You Can Lead A Camel to Water, But...

"Can you teach a camel to dance?"  booms the hoity-toity voice of the English-speaking emcee on the crackling public address system. Instead of answering his question, he continues, digressively, "What you see will remain vivid in your late years." Drummers rattle bombastically and a camel gallops onto the main stage, its head swung back so that its neckline is exposed sunward, the animal staggering forwards and backwards not dancing so much as appearing to be in dire need of urination. "Bravo, what a clever beast," gapes the emcee, rhapsodic.

The city of Bikaner has always played second fiddle to its beautiful sister, Jaisalmer. Both cities are in Rajasthan, set squarely on the edge of the Thar Desert, the southern frontier between India and Pakistan, but Bikaner is never included in fly-by-night tourist itineraries: Jaisalmer is the chosen desert dream locale. Perhaps one could fault the city planning of Bikaner, which beyond the claustrophobic alleys of the Old City, is too spread out, too suburban, too dull while the fort in Jaisalmer is an inhabited relic; a few thousand people still live there, mostly Brahmin families, connecting a contemporary intimacy with a mythologized past, a sense of wonder that feels quite remote while dodging the busy buzz of Bikaner's traffic. But for three days a year, Bikaner is queen of the desert during its annual camel festival.

The city holds the first day of the festival at a stadium named for a famous local son, an Olympic clay pigeon marksman. The groundskeepers have set up three sections of plastic chairs, one for the Indians, one for the tourists and one for press. Unsurprisingly, organization spirals quickly out of control and within the first hour of the show, nearly everyone has wandered past the police line onto the field itself for a closer look.

"Look at the shine! Look at the raiment of the Pied Pipers!" When the emcee mentions Pied Pipers I immediately think of mice at the nearby Rat Temple at Deshnok but he wants to draw attention to a battery of musicians—horns, reeds, drums, bagpipes—leading the cavalcade. "Dressed in most gorgeous finery, propped lovingly to be incomparably beautiful, the camels will demonstrate a gorgeousness to silence their harshest critics." I've never met anyone critical of the aesthetic quality of camels—indifference is slightly more common. But indeed plenty of brouhaha has gone into bedecking these passive beasts—attired in garlands, tassels, confetti, bells, inlaid mirrors, plastic flowers, nose piercings, silk scarves, marigold necklaces, pink balloons, India national flags, Kohl eye shadow, even their enormous ungulate toes look pedicured— "stunning" as the emcee declares, as I like most others, bravo with our cameras. 

Gentlemen of the B.S.F. (Border Security Force) enter, riding the animals accoutered in corresponding vestments but of a martial couture: epaulets, gongs-and-pips, ironed-on patches, and immaculate uniform creases. Rainbow-turbaned and armed to the teeth they brandish spears, swords, crescent knives, and goofy smiles (watch yourself, Pakistan!). Most conspicuous though are their waxed mustaches, where in this particular detail, size matters. Protected by extraordinary facial hair, they chaperone a princess in a purple sari in need of a parasol.

Following India's finest are some camels lugging a cart loaded with Kashmiri rugs. Then a camel pulls a large cardboard house reading State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, the proud local sponsor getting its air time. And then, oddly, the show progresses into real life logistical examples of the humpback experience. Camels slog past its audience tugging the most quotidian loads: wagons overloaded with bundles of broken tree branches, another with carefully chopped firewood, the next with food in open air sacks, another crowded with poor farmers and so on "in recognition of their contribution in desert transportation." The obviousness of their usefulness bores the audience, who stir from the their descending torpor only when we move on to camel acrobatics.

The first camel in the contest genuflects to the audience, a salutation not especially acrobatic despite the emcee's euphemistic encouragement: "Not an easy thing to do. Certainly not!" The next act involves a man rising to a standing position on the animal's hump as it gallops before the grandstands. ("Great sense of balance!") The next man does a headstand on a strutting camel ("The duty of the camel is to take a man to his destination no matter how peculiar his riding preference."). The following camel runs past us with a man balanced like the Nike Swoosh ("Even yoga can be performed on a running camel. Camels are so important in our daily life.") After this stunning stretch is a comedy act featuring a joker doing the rodeo clown bit, rolling under the animal, connecting an air pump to its rear, administering air, and checking the pressure. His gag ends with him riding backwards ("His own particular way of riding camels.") I glance at some Kuwaiti sheiks in VIP chairs, expressionless behind their dark sunglasses.

