My trip to the Sawan Camel Races!
Today we get dirty with the locals and go out to the races, not with horses but with the good old camel. I have been looking forward to going to a camel race for months, and at long last we made the time to get out and go visit the Sawan track in Ras Al Khaimah (RAK). The Al Sawan camel racetrack is located just off of the airport road in the Al Sawan area, although I would advise going a little early in case you get yourself mixed up. Another disclaimer that I would give you is try and find someone who knows something about the races beforehand if you can, or at least learn some Arabic because as we learned the hard way: you will not get any direction at all and unless you're willing to ask around you just need to know what's happening.
So as far as I know the Al Sawan race track is the only track in RAK and from what we could tell I believe that the races are held every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday and in our case they started at around 7:30am. Also (sorry for all the extra set up) if you would like a commentator we discovered that for this particular race track there is a dedicated radio channel 105.9 that only turns on for those 2-3 hours of those three days and has the typically super energetic local commentator. You also shouldn't expect to really understand who is winning unless like I said you know someone who knows something because in general the whole event isn't always clear to visitors. Even if you get the radio channel on and you understand Arabic the commentator refers to the camels with their owners' names and there is no score card or name chart, so unless you know all the people in the race you will almost definitely have no idea who is actually doing well.
The racing camels are often a mix of male and female camels but the females are usually given priority because they have more stamina and better tempers than the male camels (also male camels are more tasty, so... yeah). The prizes for winning competitions very according to the age of the camels, the size of the track, the societal status of the owners, and sometimes the gender of the camels. They range from small amounts of money to brand new cars, and sometimes if the race is high profile enough then one of the sheikhs from the ruling family will traditionally buy the winning camel for an exorbitant amount. Although all the factors matter, if gender is factored then females get the better deal for the reasons I previously mentioned. For example one of the biggest and most prestigious camel races held in the UAE is the annual Sheikh Hamdan Bin Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Camel Race Festival. For that race genders are separated and the winning male camel's owner gets a decorative dagger and eight hundred thousand dirhams, whereas the winning female's owner gets a gold plated sword and one million dirhams.
So moving on to our trip, when we got there it was around 6 in the morning and we had no idea what we were doing. After asking around a bit we were told that the race that day would be starting at 7:30 and then after some extra prodding we found where we had to enter the race track road, which is just a paved road running alongside the race tack. Then after driving up and down the road trying to figure out where we should go, we ran into a huge crowd of people with their camels crowded around in front of the smaller of the two race tracks that were there. So we pulled up there and watched as the 60-100 camels were being saddled up with their robot jockeys and their owner-specific colored clothing.
The camels were lined up along the sides of the race track in sets of three which we discovered comprised of two young siblings who would be racing, and their grandfather who is brought along to basically keep them in line (as grandpas do). Most of the camels have been trained since they were young to go racing and in fact you could see really young camels trotting with their grandpas along the other race track that wasn't in use at the time getting themselves used to the environment. Still some of the camels being lined up for the race (especially the boys) were not super excited about having the robotic jockeys strapped on to them and there was some upsetness. In the end the grandpa camels would give the troubled youngsters a "get over it" look and they would more or less pipe down.
In any case, after we looked at the camels a bit and drove around asking people exactly what was and what would be happening, we discovered that everyone just sat in their cars and drove along the side of the track when the races start. So we got in position and then after a little while a single camel from each team was lead into a line up with each other and a net was stretched in front of them to block their view.
After everyone was in their cars and the camels were in the starting position the net was lifted and the camels charged down the race track with the fleet of cars on either side driving along beeping incessantly at the camels to corral them forward.
After the camels reached the finish line they were led out of the race track and de-saddled while the car armada turned back around and rushed to re-align themselves in time for the next race. So just like that the same thing was repeated again and again a total of fourteen times, at which point we had decided it wasn't worth trying to stick with the Mecca of cars and had limited ourselves to sitting on the side and watching them all run/drive by while we listened to the extremely energetic commentator. Then we heard the announcer read out the number of the race and add that it would be the last one for that day so we watched to see who would get the award, but much to our surprise as the last race arrived at its end the black Friday crowd of cars simply dispersed like ants that had just been startled seeming to almost literally just drive off into the desert in random directions. Upon asking one of the stragglers what was supposed to happen next, we were informed that there was nothing, which makes me assume that either this was a qualifying race for a bigger event or it was just such a low caliber that no awards were handed out.
So that is that with a snap of the fingers the race was over and so is this post. Hope y'all enjoyed and while I did record one of the races that we witnessed and I would appreciate it if you checked my vlog out, I will also put a link below to watch an official channel broadcasting a camel race so you can watch it with a bit more quality. Anyway thanks for reading and I'll see you guys next time.
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