The Next Morning

Pardon the expression, but, Day 2 started out colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra. Upon waking up to the sound of camels stomping around outside the tent, I thought my body had been frozen solid to the bone. Sure, the ten gazillion layers of clothes that I had worn to bed that evening kept me as warm as they possibly could, but there's just something penetrating about the early morning cold in an empty, wind swept winter Arabian desert!

And as anyone who's ever woken up within a hundred mile radius of me in the morning already knows, I'm not exactly the chippiest and happiest of souls first thing in the A.M. but on this morning I was able to contain my usual grumpiness. Besides, when I opened my eyes I found that nearly everyone had already long since woken up and departed the tent, so whom could I possibly be grumpy to?!?. After rolling around for a few minutes in my sleeping bag, I thought to myself, "I suppose I should get up and get the show on the road," as I stretched my weary body and readied my mind for the day ahead.

As I mentioned on the previous page, upon arriving at the campsite the evening before I was told that there were hundreds of camels herded up several tens of meters from the tent, but I was unable to see any of them because of the pitch darkness of the nighttime sky. Well, the morning sun which now shown brightly across the Arabian expanse illuminated this plenitude of camels and there was no longer any question in my mind as to the whereabouts of these one-humped beasts!

Scroll to the right: and these are just a few of the camels. As I quickly learned, these animals wake up much earlier than I do and since they become restless quickly, Fahad's uncle and cousin rustled 'em up and began the camel drive across the desert right away. I grabbed my camera and began snapping pictures running behind them as they stomped up and over a nearby hill. Since a camel's foot step is approximately 8 feet long, and mine is only 3, every step they took advanced them 5 feet farther away from me so in no time at all they were far off in the distance and I was suddenly left there in the middle of nowhere with no camel's in sight, as evidenced below.

As you can see, I am surrounded only by the wide open desert and thinking, eyes closed, "a) That sun sure is bright, b) It sure is cold this morning, and c) hmm. . . those camels sure didn't last long!" Worry not though, I had plenty of opportunities later in the afternoon to snap some good camel shots, so patience, patience! :-)

On the right you can see me in my little Camp Vinnel quasi-military issue olive green pullover. 'Tis a sexy little number, no? And the winter cap was apparently produced by a company somewhere in the world called "M", or at least that's the only explanation I can come up for the giant "M" logo on the front. I bought it the day before knowing that my poor little head would freeze off without it, and since the selection in the store where I bought it wasn't particularly stellar, I figured I'd stick to the classic black look, avec le M. In any case, it worked like a charm and my head was nice and toasty warm, just in case any of you were concerned. :-)

Oh yeah, the scarf: it was a Christmas present given to me in 1997 by a friend of mine in Germany, and it's the same one I used to sleep with during the winters in Japan when it used to get below freezing in my bedroom at night because there was no heating in my apartment. Ahhh. . . the memories. . .

Alas, I digress. . .

So like I said, after chasing the camels into the desert as they ran away from us en masse, Everett, Majed, and I suddenly found ourselves rather far away from the camp, but conveniently one of Fahad's cousins showed up unexpectedly with a little pick-up truck and offered to take us back, which I thought was right nice of him! So we three hopped into the back of the truck and zoomed off through the desert back to our homebase. Unfortunately for me and my easily-irked early morning self, there was a plethora of mini sand dunes and dirt hills between us and our destination, and our driver apparently had some sort of affinity for 4 x 4'ing so the whole time back to camp we were being thrashed around, bounced up and down and thrown from left to right as we sped through the desert spinning around in circles and jumping over every natural obstacle in sight. Now, just imagine me: I'm already grumpy as hell by the simple fact that it's still morning time, it's butt-freezing-cold and I feeling like a dog with his head stuck out the car window. We were also tearing up the desert violating every environmental-preservationist philosophy I've ever held dear to my heart, not to mention the fact I was sure that at any moment we would jump over a burm that was just a wee-bit too high and the truck would flip over, we'd spill out the back, and then go flying in every which direction and be instantly killed!

