Jordanian Tours »Camel Trekking Tours of Jordan

Camel Trekking Tours of Jordan

camel trekking picture The camel is the ship of the desert – it can survive in the worst circumstances. Since the dawn of time the camel has been the best means of transport for people in the desert. This is still the case today.

Some people think that the camel is a bad-tempered animal. On the contrary, it is one of the easiest animals to control – even a child can control hundreds of them because they always follow the first camel wherever he is being led.

Camels are beautiful to look at with their big, liquid eyes and long fluttering eyelashes, and their stately, haughty manner. There are lots of interesting facts about them:

They do not store water in their hump nor in misnamed “water cells“ in the stomach.
They can live for up to 40 years.
The earliest known camels lived 38 million years ago.
They have a keen sense of sight and smell.
They do not have a fixed breeding season and the young, when born, can stand up almost immediately.
The camel‘s hump is a reserve of fatty tissue and is not supported by any bony structure. When a camel is in good condition its hump is tall and firm; in poor health the hump becomes soft and flabby and may disappear as the reserve of fat disappears.

Enough of straightforward facts – let‘s dispel the myth about camels storing water. If they do not, how can they go so long without water?
Three ways – all adaptations;

When deprived of water they excrete less water in the urine.
Regulation of body temperature – in mammals normal body temperature is 100oF (38oC), just like humans. We maintain this temperature by sweating and by evaporation of water from the lungs. A camel’s body temperature has a wider range and not until it reaches 105oF (41oC) does the camel begin to sweat. As a result, less water is lost from the body.
Finally, loss of water in most mammals by sweating causes the blood to thicken. In contrast, much of the water from the camel’s blood is replaced by water from other tissues.

camel trekking picture To summarise: the camel can lose 25% of its body weight without problem (a man losing one eighth of his body weight is in serious trouble).

Today camels are of great economic importance to the Arabs and the people of central Asia. They not only provide them with a means of transport, but also supply them with milk, food and hair to weave into clothes.

In our trekking tours we follow the ancient trade routes, passing by many interesting caravan stations and archaeological sites, experiencing the open desert landscapes during the day and sleeping under the stars at night, listening to real silence.

Our caravans leave early in the morning and end when we feel we want to stop to eat or to relax and spend the night wherever we stop. You will have the chance to understand the camel better when you are with them the whole day in the desert and you will discover just how friendly the camel really is.

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