The camel dancing seems redundant after the acrobatics exhibition. Led by bearded men in dhotis, pulled by the reins like marionette strings, camels move herkyjerky as if they are dodging Pakistani machinegun fire. More photogenic is the camel-shaving festival in which several camels are paraded before us with intricate geometric designs shaved into their flanks, reminding the viewer of henna, mandalas, and carpets. The camels are escorted by their barbers around a circle of spectators posing at specified positions for the cameras to encapsulate the ephemeral beauty. ("You know it's like the catwalk, a real fashion show. Bravo.")

Well, not like any I have ever been to but this is India. More germane to the spirit of a fashion show is the Mr. Bikaner contest. Representing the different cities of Rajasthan, the contestants' turbans are varieties of pattern and color: red, saffron, shades of purple and green--if you even notice the colors once you've gotten over the men's outstanding mustaches, the longer ones unrolled and curling out stretched to their fullest diameter. "Just look into their faces, ladies and gentlemen, and witness…the glory," the emcee intones with situational gravitas. But glory can be superficial and the true determining factor for Mr. Bikaner is personality. Taking turns addressing the audience, their handling of the mic would be decisive. Some, despite the swagger of their facial hair, are short but sweet. One bursts into song. A bearded Mr. Bikaner wannabe shouts a maelstrom at us, blowing his chance of victory, though to be honest if one of them has the chutzpah to unsheathe his sword and feint, he would have clinched my vote (the announced judges are army officers and doctors to a chair which leads me to presume military service and medical knowledge are essential qualifications for evaluating the ideal Mr. Bikaner). Bizarrely, in a flagrant push for cuteness, a small boy and girl dressed in the height of desert fashion are brought on stage. The tiny boy embraces the tiny girl and kisses her cheek and the crowd goes nuts for this saccharine outburst (organizers manage to pull the stunt off in spite of the risk of controversy, for Rajasthan is infamous for child brides being married off in group dowries and here could have been poster children).

Following Mr. Bikaner against the backdrop of a soft, magical light, begins the Miss Meridan contest, which is named after a woman involved in a folk tale that includes drought, seeds, floods, love, and camels. "This contest is about grace, style, poise, personality." Yes and it is just like a real fashion show because the girls have to utilize their feminine charms to woo our cheering. They work mostly from the same template as the camels:  henna, bangles, jewelry. Of course, they are wearing swirling, colorful saris but the garment, like the Japanese kimono, is justly famous for the intricacies in its folds and certainly requires a touch of finesse to make it work. In fashion you capitalize on your strengths, you work with what you have, and some of the women do well exploiting the flirty potential of a veil, conjuring an aura of mystery and romance. ("Sometimes sexy is not what you can see, but what you can't!")  Like the contest for Mr. Bikaner, personality goes a long way and the women finish their catwalk performance with an address to the audience. Some sing village songs, some are cheered by local factions, but most of the girls flop the personality bit, but for this they can hardly be faulted—they are not only shy but also bewildered to be standing before such an enormous (mostly male) audience. Traditionally accustomed to modesty rather than stage events, the women betray not only their girlhood but also a lifestyle that has not conditioned them towards spectacle.

I do not stick around to hear the winners announced, nor do I return to the stadium that night when another local hero is scheduled to perform (the winner from a TV talent show—the American Idol equivalent). I worry the celebrants might have dug into their moonshine in the interim and having been to several Indian weddings, I have had enough of moshpits and juiced-up, excitable Indians, their elbows in my teeth.

My reliability as a Bikaner Camel Fair witness deteriorates from the moment the Miss Meridan contest wraps up. I do not attend the last day of the festival due to outgoing travel arrangements and the day I do go to Ladera, a desert village within the Thar Desert, I don't have the patience to decipher the slipshod scheduling of the events. A certain fatigue plagues my notetaking and without the exclamations of the ironic emcee, my enthusiasm does not respond critically to the events. Or perhaps the novelty of camels has begun to wear off.

