Camel Ride

Camels in waiting, Oct 19 2016

Fun in the Desert.

In the afternoon of we took advantage of another of Dunhuang attraction, the sand dunes and a camel ride. At first look they are an intimidating beast. Tall, very angular bodies, long snouts and big teeth.There were literally hundreds of camels in the pen in no particular order.We had the ticket and wandered into the pen as directed and stood around with no one paying particular attention.It seems that the camel drivers were not very interested in working and had to be forcefully persuaded, as appeared to me, to attend to us and get us on the camels.

The camel driver pointed to two camels and signaled we should mount. Camels are nicer than horses since when they are at rest they fold their legs under themselves and rest on their bellies, maybe three feet off the ground. The saddle was comfortable with a giant metal ring to grasp and the driver put our feet in the stirrups.Getting up from sitting the camel puts his two front feet forward and stands. Surprising all novices, we are now at an angle and until the back feet are up we are holding on.Once up you are now about six feet off the ground and holding on dearly. The driver attached five or six camels, by a rope, back to front and off we went.I didn’t think it was a bad gait. A bit bouncy. We were on for a three mile walk through the dunes. A little scary going downhill, but fun.Amazing to watch the camel’s feet splay outward as the feet meet the sand, creating a wider foot to ride on the sand. I took lots of photos on the ride but never let go of the metal ring.

The dunes are quite beautiful and have subtle color changes with the light that I tried to capture in photos.