One of my first camel rides was in Egypt, around New Year’s 1984. We had gone to the Pyramids on a blustery cold day accompanied by my mother. She was in her late fifties at the time, but only hesitated momentarily. There is a photo of her, mouth open in a scream, coat flapping in the wind and hand on her head to keep her hat from flying away. To know, and or see, the one-two-three of a camel arising from a sitting position, is not the same as experiencing it. There is no comparison. (If you have never done it – put it on your bucket list.)
I never hesitate to ride a camel. Noble but irritating beasts, camels have captured the imagination and have become synonymous with the Silk Road. My map of Chinese Turkestan designates the Silk Road routes through the deserts and mountains with a tiny camel caravan logo. Fa-Hsien, Marco Polo and countless other travelers rode or accompanied camels through the desert wastes. The monumental statue that sits just outside the West Gate of Xi’an is a depiction of a camel caravan that denotes the beginning of the Silk Road in China. If one wanted to add a sound track, it would be of honking, grunting camels and the rhythmic clanging of their bells.
Since my first ride, I have never declined an opportunity to ride, however short a distance, on one of these impressive beasts. Although my first ride was on a Dromedary, my very last one was on a Bactrian. (Neophytes take note. The one-humped variety can be remembered by turning its capital letter, D, on its back; the two humped species, likewise, a B on its back has two humps.) Dromedaries are taller, more slender, have less hair, but are just as contrary. Riding a Bactrian camel is slightly easier as one takes her place between the humps and hangs on to the copious hair. Otherwise the mounting and riding are similar.
My last camel ride was in the Takla Makan Desert not far from Hotan, along the southern branch of the Silk Road. Three foreign ladies had agreed to take a one-night camping trip to the desert, to experience what a camel safari would be like. Our local Uyhgur guide, along with some local camel owners, arranged the trip. As we headed out into the dunes, we quickly lost sight of civilization as we lurched up and down the sand hills. We found a deep pit to build a fire and pitch our tents. The bed was hard, the food burnt or inadequate and the night short. A young man, who had come with the camel handler, had to round up the camels in the morning as they had been let loose to graze overnight. Packing went quickly and as my camel sat loaded, ready to go, I decided to get on without waiting for the camel boy. As soon as I had thrown my right leg up to get into the saddle, my camel lurched to its feet. I screamed as I watched my feet and legs arch over my head and screamed again as I hit the hard sand.
Becoming lost and close to death is a trope among explorers, but perhaps the best known story of situations like this is Sven Hedin’s ill-fated 1895 attempt to cross part of the Takla Makan. In late winter “I left Kashgar and began a journey which proved to be one of the most difficult I ever undertook in Asia.” (p.105) In Maralbashi, an old man “told me that when a traveler is lost in the desert, he hears voices calling his name, he becomes bewitched, follows the voices, and is lured deeper and deeper into the desert, only to expire from thirst.” (p.106). The small caravan set off with eight ‘splendid’ camels, all males, seven Bactrian and one Dromedary. He also hired some local men, one he called Yolchi, or guide. He had four iron tanks and six goatskins for water. In a fatal mistake, Hedin failed to recheck to see that the iron tanks were full as they left their last source of water. Yolchi swore it was only four days to the river. More than four days later, when it became apparent that water was becoming extraordinarily scarce and no river appeared in sight, Hedin again made a fateful decision to continue east towards the Hotan Daria instead of the more cautious choice of turning back.
Quotes from Hedin’s diary and from his books contain the harrowing account of running out of water, slogging through the desert, finally alone, all the others, including the camels, left behind. Night fell, and he felt sure that this was his last on earth. “Suddenly, I started, and stopped short. A water bird, a wild duck or goose, rose on whirring wings and I heard a splash. The next moment, I stood on the edge of a pool.” (p. 132) He drank deeply, then filled his waterproof boots and returned to his last fallen comrade. The guide, Yolchi, who had failed to completely fill the tanks and who had insisted the river was near, had disappeared with the one-humped camel. Eventually three of the four men who had accompanied Hedin survived, as well as one large white camel. Eventually, Hedin recovered his dairies, but most of his geological equipment had disappeared. He never again left a campsite without personally checking supplies, most critically, the water supply.