Thanks be to Allah though ("al-Hamdu l-illah"), that did not happen and we made it back to the camp in one piece. But just barely.

Upon returning to our little canvas abode, we started making preparations for breakfast, which you can see to the left. In the picture you can see a good shot of the camp, which consisted of the tent, the water truck, and a few of my students' vehicles, all surrounded by a rolling desert plane covered by the occasional dry little shrub here and there. Fahad's uncle and cousin had long since departed, along with the camels, so the atmosphere was much more peaceful and quieter than it had been when I first woke up an hour earlier. And I welcomed the calm.

Above: a close up picture of the tent sight with everyone hanging out in the kitchen. I think this is a pretty cool shot since you can see Everett just standing there all ho-hum as Majed and Fahad start mixing the ingredients for our little morning feast: fire baked wheat bread with lamb in a red sauce. You will also note in the above image the traditional Arabian winter clothes that nearly everyone is wearing, specifically the large, heavy jacket-like robes and the red and white shamal (head wrap) which at this time of the morning serves as a scarf. Also, I think it's a cute little picture of the Bedouin boy, who, for a few moments, stood still just long enough for me to take a picture of him. (He was the vivacious little whipper snapper I wrote about from the evening before.)

Since the main goal in going out into the desert was to treat Everett and me to an authentic, traditionally Bedouin experience, breakfast was to be hand prepared and baked in the coals of the camp fire and served with freshly slaughtered lamb,just as the Bedouin have been doing for millennia.

The bread was mixed basically the same way anyone anywhere would prepare bread: a decent amount of flour, a little bit of water, and plenty of heat. The bread we were preparing was yeast-free. The preparation of the bread was rather ingenious actually, and I learned a great way to bake in the absence of pots, pans, baking sheets and ovens: you bake directly in the fire itself! More specifically, you poke around the coals until the flames vanish and then you just insert the uncooked goods straight into the coals, wait a few minutes, and then voila, breakfast bread is served! There was one aspect of the baking process, however, which was a fusion of old tech with new tech - the use of aluminum foil. Actually, this was a topic of great discussion during the course of the morning, "Should we envelop the dough in a thin layer of foil in order to keep the bread as ash-free as possible - to conform to the (perceived) standards of our Western guests - or should we bake directly in the coals as one would traditionally do and just brush the coal and ash from the bread before/during eating?" Everett and I were unified in our opinion that we wanted them to produce the bread the way they preferred as Bedouin and that we had come here to learn about their culture, and under no circumstance did we expect them to prepare the food in a way that they thought might be more pleasing for our pallets.

After a lighthearted group discussion on the issue, the decision was made to cook the bread using the foil, which was perfectly fine with me, just as cooking it without the foil would have been fine as well. While a part of me wondered what it would be like to eat bread with ash and coal fragments in it, I was more than happy with the end result, as seen to the right.

Once the ingredients of the bread had been mixed together in a small bowl, several large sheets of foil were laid out and a thin layer of animal grease was gently painted thereon. The dough was pressed out into a thin square, about an inch (2cm) thick, basted with some of the same grease that been used to coat the foil, and then the dough was wrapped up in the aluminum and buried under a thick layer of hot coals in the middle of what had earlier been a flaming fire. As soon as the hot coals had been placed upon the aluminum, I could hear the sizzling sound of the bread beginning to bake. Being a bread lover myself, I nearly began to salivate just thinking about cracking open that aluminum foil and digging into the deliciously aromatic treat now cooking before my eyes and filling all my senses with anticipation!

