Camels and remote lands

After my first camel safari the length of Somalia, I was hooked.  There is only one thing better in life than loading your camels in the pre dawn darkness, with the embers of last nights blaze slowly dying away and another day in the deserts of  Africa and  Asia to look forward to; and that is making the same journey by the light of a full moon.

Camels are so much more than transport. They are perfectly adapted  to semi arid environments; their soft padded feet  suited to the fragile soils and their selective browsing quite unlike the devastation caused by overstocked herds of cattle and flocks of goats.

Breakfast

As for personality, when you get to know them, each has its own character and temper, and if mistreated they will remember and wait for that moment when you are all on your own and no one is looking.  

Camels are bred for a wide range of characteristics be it milk production, riding or pack camels. In the Middle East a good racing camel can be worth a small fortune. For me they are simply the best excuse to travel in and experience remote lands.

one big camel 

Perfectly adapted for semi arid environments.

30,000 feet over the Sahara - Flying in Africa & Central Asia

Across Africa and Central Asia international flights are by and large uneventful, with  regional hubs such as Abidjan and Nairobi perfectly OK.   However, mention old favourites such as N’djili and Murtala Muhammed and hardened field workers will wilt at the memory.

In fairness many of the truly awful anecdotes hark back to darker times.

Murtala used to be nothing more than an organised crime shakedown from the plane to and including the taxi outside.  No one who knew would go anywhere near the place. You either flew to Kano or over to Togo and drove back across the border.

These days it is a revelation in comparison. This was certainly helped by a shoot to kill policy, to deter the habit of blocking international aircraft taxiing on the ramp and then robbing the cargo hold as passengers looked on through the plane windows.

N’djili in DRC certainly has seen better days. Today it is OK getting in if you retain a steady nerve, though more of a challenge getting out. 

International flights from the better organised hubs can still be interesting.

Two from memory are a hard landing at night in Jomo Kenyatta. The pilot of the twin prop came on the tannoy to announce that whilst we may have considered it a hard landing he thought it was excellent, as the airport had just had a total power failure including the landing lights.

Having found our way into the customs hall by a set of stairs (it was pitch black), I spent the next hour  standing over the customs officer with my torch whilst he stamped everyone’s passports.

At Dushambe the plane was wildly overloaded.   The standing passengers forced off through the front exit, promptly ran to the back and returned through the rear exit. This continued in suffocating heat until the guards finally closed the front exit and stood with pointed rifles at the rear.

A vivid memory was an airbus flight from Abidjan on a European airline that thankfully no longer exists. Suffice to say it was the national carrier for a country created in 1831.

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Somewhere over the Sahara on a beautiful moonlit night one of the engines made the sort of noise you really do not want to hear at 30,000 ft, on a two engine plane.

Then slowly and inexorably we began to descend.

Absolutely nothing was heard from the flight desk as crowds began forming at the windows pointing excitedly. Time passed the dunes grew larger, and ground speed increased.  By now the passengers was really excited, some were kneeling and praying.

The sound of the landing gear going down caused even more panic as belly landings are not performed well with wheels extended. Looking out the windows there was absolutely nothing to see apart from high moonlit dunes, speeding past just below us. Then suddenly we flared and with a loud bang we were down.

All was still and calm. There was no communication from the deck. Time passed until an exit door slowly opened and a head appeared in the darkness. We were all marched down a set of steps and into a small passenger holding area. The crew disembarked separately and vanished forever.

It turned out that we were in the Algerian Sahara. Our onward journey to Europe was finally accomplished in one of the decrepit Russian planes that abound Africa.  After the fall of communism, they just never went home.

The pool by the Jacaranda - Nairobi Kenya

Travel has inevitably included many nights in far flung hotels ranging from rat infested hovels  to historic gems. Favourites have included Deans in Peshawar and the beach huts in Zanzibar - with revolving ceiling fans at neck height.  In Liberia Mamba Point was at one time one of the few safe place to stay in the country with nightly rates fixed accordingly, and Abidjan's Hotel Marly endlessly playing Celine Dion’s album 'D'eux' .

For Kenya, The Fairview was the traditional colonial hotel in Nairobi exuding character, with the  balcony of  The Norfolk  the place to meet.  However the old Jacaranda remains my favourite. That Jacaranda no longer exists in its old form. It was taken over by new owners  revamped and is now a modern hotel. Back then every day was a new adventure.

The Jacaranda became the base for many aid workers going in to or from Somalia during the fighting of the early 1990’s.

Sometimes water flowed from the taps and sometimes it did not.   One day a broken water mains was repaired when everyone had gone out for the day leaving their non functioning taps on, resulting in a spectacular waterfall from the top balconies with the torrent pouring out under the doors. 

On another day the pool was a sea of shampoo bubbles. It was the only place left to wash. It took some time to clean the pool out and refill it for its normal use.

The Jacaranda sometimes employed newly qualified staff fresh from catering college. 

Two stood behind me one evening having a blazing row - should I be served from the left or the right. Eventually the girl threw the bowl of soup to the floor and stormed off; I remained unfed.

I also managed to incur the worst bout of food poisoning ever and spent a night doubled up, but these are minor hiccups compared to the effect the Jacaranda had on those just back from the Somali bush.

The place was an oasis of calm in hectic Nairobi; the food by and large great; and the staff welcoming. It's attractiveness grew exponentially when camping out in some forsaken corner of unloved Somali desert.

The one distressing quirk was the outside door the staff   used to enter the kitchen. It always shut with a loud bang.  It did so with a group recently evacuated from Somalia sitting by the pool. You have never seen so many reflex dive for cover.

Northern Kenya

For what now seems a  long time ago I was fortunate to live with pastoralists in Northern Kenya.

I worked on  on a stock substitution programme to introduce camels to their traditionally cattle based society.  Cattle are more than livestock in this part of the world. They are financial banks on the hoof and for many  societies the bedrock of the curse of lobola (the bride price) which is an endless source of grief across Africa.

Occasionally Wilfred Thesiger used to wander up from his base at Maralal for conversation and just to ensure I was still alive. He was a great man and an outstanding writer, but  could never be persuaded to pack his own camels.

Camels and sand dams are two of my passions. In the right context they are both environmental superstars for arid lands. The more familiar boreholes for watering livestock do work, but more often open a pandora's box of conflict over ownership and access rights.

In those days local news travelled slowly and the endless cycle of cattle theft between the Turkana, Pokot and everyone else was fought out with spears.

Camel scraping out a seasonal dam

Today the land is drier and competition for resources has increased, with automatic weapons replacing spears as the weapon of choice.

This however remains a unique land that  shape's perspective on your own life.  The sense of light and space  is immense and the people are of a special quality to both survive here and enjoy this wonderful place.