The winning camel can fetch up to five million Dirhams if sold at the festival, though only one million if sold outside the festival period, thanks to the Abu Dhabi government subsidising the sale to safeguard the festival and ensure that the UAE traditions are kept alive.
“Last year I got 300,000 Dirhams for one camel”, our guide says. “Though I’d rather have won the Land Cruiser, those are what everyone comes here for”.
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