The only one at the camp not anticipating breakfast was the hapless little goat tied to the water truck at right. Actually, Mr. Goat had been spared from the breakfast slaughter since his fate was to be on our dinner plate come sundown, but his brother wasn't so lucky. After waking up in the morning I walked to the back of the truck to wash my hands and noticed a nicely piled goat skin resting peacefully on the ground beside the back of the vehicle. Poor guy. To tell you the truth though, I was rather amused by the sight of a goat without a body, which appeared not-so dissimilar from a jellyfish out of water, just kind of all lumped there. Now, I remember a day way back when I was a vegetarian that this sort of thing might have disturbed me greatly, but now that I'm a meat eater again [thanks Japan!] (although I plan on returning to vegetarianism once I live again in the United States), I do find it admirable that the people here in Saudi Arabia are still very much in touch with where meat comes from. They still understand that if you're going to eat an animal, you must kill it first with your own hands, and that meat doesn't just magically appear on the supermarket shelf prepackaged and ready for consumption. As a part of the slaughter, the Saudis do two things: first, they make sure that they don't slaughter the animal in front of the other animals (out of sensitivity?), and secondly, they say "bismallah" which translates to "in the name of God," as prescribed by the Koran.

Anyways, before we knew it, the bread was baked, the lamb was cooked and we all sat down in a big circle for a nice, yummy little breakfast out in the middle of the desert as the slowly warming sun rose lazily in the eastern sky.

After breakfast we packed up our sleeping bags and cleaned up the tent, above, in preparation for our little excursion out into the desert. Hmmm. . . actually, we were already in the desert, so I suppose it would be more appropriate to say that we were going FURTHER OUT into the desert. :-)

It wasn't long before we were all squared away and piled into the sport utes ready for our little jaunt. Majed's ritzy little Lexus had room for six people so Bassem, Khalid, Farhan, Everett and I jumped in his truck and everyone else jumped into Fahad's vehicle.

Left: as we headed out of camp we drove over a bunch of little shrubs and sandy hills in search of the dirt road we would follow to hook up with the camel caravan which had left on its drive earlier that morning. Eventually we 4x4'd our way through the desert and located a nice little dirt road that made for much smoother driving. The landscape of the desert itself transformed from soft dirt and bush covered knolls to hard packed rocky moonscape to sand dunes rather quickly and haphazardly. I was constantly surprised by each new landscape as we crested one hill after the next. In the accompanying picture above, you can see Majed at the steering wheel, wearing a Western T-shirt and sunglasses, but retaining his Saudi heritage by slinging his shamal headwrap/sunshade/scarf around his neck.

The whole scene just fascinates me whenever I think about it. I mean, there we all were, a bunch of Arabic speaking Saudi Arabians, a couple of English speaking Americans, driving in a Japanese sport utility vehicle, listening to American R&B and traditional Arabic music on an Asian CD player as we chatted back and forth in a bilingual conversation chasing camels across the Middle East. You know, this modern world of ours really is out of control sometimes!

Right: and speaking of out of control, I was rather surprised to find a significant number of farms and agricultural areas splattered across the desert here and there. I suppose that before coming to Saudi Arabia I just assumed the entire country was one giant arid wasteland. And even though I had read that the government has spent billions of dollars in building water desalination plants up and down both coast lines and built pipelines from the sea into the center of the country to deliver life giving H2O to everyone, somehow I just wasn't expecting to actually see these little green farms all around. Yet there they were. Now, being from California and seeing the same bizarre thing there, this should have come as no surprise to me, but for some strange reason it did. From what I've heard, large parts of northern Saudi Arabia have been transformed into agricultural zones, especially the closer you get to Iraq where the climate is a little less harsh than it is in central and southern Saudi Arabia. Although I'm not exactly sure what sort of green moss is being cultivated in this particular field in the above picture, it's my understanding that many of these expansive fields grow wheat and other related grains, which are critical for the staple foods of the Middle East.

Left: I call this picture "Iowa of Arabia."

Sure, the only time I was ever actually in Iowa was in 1982 when I was six years old driving from Colorado to Wisconsin with my family, and from the few memories of corn and rain in Iowa that I do have, this picture doesn't look anything like that, BUT it does contain the main elements of almost any rural scene you find all across middle America: grain silos, meandering electric wires strung in long sinewy stretches, and the analogous church. Of course in this picture it's a mosque, but the idea is still the same. The one main difference being that God doesn't forbid cameras in Iowa and you don't have to go undercover to quickly photograph a house of worship there. Or do you?

