..And the Times They Are A-Changin'

Today began blustery and wild with the trees outside my window playing havoc with the wind....I almost imagined I was back in the UK!! except the flame trees gave it away!

GK decided a drive was in the offing so we could really give the cars a run after their long standing holiday in the car park....so we headed out to one of our all time favourite haunts to catch up on our four legged friends at the camel race track!

Horror of horrors...it sat resplendent in ghostly silence...abandoned and alone...not a trace of life, four legged or two legged to be seen anywhere! The racing colours that adorned the tented grandstand looked faded and uncared for.

The Majlis, the seating area, the track and the gardens all images of a former glorious past. Left behind.... the stark reality that modernity is perhaps the only thing on Dubai's agenda at the moment. Billboards heralding the rise of yet another magnificent city within a city....that of Meydan, the soon to be horse racing capital of the world. Usurping everything in its path.....covering the vast acreage of what once was the thriving hub of a bedouin livelihood.

Those of us who would rise early to join with the camel racing fraternity and

.....share in a breakfast of soft drinks and cake, courtesy of the Sheikhs,
.....cheer loudly as the lumbering 'ships of the desert' headed for the winning post
.....watch the jockeying for places as trainers and owners tracked them in their 4 wheel .....drives,
.....listen enthusiastically to the hooting and shouting of expletives that only camels .....understand
.....applaud the courageous young jockeys riding for all their worth(some only 3yrs old)
.....mingle with the keepers and handlers as they re-harnessed their camels when the .....races were all done....

...think differently.

We know only too well in our hearts....

No amount of modernity, however grand, will ever be able to recapture those sights and sounds or the culture that was once the essence of the bedouin Arab and his trusted friend.....the racing camel. To him a symbol of life or death in this otherwise harsh terrain

They seemingly now remain as just a moment in history to be written about, whenever time allows, confined ignobly to the pages of a guide book.

So sad :(

Tomorrow is another day....and one with a quest...where is the camel race track now? Did it really disappear or has it emerged somewhere else within the borders of Dubai?

Sleeping on it!

Happy Blipping Everyone