The Camel Beauty Pageant

In December there was a big camel beauty pageant held in the desert outside of Riyadh.  The idea intrigued me so I joined a tour to go see what it was like.  It wasn't quite what I imagined a beauty pageant to be but it was still interesting.  We drove a few hours and soon we began to see people setting up tents.  Some tents are smaller canvas tents, but the black ones are made from camel hair and are still used by Bedouins today (and they are actually quite expensive to buy).

As we got closer we could see the big gates - even though there is no fence and the gates are in the middle of nowhere.  It's very typical for them to build something big and glorious that is in reality quite useless.

As we got closer it got more and more crowded and we saw very few women (except the ones from our tour group and a few selling things on the road.  There were all things related to camels.  Camels being hauled around in trucks:

People wearing camel skin coats:

People making (and shops selling) the harnesses and decorations to put on your camel:

And even I had to try on one of the camel coats.   I didn't buy anything because there is no way it would fit in my suitcase along with everything else and I'm sure very little of it is made from actual camel.

We got back on the bus and went out to where the pageant was held.  We drove through some more gates because only the judges and media were allowed in.  Our tour group got special permission since we are foreigners.  The judges all waved at our bus as we drove past them (and we made jokes about what scores we would get).

I thought it would be a pageant for individual camels but it turned out to be scored per herd.  Each day they score a different color of camel (white, black, brown, grey) and we were there on the day for white herds.

We couldn't understand anything the judges were saying so we don't know what kinds of scores each herd was getting but they were all beautiful to me (as far as camels go, anyway.)  After that we were taken to an area with some traditional tents set up for lunch.

  It does get cold in the winter so they had a fire and served tea and coffee before lunch.

They also had some camels for the kids to ride.  A lot of the adults also rode around, especially people who had never ridden a camel before.

Just before lunch they brought out a falcon and some very skinny hunting dogs.  They showed us how the falcon and the dogs work together to catch small desert animals.  Falconry is a big part of Arabian desert life.

Then we finally got to eat lunch.  There was a salad and dessert buffet and the main course was Kabsa, which is very typical food of flavorful rice with nuts and spices and raisins with roasted lamb on top.  You can also make it with chicken or even, you guessed it, camel.

We had the lamb and it was delicious!