Well, as we continued our drive in pursuit of the ever evasive camels we chanced upon a nice giant sand dune, so Majed cranked the wheel of the truck and hooked a hard left off our bumpy dirt road spinning sand in all directions as we sliced our way up the back of it.

On the right: moi. :-)

Miraculously enough we made it up to the very top of the dune without sinking ourselves straight into the sand. By this time the sun was burning brilliantly high up in the sky and the afternoon temperature was extremely pleasant, as it almost always is in this country during winter. As soon as we jumped out of the truck, the first thing we did was throw off our shoes and dig our feet straight into the nice cool sand just a few inches down. We all stretched out and breathed in the nice, fresh desert air, considering it a welcomed change from the urban brown haze that often blankets Riyadh. We then walked up to the crest of the dune and sat down enjoying the peace and calm of the desert.

Left: a nice little picture of the shabaab (Arabic term of endearment for "guys"). From left to right, Majed, Bassem, Abdulwahid, Everett, Ali, Waleed, and kneeling in the front is Khalid, with Waleed's cousin kneeling and staring off into the desert on the right.

So there we were, just a nice little group of guys hanging out atop a sandy mountain enjoying a refreshing respite in our search for the all elusive migratory camels as they zig-zagged their way across the Saudi Arabian deserts.

Above: here are the shabaab as they shoot the breeze atop the sand with Everett staring off toward the desolate west. And well, me being the picture junky that I am, I grabbed my camera and leapt off the side of the dune slid down its face toward a windswept base, which appeared to have been etched by an armada of long and slender snakes, as seen below.

Above left: a lonely, forked blade of grass sprouts up miraculously from the lifeless sands of the sunbaked desert.

Above right: "Hi Mom!!!"

Above: now, I understand that photographing my feet is perhaps not the most sought-after angle of Saudi Arabia that my reading public are demanding, but I was rather intrigued by the dry, crusty sheath which actually entombed the mass of sand below. As I walked, I heard this soft crunch, crunch, crunch, almost as if I were walking upon slightly frozen snow. This reminded me of the Zion National Park in southern Utah which consists of mountainous slabs of sandstone - sand dunes compressed and solidified over hundreds of millions of years. As I trotted over the sand, crumbling softly beneath my feet, I thought of those mountains in Utah and how they may have begun their existence just like the very sand I was now standing upon.

Or perhaps not?

Well, after basking in the sun for a little while and reengergizing ourselves, we hopped back in the sport utes and spun our way down the sand dune and back toward the dirt road we had flown in on.

Left: Bassem, Khalid, and Farhan looking rather studly in the back of the truck.

(Does anyone else other than me notice a serious earth tones theme going on here???)

Anyway, as is apparent in the picture, nobody is wearing the traditional Saudi shamal head covering, and from what I understand, this is often the case once the shabaab depart greater Riyadh. All of my students have travelled to more liberal countries in the Arab world, Asia or the West, so when they leave the conservative confines of the city, they often remove their obligatory head gear and don Western garb in pursuit of a little sense of being plugged into modern global youth culture. (Although, in such a sun burned country like Saudi Arabia, I'm sure this act of removing their shamal will eventually lead to increased rates of skin cancer a couple years down the line. . .) You will note, though, that Farhan (on the right) is going multi-cultural for the day: he's lost the head wrap, wears a pair of European styled sunglasses, yet retains his *very* nice pinstriped thobe (robe). Personally, I think it's a look that works very well, and it's just a matter of time before I sport a similar one myself! I'll have to grow the required Saudi mustache first though. . .

Well, I didn't have a whole lot of time to continue contemplating the intricacies of globalization on international fashion trends because as we crested yet another hill in the desert, I looked out the left window of the truck and suddenly noticed animals popping up everywhere like wild mushrooms. "Good God!" I thought to myself, "I've never seen so many long haired monsters marching their ravenous way across a country before!!!" Sure, the United States is no stranger to the animal raising industry, but in the U.S. don't livestock generally just hang out at one farm forever? It's not you'll be driving down some random highway and then suddenly be confronted by a humongous herd of creatures clogging the road way? Or maybe I've just been driving on the wrong roads across America?!? In any case, I was rather surprised not only by the number of goats in this herd, but also by the length of their hair. I had no idea that goats could produce such coats! Just look at the little guy in the above right picture.

