1,000 Camels Walking Down the Road in Oman

One day many years ago, on my second trip to the Dhofar region of Oman, I was out in the middle of nowhere with my guide Faisal. Specifically, we were driving somewhere between the enchanting little city of Salalah on the Arabian Sea and a sparsely inhabited desert village called Mirbat. Abruptly, Faisal drove off the road and parked in the dirt.

Ahhhh! he yelled, hitting the steering wheel with his hand.

What?! I asked, looking at him.

Camels! he shouted.

At that time I looked out the windshield to see what he was shouting about. I then saw approximately 1,000 camels slowly lurching down the road straight at us. Just a few camel herders skipped along beside them, skillfully keeping them from wandering off.

Surging with excitement and joy, as I’m sure you can imagine, I jumped out of the car with my camera. At that exact time, the camels reached the car. Six or seven deep, they walked calmly and quickly past, focused on the road ahead. They were all impressively well behaved and focused on their journey.

A few minutes later, the camels finished methodically lumbering past the car. While they were around us, I had of course had taken every photo and video that I possibly could. Climbing back into the car, thrilled beyond belief, I sat down next to Faisal. He was now was tapping his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel.

Why are you upset with the camels? I asked.

Because, Faisal replied, we had to wait.

For me, this massive herd of wild camels in the Omani desert was one of the most exciting things I’d ever seen in my entire life. For an Omani, who sees camels everywhere he goes all day every day, it was an annoyance.

This camel experience demonstrates how people from different parts of the world can interpret the same event in dissimilar ways. People from the Middle East have very different experiences than people from people from the West, so Faisal and I saw the camels from completely different perspectives. It didn’t mean that one of us was right and the other wrong. It simply meant our own cultures and lives, our own personal histories and experiences, caused us to see and think in our own individual ways.