On the way to Ladera, civilization disappears when we leave the main highway and the claptrap bus takes to a potholed dirt path. We pass mud huts, thatched roofs, idle children and village elders surrounded by a landscape of desert scrub and top-heavy sand dunes. Bunting twined on some cables indicates the festival's presence as well as a Vodafone banner in some dusty, leafless tree.

By the time I alight from the bus, the first event has already begun, a variation of Greco-Roman wrestling. One prone to conjecture has to wonder whether the source of the sport is a residual consequence of Alexander the Great's incursion into the Punjabi region. That theory can not be guaranteed and neither can a view and I don't feel like using the tourist card to push myself through the crowded male audience. I wander the dunes slightly incoherent, taking in the landscape, emptying my shoes of sand, failing in conversation with a stoned sadhu, and waiting for the next event, a foot race up a dune. This, too, lacks camels but provides an outlet for hyperactive locales to exhaust themselves for no suitable reason.

Nothing like the Indian Air Force for a strong pick-me-up. Two fighter jets practice maneuvers over the event leaving sonic booms in their wake and stunned shoeless farmers gasping for their gods. Then higher, from an aircraft built for such purposes, skydivers leap into the void, floating down on bright parachutes and who, once they land, are mobbed by impressed children.

How are the camels supposed to follow James Brown at the Apollo? The camel jockeys whip their animals across a 200-meter field, wiping out for me at least the animal's cliché reputation for slowness. Tragedy is narrowly averted on the final race when halfway through one of the camels right-turn off the course and stampede in the audience's direction, his rider perhaps aiming for a creditor he has spotted in the sands.

With the sun thus setting I mill around the trail leading back to the village, Ladera, and beyond, my hotel in Bikaner. Wandering, I see a camel's cart being loaded with what must have been the entire female half of a local family clan. Squished together, they giggle at me as the camel's handler mutters his familiar orders to the animal, a genuine moment of truth within the staged artifice. I walk along the wagon, waving farewell to the blushing ladies.

Perhaps a Long Way Home

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2008

Mickey Mouse, A Mentor Named Don Quixote, a Cameleer Called Abdul, A Beast Monikered Bob Marley, A Man Without a Past

A Spot in the Western Sahara

"The less she bore man’s imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of his heart.”

Marcel Proust on Nature

Sunrise in the desert is a true delight. With the stars slowly fading out, a purple haze becomes the western horizon. Light diffuses across your vision in rainbow patches, a hue of Venetian wild yonder gathered wishfully from Bradbury stories. And to be alone on the sands is to give in to imagination, to the magic of fairy tales and serialized adventure musings. It is desolate and cold yet romantic and rejuvenating. In central Morocco, I was wandering the Sahara dunes, alone, just after the sun had risen and a sky being blued. From the distance there was a lone figure coming towards me. My hotel, where I was the only guest, was on the outskirts of the village of Merzouga, a good six kilometers away from any dwellings or fashionable auberges. The person seemed to arrive with the dawn, a man born of the light. As he approached, I discerned his navy tunic and matching turquoise turban-- ‘le hommes bleu’ the tourist literature calls the Bedouin of the Western Sahara. Amid the wide expanse of sand, he approached my vantage point, called out a 'Bonjour,' and kneeled before me. From a satchel, he unrolled some newspaper and produced specimens of fossilized rock. "Good price," he said in English once he had successfully discriminated my American accent.

The first nick in the relevance of the Western Sahara caravan route came in the 16th century when the Portuguese opened the Atlantic coast with coastal shipping. Nevertheless, men, camels, and goods continued to cross the Sahara for hundreds of years, from Marrakech to Timbuktu, trading in salt, spices, ivory, slaves. In the 20th century the French established a Protectorate. Under their colonial supervision a modern highway infrastructure was constructed. Later than that, airplanes made transport quicker and more efficient. Thus, the legendary caravan routes have largely disappeared and very few hardy men still make this difficult journey. Still the desert grows, it effuses, beckons, and challenges. In this era of mass tourism and virtual experience, it is this market that is the only lucrative one left in this arid, foreboding land.