Above: a rabid-looking camel trotting through the desert with his legs tied together, suffering not from rabies but rather a lusty urge to merge with the other galloping females all around him. It was rather offensive actually!!! I mean, there we were driving along just minding our own business when suddenly this frothy monster comes galloping up beside us hurling bubbly white drool in all directions as the dopy grin on his face hid the not-so unapparent thought, "Females! Females! Females!!! MUST HAVE ONE. . . huh huh huh. . ."

Have these beasts no shame?!? ;-}

In any case, his front feet were tied together in order to discourage him from. . . ahem. . . uh. . . you know. . . with the other females of the herd. And since a cute little baby camel had been born earlier that morning (and was being driven around in the back of a truck), the Bedouin herders leading the pack, Ziiyid and Abdullah, decided that there was no immediate need for anymore newborns for the rest of the day, so it was ankl- shackles for the poor dude.

Above: after a series of communications with Ziiyid and Abdullah via CB radio, we finally caught up with the main pack of the camels, although these packs are so out-of-control fast that when we finally drove up to where they were crossing the street through some random little down, I only had enough time to shoot a picture of the tail end of the caravan. Just a few moments before I snapped this image, there were about a gazillion camels crossing the street! (If you look closely, you will notice one of the days-old baby camels, a little white one, crossing the street. It only takes about 3 days before the new borns can fully travel/walk the 60-miles-per-day journeys on their own.)

The whole seen was rather entertaining actually. As we approached the camels nearing the road crossing, several of my students had to jump out of their cars and direct traffic on both sides of the camel stream in order to stave off any potential car-camel collisions. Just imagine the total damage one of these giant animals would do to your car if you ever hit one!

Side story: while we were driving through the desert we chanced upon this random little town where our convoy of sport utes had to fill up with gasoline. So we all jumped out of the trucks while the Indian gas station attendants filled up the car and picked up a few little treats and drinks inside the little convenience store (although the convenience stores in this country are totally different from the one's in the West - they sell really bizarre things like stuffed animals and tea kettles). So anyways, as we were piling out of the cars, I noticed a little truck pulling into the gas station driven by a traditionally dressed Bedouin guy with his family stuffed in the truck and a towering monstrosity of belonging looming ominously in the bed of the vehicle. It was a mass of tarps, tents, canvasses, colorful cloths all tied together with worn ropes from which dangled pots, pans, tea kettles, and all sorts of trinkets. Well, I thought it would have made a great picture, but knowing the sinful nature of photography, especially among the "untravelled" Saudis in this country, I figured I'd keep my camera safely stored under the front seat of our landcruiser. So after picking out a few things to drink inside the store, I ran outside and around to the back of the gas station to utilize the restroom, which consisted of a sha'nasty little porcelain hole in the ground with no toilet paper (only the traditional hose to clean yourself). Whatever, a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do when a guy's gotta do it. But that's not the point here. The point of this little anecdote is that while I was away in the hammam (bathroom) a little international misunderstanding was occurring out front between Everett and the Bedouin guy who pulled up in his truck.

Rewind: just as I had walked around the back of the gas station, Waleed said to Everett, "Look at the Bedouin people. Maybe you want a picture?" Well, needless to say, of course Everett wanted a picture, but having watched me nearly get arrested several months earlier at the Riyadh Museum for photographing in public, he was quite aware of the not-so-smart idea of photographing people in this country. But Waleed said it would be fine and was like, "Just take out your camera!" so Everett cautiously did just that.

