I never thought I would be blogging about spending Christmas in the middle east at the camel races, but after the last 4 years you would think I wouldn't be surprised. I could blog about our Christmas morning, but that seems a little boring compared to our afternoon.
Yes. Camel races is where we spent our afternoon. We took about a 30 minute drive from our house into the desert to find the camel race track. Talk about seeing A LOT of camels. Now, we know where they all are if we have anymore company come to visit us. We saw white camels, brown and black. I posted several pictures on Facebook so these may be duplicate to some of you.
There was no betting or anything like that to speak of where we were. I'm sure it was going on in some form or fashion or there wouldn't be so much interest in having their own camel win. It was all men and only a handful of us western women watching the event. There were stands at the finish line, but we didn't go in. Instead, we headed to the starting line and watched the races begin. As soon as we arrived, the main man who begins the races came over and kissed Jordyn and tried to pick her up to take her to the camels. Matt grabbed her and followed, but she would have NOTHING to do with them and cried. :-) We could have had a great picture and the men were so friendly, but it didn't happen this time. I think if she had time to warm up a little bit, she might of agreed but those camels were big and intimidating when we first arrived!
Back to the races. The race begins and the men run for their life in order to not get trampled by the camels. Some camels begin quite quickly in the right direction and others, well... don't want to cooperate. The camels all have mechanical robots on their backs that their owner has a remote control to whip the camel during the race. Think PETA would approve? I'm guessing not. The final camel carries a human who rounds up the camels along the track who lag behind. After the start, the men and spectators run and jump in the car to race along with the camels during the 5K and 6K. I was glad Matt was driving and not me! They began about 30 mph and slowed to 20 mph as they got tired and their necks began to droop.
We watched several take offs and drove alongside 2 races. It was really a lot of fun and something we will never forget!
2 comments:
Oh, my....oh, my. Are you kidding me? I've never imagined, much less seen, anything like this!!! A camel running??.....and racing!???? So cool. What an experience for yal! Warm, sunny, sandy, short sleeves, while I listen to and watch reports of feet and feet of snow and many cancelled flights all along the east coast. What a world we live in. Such an interesting post. Keep them coming. We're always here checking up on you. <(^.^)>
So freaking cool! I want to go to camel races!
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