Day #62: Camels

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We stayed the night with a family who keep camels, tethered maybe 40 feet from the gers, the first time I have had the opportunity to observe camels close up.

According to our guide, camels are considered to be very sensitive animals (when we pass them on the road they will often all look up to see what is going on). They show emotion (including crying), and if a female camel rejects her calf, the herders will play her traditional music, which apparently will often result in the female re-engaging with her offspring (the guide recommended a film, "The Weeping Camel", which illustrates this).

At this time of year the camels shed their winter fur, and as the wool is valuable, they are usually shorn by the herders and at present they look a bit unappealing, half-bare with bits of mangy coat hanging off them. Now they are mostly docile (apart from some resistance on some of their parts to the shearing) but in breeding season they can be difficult to control. One expat I met said she had seen two male camels in breeding season fight to the death.

The camels are kept for milk (and transport) as well as fur and meat, and it is the woman's job to milk them, but the man's job to be the veterinarian. One poor camel we saw wouldn't or couldn't get up from the ground, so we witnessed the husband trying to stretch our her legs to persuade her to stand up, to no avail. She was left overnight for further review the following day, so we did not discover the outcome.

We stopped today to walk around a rocky part of the desert that reminded me of the areas of the Atacama named after Mars for the way the rock formations look.

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