In thّe land of camels. (ٍِعلى ارض الجمال)

I thought I should give a little context into the camel here. The camel is ubiquitous in Oman and not just in the desert. As you see in these pictures, camels just roam free and they are not bothered at all by humans -- in fact, they like investigating our camp sites, coming close and (as the picture below shows) eating our leftovers!



Aren't camels cute animals? They just have very expressive faces I think.

Here in Oman, you will see camels everywhere when you drive between cities -- but don't think that these are wild camels -- according to our Omani friends, all camels in Oman are owned by families, and are marked by their owners to show who they belong too -- but they are left alone during the day to roam free for food. At night they return home to sleep -- according to our Omani friends there is no risk of camels being stolen though (as I thought there might be) because they are all marked, but more over, because they are not worth anything -- there are no real uses for camel's now except for the milk and meat, and those are not that valuable (since, again, camels are ubiquitous) and everyone now eats other forms of meat (beef and chicken) and drinks cows milk. So when I asked about whether the camels could be stolen, I was told that that wouldn't happen, because "what would someone do with a lot of camels?"


Cute nonetheless!

I have to admit that after posting this the first time, one of the students here at the University told me that camels are in fact worth thousands of dollars (though I think she may be mistaking your average roaming camel and specially bred racing camels, but I can't be sure, I really have no idea how much camels are worth!)