All along my travels I’d been warned against the hustlers of Merzouga, a small village on the edge of Erg Cherebi, where the largest sand dunes in the country were accessible via a good, paved road. Supposedly busloads of tourists made the stop, posed with camels for five minutes and took off on the long trip back to Ourezazate or even Marrakech, a good six hours drive away in grueling heat. This stretch of the desert has also become something of a Land Rover’s amusement grounds with manic cavalcades of sports utility monsters roaring through the gentle ambience, bellowing  berserk macho energy. The camel tracks were covered by their 4x4 ruts and the quietude compromised beyond pity.

I was on the local long-distance bus from Tinehir to Erfoud, where I would have to change buses to get to Rissani. There, a taxi would take me to Merzouga. It was a convoluted route and I expected some trouble. Still almost a hundred kilometers from my destination two slick young cads took two seats across from me. Our conversation was typical of two hustlers making the peripatetic strike. They praised my coming to Morocco, for taking local buses, for meeting real Moroccans; these people on the tour buses, they said, missed out on the whole experience. "You are like Berber,” they announced, intending it as a compliment, a comparison to the indigenous population, the original Moroccans. 

Following the obligatory round of sickly, sweet praise they turned their talk to camel treks. “I’m a musician,” the thin, peppy one informed me. “I will perform a party tonight. You must come.” I told them that I hardly had a party in mind for the desert and that I actually wanted someplace very quiet, remote, soundless… I told them I had chosen my hotel, the Nomad Palace, precisely because it was far away from all the other hotels in the area.

Ah, but the dunes weren’t as high, they said. Undeterred by my steadfastness, they remarked the place was dangerous, too close to the Algerian border and that sometimes Americans were kidnapped or even shot by snipers. I politely smiled, acknowledging their desperate spinning with a skeptical eyebrow furrow. The younger one, the musician, slipped into a pouting silence. His friend persisted, lamely, recommending a compromise: if I went on their desert excursion, they would be happy to drop me off at the Nomad Hotel in the morning. Nope. A series of unrelated personal questions followed--to save face or win me over I could not decide but answered them succinctly. When it was discovered that I lived in Japan, the melancholy musician sprang to life in simple, but perfectly pronounced Japanese: "Honto ni? O-genki desu ka? Sabaku ni ikitai?"  Really? How are you, my good man? So you want to go to the desert?

The bus had reached Erfoud and was nearing its terminus. They reminded me that they were my ‘friends,’ and that I would be hounded by “faux” guides as soon as I stepped off the bus.

“Those people outside, they’re going to make couscous in your head.”

“Yeah,” I asked. “Then what are you making?”

“An egg.”

“Oh, so you’re frying an egg in my head?”

“Yes. With a Moroccan salad.”

“Abunai,” he said in Japanese, cocking his head to the faces outside the parked bus. Dangerous.

They weren't lying about that. I was hounded as soon as I disembarked. At a teleboutique, I called up the Nomad Palace: Ali, the proprietor, was in Erfoud picking up fresh produce from the weekly souk. A lucky break. He would be over in a few minutes to pick me up. I waited on the curb while some woebegone tout, stubbornly hovered over me, promising a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I had visited various African deserts and witnessed their commercialization. I knew it by the sound of a flipped silver coin hitting the plastic table. But I couldn’t help myself: I clung to my expectations, I had visions of romance, adventure, and mysticism, but so tenuously held on.

Perhaps the desert loses its enchantment when it's turned into a postcard. Can a tourist really claim he’s been to the desert and the ascetic hardships the journey implies? Or has he merely seen it? If you walk far enough there’s the silence and the wind envelops, the sand gets in your eyes and mouth and scratches your skin. But the danger of its indifference to life, of its potential ruthlessness has been sanitized. The French Foreign Legion outposts have been replaced with ‘auberge avec piscine.’ Men who may have once raised camels mop the floors of honeymoon suites. The old ways are gone or put on as ‘authentic’ cultural experiences.  It's not enough that the ways of the infidels had to contaminate the national governments, the cities, the youth... even in the desert, archetype of the middle-of-nowhere, the infidels had it right: money makes the world go round.

Perhaps I'm naive.  You can’t blame the local 'men in blue' for wanting to make a little bit of profit out of us. For those  who were born and will die there, the desert will always be a rough place, real rather than romantic. It's my fault, rather, for wanting to believe in Mickey Mouse although he’s just a cartoon character.

