Cruising Through The Desert

Camels and deserts are all but synonymous. At least, they used to be. In the last ten years, India’s camel population has plummeted by nearly fifty percent. In 2012, there were an estimated 400,000 camels, the vast majority of which live in Rajasthan. Now, there are about 250,000 despite multiple attempts by the Indian government to reverse the trend.

The reason is both obvious and inevitable. For centuries, the camel has been prized as the “ship of the desert.” Today, that ship no longer sails as most people now have access to buses, trucks, cars, and motorcycles by the millions. Herders, who survived for centuries selling camels for transport like a showroom of Toyotas now depend on the sale of camel meat, milk, and fiber, which in turn pays for the petrol that runs the vehicle that has replaced the camel.

It is an exercise in futility. But traditions die hard, particularly when they come from the Gods.

In the pantheon of Hindu deities, Lord Shiva is considered the most powerful. He is known as the destroyer, and to temper his capacity to inflict harm, he is quelled by a steady diet of opium. Ostensibly, this makes him oblivious to the world. But the raika, India’s traditional camel herders, believe that Lord Shiva created them solely to take care of the camel. And what mere mortal dares to question a command from the most powerful, even one stoned-off his holy gourd?

On a hot Sunday afternoon in August, I head for the sand dunes in Rajasthan in search of a camel herder. I am traveling with my friend Akaram, and two other men in a truck where I know if I lift-up the floor mat, I will surely see dirt. Faulty flooring notwithstanding, I am grateful for a proper seat and four wheels. It is decidedly more practical than riding a camel, particularly given the distance we will need to travel. And if I am to be perfectly honest, I have spent the last week on the back of Akaram’s motorcycle sitting “sidesaddle” like a proper Indian woman. I am grateful to be facing forward let alone having a bit of protection from the oncoming traffic.

My driver, Rakesh, knows a camel herder who will be perfect for my needs. “He has many camels—"big, big camels,” he tells me. “You will see more camels than you have ever seen in your whole life. Trust me.” I nod my head with both excitement and appreciation. I do not, however, explain that this is not my first camel rodeo, and he will have a hard time surpassing my camel stats to date in both the Arabian and Gobi Deserts. But this is not a competition. I truly couldn’t be more grateful for his time and willingness to help.

After more than an hour of bouncing and swerving from side to side (at one point, we swerve so hard I am thrown to the floor), Rakesh stops the car under a small grove of trees and pulls out his flip phone. No more than five minutes pass before a dark brown man appears on the horizon, he is leading a camel with one hand and holding a large brass bowl in the other. It is not until he gets closer that I realize he is holding a bowl of camel’s milk.

Rakesh promises me the milk is “fresh-fresh-fresh” and I smile. I know what is coming next. Dairy products are no longer my friend, even “fresh-fresh-fresh” camel’s milk, and for the first time that I have been back on the road since Covid, I am reminded of these delicate dietary scenarios where culture, kindness, and respect all unite in an angry gut. It is a small price to pay not only for the hospitality, but for the extraordinary privilege of spending time with someone whose life’s purpose was pre-ordained by the most powerful God.

The herder offers me the bowl which is more akin to a soup tureen than a regular drinking vessel, and I offer my biggest smile in return. I am not just concerned about choking down a few polite sips, but how I will tilt this enormous bowl to my lips without spilling most of it down my kurta. Plus, the interminable question as to what cooties I will also ingest in the process?

To my shock and relief, it’s not that bad. I don’t suddenly crave a camel milkshake or the desire to pour it over my cereal, but it’s palatable. The herder starts talking excitedly with Akaram and I hear the word antioxidant, which sounds the same in Hindi as it does in English. Indeed, this dark brown man in the desert knows all about antioxidants (I choose not to follow-up with a discussion about free radicals) and he then encourages me to take another sip. I suspect my gut doesn’t care there are antioxidants amidst all this dairy, but I graciously take one more swallow.

It turns out meeting has not been the luck of the desert as Rakesh implied, but a quick exchange of phone calls to find out exactly where he and his three hundred camels were grazing that day. The average desert tourist may want to ride a camel, but they have little interest in meeting the herder. For me, I am not the least bit interested in climbing on top of yet another camel (it’s a long way down from the hump of a Dromedary) but learning how the herder survives, particularly this summer where the monsoon season has brought unprecedented rainfall. The old-timers are quick to remark that they haven’t seen rain like this in forty years. Roads are washed-out. Fields are flooded. And the camels have succumbed to a miserable itch. I’m not able to determine the exact cause of the itching, but I suspect the extreme wet is causing an explosion of bugs and other creatures that soon crawl under their skin. The herder has spent thousands of rupees at the local veterinary clinic (do not imagine the place where your dog gets its rabies shot) to get medicine.

I ask if the medicine is an injection or a drench they squirt in its mouth? He goes through the motion of plunging a hypodermic needle and I nod my head, but I can’t imagine it’s easy to give a camel a shot let alone three hundred. Apparently, it’s a three-man job: one to give the needle and two to hold the halter attached to the peg in its nose. The thought makes me wince for the camel, but the alternative is worse; a fact that I all too often forget.

During the short time we have been talking, another herder appears over the horizon—it’s his brother—and then two small children, and eventually the entire caravan of camels begins to appear. I am beginning to feel like I’m on a movie set except for one particularly distressed camel who is screaming for all of India to hear. I ask if something is wrong and apparently not. He just happens to complain a lot.

Unlike Bactrian camels, Dromedaries do not produce a prodigious amount of fiber, but they are still shorn with scissors. Some of it is sold locally for making rugs and some of it they keep for themselves to spin into halters and blankets.

The herder is the sixth generation of his family to raise camels and then he points to his sons, indicating they are the seventh. There will be no formal education for these boys, the desert is their classroom. But still, I cannot imagine how they survive.

And then I discover they do more than just survive, the camel herders are thriving—thanks to tourism. Every year more and more tourists, particularly an increase in Indian tourists are visiting the Thar Desert. They stay in fancy desert camps with air-conditioned tents, eating seven-course meals and listening to traditional music. And they ride camels under the stars in the cool of the night, spending fifty dollars for a few precious hours of times gone by.

Perhaps, the camel is still the “ship of the desert” after all. Perhaps, that “ship” now looks more like a Carnival cruise.