BAD MOVE: taking out his camera was perhaps the worst thing that Everett could have done, because apparently the man's wife was in his car, fully cloaked of course, which set this Bedouin man's temper aflame!!! He raced straight over to the car and started screaming at Everett in Arabic (keep in mind, Everett doesn't speak a lick o' Arabic) and tried swiping his camera away from him, which of course in Saudi Arabia a Bedouin man has every right to do if he feels that his wife is being violated by another man! So Everett is standing there basically having this mini freak out when the rest of my students walk up and are like, "What's going on here???" and they start telling the Bedouin guy to chill out. Well, Mr. Bedouin wasn't too hip on being told by a bunch of corrupted Saudi youth that it was perfectly fine for this disrespectful Western infidel (Everett!) to violate his wife by photographing her (although that wasn't his intent). So suddenly this guy pulls open his robe and reveals a curved dagger he had strapped to himself - which many desert men have here to use for purposes of self-defense and/or conflict resolution - and the situation was quickly going from bad to worse.

And of course the whole time I'm all just, "Tra la la la la!" in the bathroom out back, totally oblivious to the drama unfolding outside.

So after a couple of unsuccessful swipes at Everett's camera and a couple defensive motions by my students to deflect this guy's not-so-subtle aggression, Waleed demanded that everyone get in their cars and get the hell out of there before anything really bad happened.

Well, all dumb and happy I come strolling around the corner fully refreshed and say, "Hey guys! That bathroom sure was raunchy!" to which Everett sternly replied, "Daniel, get in the car right now." And I'm all, "Why is everyone in such a rush all of a sudden?" and Everett just screamed, "GET IN THE GOD DAMNED CAR, DANIEL!!! THE DUDE'S GOT A KNIFE AND WE GOTTA GET THE $#@& OUTTA HERE!!!"

So I'm like, "HOLY SHIT!!!" and I literally jumped into the truck and we all burned rubber out of there like nobody's business!!! And as you can guess, as we flew out of that one-camel town, Everett was just sitting in the front seat of the truck totally quaking in his boots and was all shaky - understandably so. Not to rub it in or anything, but I just leaned over to Everett and said, "Now you know how I felt when I was confronted and nearly arrested at the museum. It's not a good feeling, is it?" to which Everett replied, "No, not really."

Welcome to conservative Saudi Arabia.

Or better yet, maybe I should say, welcome to intolerance, confrontation, and aggression - traits found in all countries and all cultures to some degree or another.

Well, daggers and death threats aside, we managed to get over that little run in with excitement rather quickly and continued our drive to re-intercept the camels, which by this time - late afternoon - had arc'd their way north through the desert. The plan was to locate them and then sit down for dinner and relax for a little while before returning to the city.

Above: at our new camp, faces only a mother could love!

It didn't take too terribly long for us to locate the herd by CB Radio and before we knew it we were back in CamelVille. By this time it was around 4:30 p.m. and the camels were just moseying around grazing here and there and getting ready to settle in for the night.

Once we all climbed out of the trucks, Fahad came over to me and said, "Daniel, would you like to ride one of the camels?" so I said, "OK!" and we walked over to the meanest, grumpiest, unhappiest creature with four legs this world has ever produced. As we approached the white-ish brown beast, he just looked at us with a look on his face like, "Don't you even THINK about hopping on my hump, or it's going to be the last hump you ever hop on!" As he sat there in the dirt on all four legs, resting on this chest pad (partly visible left), he just gnarled as us and pulled his gums back to reveal a rather intimidating bucktoothed growl. "I'm supposed to actually ride this thing?!?" I thought to myself. "Get on!" the Sudanese master motioned toward me, so I walked up to Mr. GrumpyCamel, lifted my right leg and just hoisted myself atop the giant oaf. And surprisingly, I made it on without falling off! "Phew! I did it!" I said to myself in praise, "Now, that wasn't so hard!" Just then the camel decided to STAND UP and I was like, "WOOOOOOOAAAAAAAH!!!" as he raised his giant rump straight into the air and I lurched forward nearly flying off the front! Then his front legs shot straight up and I nearly flew off the back! I tell ya, I felt like I was on the Arabian version of a buckin' bronco!