Owen Lattimore made a journey starting in 1926, that took him and his bride from Peking to Delhi, along old trading routes. In the first part of his journey, alone with a family servant, he joined a camel train. For two thousand years, trade had stretched from China to Europe through Chinese Turkestan along a series of trade routes dubbed much later, the Silk Road. Lattimore was motivated by adventure, but brought immense curiosity, language skills and patience to the year and a half long endeavor. The first part of his journey was chronicled in a book ‘The Desert Road to Turkestan’ in which he tells of his many adventures. The camel caravan became a moving village with diverse actors. The caravan was in fact a convoy, made up of an amalgam of traders, their servants and camels. Hundreds of camels stretched for miles and each night the unloading and the reverse in the morning could take hours. Camels made horrendous noises, fought with each other and their handlers and fouled the air with their stench. Being fluent in Chinese, both formal and informal (Lattimore could swear like a stevedore or a camel puller), he had insights into the way of camels, the caravan, the merchants and all those they met along the way, officials, bandits and locals.
In 1999, Alexandra Tolstoy, the great granddaughter of the famous Leo Tolstoy, with three of her girlfriends, made an impressive trip “to retrace this historic route on horse and camel” (p.3) from Merv in Turkmenistan to Xi’an, China. The first part of the journey was on horseback, but the group was met at the Chinese border, the Torugart Pass, with camels. “The dreaded moment came to mount the camels.” (p. 109) This first day left them stiff and sore and a conversation with a fellow traveler in Kashgar with a foreboding of the desert terrain ahead. “All desert, no trees, no bushes, no life…which turned out to be all too accurate.” (p. 111) After months on the road, the last section, with camels was fraught with boredom, screaming fits at the Chinese staff and a lot of walking. Their arrival in Xi’an was met with members of the press who insisted on photos with the girls on their camels. Their camel handlers found a permanent home for the camels outside of Xi’an. “It was very sad to see the camels being led away. Their long-lashed eyes looked more doleful than ever as they lumbered slowly off, obedient to the last.”(p. 209)
Part of this route had been followed by Charles Blackmore in 1993. A British army man, he had previously tried to recreate T.E. Lawrence’s trip around Jordan and present-day Israel. After this, not done with challenges, he was determined to cross the ‘Desert of Death’, the Takla Makan, from one end to the other. The main form of transportation was the camel, with back up by specialized trucks. In the fall, he traveled with a motley crew of local Uyghurs, Chinese ‘handlers’, thirty camels and a collection of foreign adventurers. In two months, they managed to cross the desert in heat, cold, wind, illness, and infighting, surrounded by the sheer cussedness of expeditions. Chapter One begins with the only death they experienced, the mercy killing of the largest of their camels, who had broken his neck the day before. They had had no water for the camels in three days, the desert temperatures were dropping and they were all tired and at the end of their reserves. It was at dawn and the camel had been tugged and dragged until its head faced Mecca. The oldest of the camel handlers was chosen. The sharpened knife cut, blood spurted, the old camel gasped and sighed. “I turned away with a heavy heart and contemplated the outline of the sand hills to the east. There was no obvious route through them, ugly and distorted, cruel and forbidding, they appeared to laugh over the death of our camel and deliberately mocked our challenge.” (p.5)
My ill-fated attempt to climb onto the camel ended in a series of comedies. There was a rescue by motorbike across the dunes, a childish whimpering ride to the city to find a hospital, a curse-laden series of errors in the hospital trying to find a doctor, and then the x-ray room. And then there was the final insult. The cigarette-smoking doctor wiped the ash off the x-ray as he gave it to me. “Nothing broken.” (But it still hurt.) I swore that my animal riding days had expired at the age of 69.
I will give the great explorer of Chinese Turkestan, Hedin, the last word. In his autobiography, written in 1925, long before he stopped his travels, he gives this eulogy to the camel. “Finally, I remember with sadness the faithful camels that without complaining carried us and our loads across the endless spaces, so many of which are lying forever on the long, weary road across the Gobi Desert.” (p. vii)
Sources:
Blackmore, Charles (2008) Conquering the Desert of Death, Taurus Parke Publications, London
Hedin, Sven (1932) Across the Gobi Desert, E.P. Dutton, New Yok and London
Hedin, Sven, (2003), My Life as an Explorer, National Geographic Classics, Washington D.C.
Lattimore, Charles (1995) The Desert Road to Turkestan, Kodansha International, New York
Tolstoy, Alexandra (2003) The Last Secrets of the Silk Road, Profile Books, London