Until then, I had only paid short visits to our moving herd in the mornings before they went out to forage. During those visits, besides drinking camel milk tea, the special perk had been to be nuzzled – kissed – by friendly female camels. The camels of the Raika very decidedly disprove the familiar image of the species as ill-tempered, obnoxious, stubborn, stupid and spitting creatures. The females radiate calm and serene dignity in combination with a curious and inquisitive streak that often gets the better of them. If you stand quietly among them, they cannot withstand the temptation to check you out gently, carefully approaching you, then bending down their long neck, taking a whiff through the long slits that are their nostrils and then deploying their very movable upper lip to rub your cheeks and give you a cameline kiss. Baby camels are not quite as refined and may prefer to nibble your ear or rummage around in your hair. But beware: if you extend your hand towards them, as you would for a dog or horse, it will immediately break the spell and make the noble camel turn its head away. Instead, behave as if they were the Queen of England: wait until you are approached and don’t touch. Camels will only interact with you on their own terms and that’s part of what makes them so fascinating. Forget swimming with dolphins or espying a tiger on a jeep safari. For me, there is no bigger thrill than a tete-a-tete with a well-bred camel.

I have always been filled with wonder at how a couple of Raika herders could move around with, say 50 camels, and make them behave like an orderly school class waiting at a zebra crossing. They respond to verbal ‘commands’, or rather gentle encouragements, to disperse and browse, to assemble and move on, to catch up with the rest of the herd or to wait for their turn at a watering point. This is not unique to the herds of the Raika, as Bedouin camel herds are exactly the same.

But this pleasant and cooperative behaviour cannot be taken for granted. It’s invested in the herder and is the result of skilled and purposeful relationship building, often over generations. This herd-building process had not happened with the camels we now had at hand. We did not have a functional herd, but an assortment of individual animals who were nervous and unhappy. It was an utter disaster. Because they did not know us, they did not trust us, and we did not have the communication skills to change their minds and convince them that our intentions were honourable. None of the camels was inclined to show any of the intimacy that I had revelled in earlier. Far from it, I could not even get close enough to handle any of them. If I came within a metre, they would turn around and walk to a safe distance, from where they would look down at me with a supercilious stare, saying something like: ‘Who are you? I don’t know or trust you!’ Taking a cue from their mothers, the babies jolted away awkwardly whenever I appeared on the scene, as if I was a bogeyman. The worst were three young males who were always on high alert. Suffering from mange, a highly contagious skin disease, they urgently needed treatment, but capturing them for this purpose took hours every morning and involved some kind of lassoing that only enhanced their fears.

The rescued camels presented a different set of problems. They were docile, apparently having pulled carts in their previous lives. But they were neither interested in the company of other camels, nor did they know how to browse from a tree. They were used to having feed placed in front of them. They refused to go out grazing and integrate with the others. We had to keep them in a paddock on our campus and purchase expensive feed for them.

When we finally found a herdsman, this did not improve the situation much. For many years, he had worked as a village cow herd, but he did not have a knack for camels, although he craved their milk. Otherwise a sweet man, he was short-tempered and instead of talking to the camels in a friendly and soothing way, he frequently yelled at them, making things even worse. The status of our ‘herd’ was a huge embarrassment, and when a group of camel herders visited us from Jaisalmer, they just shook their heads in disbelief, remarking that ‘We can see that these camels are not happy.’

Some months later, our herdsman was injured rather severely by a camel and went home to recover. The story went around that the camel had crushed him when he wanted to milk her. Eventually, we struck gold and found Madhuram from a long line of highly reputed camel and cattle breeders. Because of a lack of income, his family had already sold most of their camels and Madhuram had had a stint working in Mumbai which he hated. Happy to be able to work with camels again, he quickly managed to rebuild their trust and, within months, some of the young camels had become cuddlers, sneaking up to unsuspecting visitors and using their long, flexible necks to stick their spongy noses into their faces.

(Excerpted with permission from Hoofprints on the Land by Dr Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, published by Chelsea Green; 2023)