A camel trek is the one part of a desert trip almost nobody can picture in advance. Is it uncomfortable? Do you need experience? How far do you actually go in a day? We have led these caravans for years, so this is the ride as it happens, hour by hour, from the moment you put your foot in the stirrup to the moment the campfire is lit.
Before you mount
No riding experience is needed. None. A camel walks; it does not trot or gallop in a tourist caravan, so there is no falling-off problem to solve and no reins to master. Your guide walks on the ground beside you, leading the animal, and a cook and second hand travel with the caravan.
The one thing to know is how the ride begins. A camel never stands while you get on. It kneels, you swing up onto the saddle, and then it rises, back legs first. For a second you pitch forward, then rock back as the front lifts. It feels dramatic for about two seconds and then it is simply comfortable. Lean back, hold the frame, and let it happen. It never gets worse than that first rise.
The first hour
Fresh out of the village, the caravan settles into its pace: roughly 4 to 5 km/h, a slow, rolling walk with a rhythm your body tunes into faster than you expect. The motion is less a bounce than a sway, and after twenty minutes most people stop thinking about it entirely.
The landscape does the talking. You leave the last palm gardens and move onto the hamada, the dark, flat stone plateau that flanks the Drâa, where the horizon opens in every direction. The sand underfoot is firm here, the light is long, and the only sound is the soft shuffle of feet and the creak of the saddles.
Through the middle of the day
By late morning the heat builds, and this is when the caravan does what caravans have always done: it stops. We break in the shade of the tamarisk trees for lunch, with flatbread baked in the hot sand and the sweet mint tea that nomads pour from a height.
The rest is not padding. The middle of the day is the wrong time to move in the desert, for the animals as much as for you, and the pause is where a trek turns from a ride into a rhythm. Stretch, drink, sleep for twenty minutes if you like. Nobody is in a hurry.
The afternoon
The second ride is where the desert changes character. Depending on the route, the hamada gives way to the beginnings of the erg, real dunes, the sand turning orange and soft underfoot, the caravan winding single-file along the crests. Everything slows.
We usually reach camp in the late afternoon, which leaves the best of the day: the animals unloaded, the tents up, and a walk to the nearest high dune for sunset. On our shorter sunset rides this is the whole experience in miniature, a 30 to 50 minute ride out to a crest to watch the light go.
What a camel trek is not
It is not fast, and it is not a challenge to survive. It is not a race across the desert, and it is not for anyone who wants to cover serious distance in a day. At 4 to 5 km/h a three-hour ride covers maybe 12 to 15 kilometres, and that is the point: the pace is the experience. If you want ground under you and horizons without fences, this is the way to move.
If the sound of a full caravan sounds right, our four-day camel route across the hamada and erg is the honest version of it, four days, three nights, riding morning and late afternoon. For a longer immersion, our ten-day caravan life from Zagora to Tinghir travels with the animals for days on end, and our five-day oasis camp at Sacrée Oum Laalag settles you at the foot of the dunes between rides.
Sources
- Camel trekking: riding technique, caravan pace and terrain, Serenity Morocco Tours, Camel trekking
- Sunset camel ride and camp arrival, Sahara Desert Adventures, Staying in a desert camp
- What a desert camp provides on a trek, Umnya Desert Camp, What to pack for the Sahara
