Word: camels
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...face of it, the camel is hardly a lovely creature. Mark Twain in Innocents Abroad compared it to "an ostrich with an extra set of legs." And yet over five days on safari in northern Kenya, these beasts of burden enabled us to enjoy an exhilarating, almost old-fashioned adventure...
...real threat comes from people - both outsiders and insiders. Ber might at first seem unchanged by modern life. Tuareg traders still arrive on camel, bearing giant bricks of salt which they transport across the Sahara for weeks - just as traders did centuries ago when the area's manuscripts were originally written. In Mahmoud's mind, too, local attitudes remain unchanged. Locals remain fiercely distrustful of outsiders, he says, including Mali's government in Bamako, with which locals have been at odds for years. Many people still jealously guard family heirlooms as a tangible form of security. "We won't sell...
...kangaroo accidentally gets hit by the train, you don't really feel it," conductor Scott Fels informs me as the scrublands and giant termite mounds of the Australian Outback whisk by. "But if the train drivers see a camel on the tracks, believe me, they get away from the windows...
...Camels in the Outback? Yes indeed. There are estimated to be over a million of these ungulates roaming at will through the desert, descendants of the original camel caravans led by Afghan drivers in the 1860s and 1870s. It was these migrant cameleers who helped opened up the continent's arid interior to travelers. The country's most famous train, the Ghan, www.gsr.com.au, is named in their honor. (See pictures of Australia's hidden islands...
...fine Australian wines are served. But it's not all sitting, drinking and gazing through a window: the Ghan stops twice for half-day tours like exploring sacred Aboriginal sites around Alice Springs or floating down the deep, rocky Katherine Gorge. Keep an eye out for any passing camel herds...