And needless to say, everyone was rolling over laughing at me as I was being thrashed around by this monster flailing back and forth on the verge of death! Obviously I was a novice at this sort of thing and I don't think that fact slipped by anyone! But it was fun nevertheless and I was excited once the camel settled down and stood there long enough for Everett to snap the above picture of me. :-)

Fortunately, disembarking the camel wasn't nearly as complex as getting on the damned thing because I kind of knew what to expect this time, only in reverse. Since Mr. BadAttitude wasn't exactly in the mood to get back down on his knees for the convenience of me hopping off, the Sudanese master had to whack his stalky legs with a big ol' camel stick which caused the camel to let out this wicked grumble and then he collapsed his joints down to the ground. I tell ya, I must have looked like Wiley Coyote (sp?!?) when he's chasing the Roadrunner and then suddenly flies off a cliff, floats there in mid-air for a few seconds, then suddenly falls to the bottom of the canyon. I was like, "DOH!!!" and then before I knew it, SWOOOOSH, I was back on the ground.

Talk about a hard landing!

Shortly after hopping off the camel we were all called to a canvas which had been thrown on the ground and was where dinner was to be served. As we all got in a big circle, the hired assistants carried in a giant platter of fresh goat on a bed of rice into the center of the circle, and then we dug in. I was kind of hoping that they would cook up Monsieur Le Camel, but instead they broiled that poor little goat who was chained to the water tanker earlier in the morning. At least he went to good use and we fully ravaged him!

Above: here are a couple of beautiful camels. Just look at their long, slanky necks and how curved they are, and their eyes are pretty wild too. (Hmm, I wonder if the camel is a relative of the giraffe?)

Well, as the sun began to set, the giant water truck which had been at our camp the evening before came driving up over a hill and rolled over to where the camels were grazing. I thought, "What is that pesky water truck doing following us around everywhere?" when suddenly this long tube came jetting out of it and was set into a giant bucket placed next to the truck and all this water came splashing out. "Ah ha!" I thought, and realized there were around 200 thirsty camels in this caravan and that since there weren't any natural watering holes to be found out here water had to be trucked in to quench them all. Well, let me tell you, these camels saw that water and ran over to it like it was the last water on Earth and began slurping it down like crazy! Majed said to me, "Daniel, step away from the truck - thirsty camels can be a bit grumpy if you get to close, and those giant rear legs and feet of theirs really hurt if they should happen to come in contact with your face!"

So I backed off.

But it was cool to just watch them guzzle down all this water. When they were finished, a series of other buckets were brought out and set around the makeshift camp which the Indian and Sudanese workers poured copious amounts of grain into. When the camels were finished with their water, they walked over to the buckets and feasted on dinner. It was wild just watching all these giant creatures, who stood significantly taller than me, chow down on their grain. The strongest and grumpiest camels ate first and then the more docile ones ate only once the larger ones had had their fix. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures because I didn't want to flash them with my camera and give 'em any reasons to kick me across the face.

As Everett and I meandered around the feasting camels and watched as our Saudi hosts walked out to the edge of the camp, pulled out their prayer rugs, faced westward and began praying toward Mecca for Sundown Prayer, we talked about all the wild things we had experienced in the previous 24 hours. Driving out into the Saudi desert in a Lexus Landcruiser speaking Arabic and English, listening to Rhythm & Blues on the stereo, hanging out with a group of camel herders, and sleeping in a canvass tent surrounded by 200 camels. Then we made bread in a fire, chased camels and goats across the great expanses of Arabia, relaxed atop a giant sand dune, were confronted by some dagger wielding man in a truck, and were now surrounded by 7 and 8 foot tall camels slurping down buckets of water and grain. It just all seemed so surreal, and so cool. Never in a million years would we ever have imagined ourselves doing something like this, yet here we were.

Yes, life is amazing.

With that thought in our minds, we thanked our hosts for the wonderful experience, hopped back in the trucks, and as the sun slipped completely out of the sky, we rolled through the desert and returned to Riyadh.

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