One can interpret a child’s innocence as having no real illusions. Fantasy and reality can be one thing: whole.  At Disneyland there are no costumes. It is not a fabrication; there is no man sweating underneath cursing his lot in life, craving a cold beer. To adults, fairy tales imply whimsical make-believe, but for a child it is the way the world works. When the wizard of Oz turns out to be just a man behind a curtain, you know Paradise has been irrevocably lost.

I arrived in the desert as the reluctant cynic: I had my vision of the Sahara, its tranquil beauty, its dangerous history, and its savage light, and I expected disappointment. The only way I could come out unscathed was to adapt a special attitude, that of a fabulist, or a young child, an innocent. Perhaps channeling Don Quixote was the only worthwhile solution. All or nothing.

My cameleer, Abdul, didn’t speak English, mumbling his French incoherently, as if he had been to the dentist and injected with large doses of Novocain. Ah, but he had no tongue; it had been chopped off as punishment for a lascivious comment regarding the Sultan’s harem.

The camel, single-humped and technically a dromedary, was named  Bob Marley. The resemblance to the Rastafarian legend was a stretch though the beast did have a friendly smile. The animal would be my carriage into the great sand sea.

And who was I but a Man Without a Past. Why had I come to the desert? Why was I intent on being here? Abdul inquired with his mangled tongue the origins of my history and my quest but I accepted the questions in silence, letting his enquiries echo into the void.

Leaving the village of Merzouga behind we entered the dunes. There on a small ridge of sand: a woman of Latin heritage in a tight white suit chaperoned by a heavyset man riding down the dunes on a piece of board. Surely, with her dark, agile beauty she was a foreign princess sold to the chief of a local tribe and he a carpenter and inventor showing off an ingenious device of transport. But where was her palanquin and her porters?

Along and over the dunes we trudged. Abdul faithfully inquired after my state of being: I was absorbed by the light playing upon the dunes, how it made ever so delicate shapes, shadows slipping away like a receding tide or its creeping arrival delivering coolness, all motions at the mercy of solar angles. Contentment did not describe my feelings. I was dazzled.

I thought I would have the dunes to myself but a group of eight camels came trawling from the opposite direction—their riders looked droopy and ill-begotten— perhaps they had made the 1000-mile journey from Timbuktu? Their gaudy social attire was terribly inappropriate for the desert… Did they run out of water and have to barter their raiments? I wanted to ask them about the oasis, as the desert was vast and harsh and what if we were to be lost should we fall under the spell of landscapes? But chagrined jowls set forward—I was out of their peripheral vision. I did not exist.

Going my way were a young couple from Switzerland. Abdul was friendly with the other cameleer and he tied my reins to the rear dromedary. I took them to be speculative merchants. They didn’t talk about their purpose here. They spoke of home. The desert has that effect.

The sun set. And the sky was cast with a mulberry glow, like a plum ripening through four seasons. The moon was nearly full, just a sliver bit off and the way was lit by lunar shine. We continued, our small camel train, cresting a high sand dune where we looked down upon an oasis, small, verdant, a cluster of palms, spilled figs, small shacks of wood covered in tarp, a well containing spring water, a fire and a cooking pot.

Abdul spoke to my dromedary and the beast collapsed onto itself in a sitting position. I dismounted and entered the camp. There was food and music and in the songs a local lore which seemed culturally impenetrable, yet exquisitely beautiful. The hand drums were spanked, an oriental flute was blown, lyrics lapping the night in a harmony barked as well as sung. I lay back, looking towards distant crowns and let the sound envelop me. The tumescent moon subdued the incandescence of the constellation but no matter.  I could see the bushy bedhead outline of the palm grove poised before the great sand dune and the miracle of the oasis came to me— how water, the source of life, could be discovered in the most unlikely of places and because of these marvelous springs the desert could be crossed on foot or by beast. It has been crossed and will be crossed again. For a brief, ecstatic moment I fancied I could be one of those men, if only I wanted to. And then a shooting star defied the lunar light. It sparkled in the sky in a moment’s burst, just long enough to pause for wishes and dreams.

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005