Camel Beauty

Camel Beauty Competition Oman

Muscat in Oman has been hosting a “Camel Beauty Competition”. I had never heard about anything like that before. Most probably because I don’t consider the camel to be a thing of beauty, though the girls think they are cute.

Camel Beauty Pageant Competition Muscat

The showground is about 50km away from Muscat city and daily timings were published as 7-11am so we had time for a quick breakfast before going to learn all about camel beauty and to see it for ourselves. We arrived at nine and the contest was already over, but they let us into the ground anyway where we could immediately spot the most beautiful winner by the crowd of photographers jostling for the best angle.

Camels Bums in Camel Beauty Competition Oman — camels bums and girls

We went to see other camels – the losers. They all seemed quite nice to me, though the winner was almost snowy white and those others were normal camel colour. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to be worried about their status of not having won.

dubai camel and handler, камел — camel and his handler

Each camel had a barefoot handler in snowy dishdasha who was leading her (or maybe it was him? Yeah, I actually never thought that there could be such a thing as a beautiful male camel) on the leash during the contest. I tried to learn from one of the guides what makes a camel beautiful, but due to my limited Arabic and his limited English, I learnt nothing.

Then I asked uncle google and discovered that a beautiful camel has a large head with a big nose, a droopy lip, long whiskers and long eyelashes. The last one is the only thing which for me is pretty. The girls had already been doing their own internet research and explained that camels have two layers of eyelashes to protect themselves from the sand and they can close their nostrils during sandstorms for the same purpose.

Prizes for camel beauty competitions in Saudi this year totalled more than $50 million, and for these stakes apparently some unscrupulous handlers were disqualified for the use of Botox on camels. If they have so much spare Botox in Saudi, maybe I should put it on my itinerary.

camel contest abu dhabi camel — camels bums, camel with wide spread legs is having a pee

If you don’t like Camels you can always drive to Ras al Jinz and see turtles