Camels

Jamset and Dina collect a few dead branches from nearby trees, light a fire and start preparing our evening meal. Meanwhile, I am seated, leaning against a camel’s soft body, watching the flickering fire, while the camels are chewing their cud, their neck bells tinkling softly. While cooking, my camel drivers sing sad songs about love or precious rain.

The night is wonderful. To lie snug in your sleeping bag on the soft desert sand, under a thousand twinkling stars, and maybe a falling star or a moving satellite, is indeed meditative.”

The direct ancestor of modern camels, Procamelus, lived around 5 million years ago, spreading to South America via the newly formed Isthmus of Panama, where it evolved into the llama, the guanaco, and the vicuña, and via a Bering land bridge to Asia, where it evolved into true camels.

The last native camel in North America was Camelops hesternus, which, together with a host of other animals, such as mastodon, saber-toothed cat, and horse, in all probability were extirpated by nomadic hunters, which had migrated here via the latest Bering land bridge, about 12,000 years ago.

The dromedary, or one-humped camel (Camelus dromedarius), is extinct in the wild, but is widely distributed as a domestic animal, from India across the Middle East to the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt, Somalia, and northern Kenya. It was probably first domesticated around 3000 B.C. in Somalia or southern Arabia.

The Bactrian, or two-humped camel (Camelus bactrianus), which is also extinct in the wild, is found in the Central Asian highlands and Iran, but in much lower numbers than the dromedary. The first domestication of this species in Central Asia is believed to have taken place around 2500 B.C.

These two species are closely related, as they are able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. A widely accepted theory today is that they both evolved from a third species, the wild Bactrian camel (Camelus ferus), of which a few scattered herds live in Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Tibet, the total population probably counting fewer than a thousand individuals. It is thus critically endangered and may soon go extinct.

Camels can lose a third of their body weight due to dehydration without any harm. When they do have access to water, they are able to drink an unbelievable amount of it. It has been recorded that one camel, weighing about 600 kg, drank about 200 litres in a few minutes. Camels do not store water in their hump as was formerly believed. The hump is fatty tissue, and the reason for the storage of fat here is that the animal is better able to withstand a hot climate without an insulating layer of fat distributed over the entire body.

Besides being pack animals, which transport goods and people, camels provide meat and milk, bags are produced from their skin, and textiles from their fur. A former, rather special utilization of the dromedary was camel cavalries, used by armed forces in desert warfare, mostly as a means of transportation, as horses didn’t thrive in these dry conditions. Fighting also sometimes took place from camel-back, initially with spears and bows, and later with rifles.

In the Indian state of Rajasthan, Raikas are a special caste of camel breeders, who believe that they were created by Shiva to be camel guardians. They worship the camel god Prabuji.

Although the Rajaji area in Uttarakhand was declared a national park in 1993, the Gujjars still live here. Foresters have pointed out that these people should be banned from grazing their animals in the park, but, ironically, they seem to benefit wildlife here, as they keep poachers away from the area. For instance, the number of wild Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in the park has increased in later years. The Gujjars themselves do not harm wildlife, as they are vegetarians.