Camels are disappearing in India, threatening a centuries-old nomadic culture

Chennai, IndiaHis father and grandfather were camel herders, so Bhanwarlal became one too. “Our camels are an extension of our families,” says Bhanwarlal, 35, a member of the ethnic group called the Raika, who believe they have a divine calling from the Hindu god Shiva to care for camels in the northwestern state of Rajasthan.

“Our children bond with them from when they are young. They live with us and die with us,” he told National Geographic in a phone interview.

When the dry season arrives, Bhanwarlal—who goes by one name—and his fellow pastoralists herd their flocks of sheep, goats, and camels, decorated with tinkling neck bells and multicolored pom poms, up to a thousand miles across the acacia-dotted Thar Desert to their summer pastures. Clad in their signature crimson turbans and white tunics, Bhanwarlal and his ancestors have been leading this semi-nomadic life for centuries.

Now, the annual ritual is endangered by a cascade of threats, the most severe being a decline in camel numbers. India’s total camel population—all of them descendants of wild dromedary, or Arabian, camels—decreased by 37 percent between 2012 and 2019, according to the latest count, the 20th Livestock Census, published in 2019. Current estimates suggest that there are fewer than 200,000 camels left among the nine breeds, and 80 percent of these animals live in Rajasthan, where they’re bred to provide transport, wool, and milk, as well as plough fields.

Yet a recent surge in development in western India has brought new roads and vehicles that have replaced the lanky pack animals—often dubbed the “ships of the desert”­—as the main method of moving people and goods. Irrigation projects, such as the Indira Gandhi Canal, India’s largest, have led to an increase in farmlands, and together with the installation of new wind and solar farms, there is less open space for camels to graze. Camels seem to have become less popular with the public, too: Camel festivals, which once featured folk music and dance, food and craft stalls, and brisk camel sales, have all but disappeared.

Further imperiling the tradition is collapsing tourism amid the pandemic and a 2015 state law banning the export and sale of male camels, which included a blanket ban on the sale of camel meat. (The Raika consider eating camel meat a violation of their religious beliefs.)

The law was prompted by the smuggling of the Raikas’ camels to other countries, where there’s demand for their meat, says Ilse Köhler-Rollefson, a German veterinarian who cofounded the nonprofit Lokhit Pashu-Palak Sansthan in 1996 to protect the Raika and their livelihoods. But this law has been controversial, she says. “It’s not practical to restrict the sale of domesticated animals, which is inextricably connected to profitability,” says Rollefson, also a National Geographic Explorer. “Male camels have to be sold for the Raikas to make a living.”

Facing these obstacles, Bhanwarlal, whose family lives in Malari village, has decided to send his children to school and encourage them to make lives for themselves outside of camel herding.

“The only thing that is still sustaining us is sale of camel milk. Unless the government gives us some incentives, sets up camel-milk dairies, and allows us to sell male camels, we are doomed,” he says.

Rajasthan’s animal husbandry department did not respond to National Geographic’s requests for comment.

The next superfood?

Camel milk has become a trendy drink in India, touted by many nutritionists as the next superfood, says Dharini Krishnan, a dietician in Chennai. It has low amounts of sugar, is rich in vitamins and minerals, such as vitamin C and potassium, and is an alternative for the lactose-intolerant, Krishnan says. (Go inside the world’s largest collection of animal milk.)

Researchers are investigating the potential therapeutic benefits of camel milk to human health, though such studies have been too limited to make any conclusions. One study on a small group of type 1 diabetics in Bikaner, Rajasthan, for instance, showed that camel milk could reduce a person’s need for insulin.

Making camel milk a source of income for camel herders, however, comes with its own set of challenges. To transport raw camel milk to cities, it must be pasteurized and refrigerated, a costly process, says Sumanth Vyas, principal scientist of the ICAR-National Research Centre on Camel, based in Bikaner, Rajasthan.

“Camels were never meant to be reared for their milk, and camel milk as a business is difficult, because of the logistics of demand and supply being very far away from one another,” Vyas says.

Such obstacles motivated Rollefson to found the Kumbhalgarh Camel Dairy, near Sadri, in 2010. The Raika-run dairy collects about 130 gallons of milk a week from various herders, who manually milk the females standing up, allowing their calves to drink from teats on the other side. The milk is frozen, packed with ice, and sold to various markets in the cities. (Read more about Rollefson’s work promoting camel milk.)

In 2016, Shrey Kumar co-founded Aadvik Foods, a Delhi-based startup, with milk sourced by Raika camel farmers in Rajasthan. Aadvik started selling frozen camel milk though online orders, the first company in India to launch branded camel milk as well as camel milk powder. “We wanted to make it accessible to people of all economic groups, and this is why we started making camel milk powder,” Kumar says. “Camel milk is a niche, but growing, market.”

Boosting camel herders

Camel milk dairies have proven profitable in other nearby states, including Gujarat, where camel herders from the Kutch region partnered with Amul, a Gujarat-based dairy cooperative, which launched camel milk in 2019. Besides camel milk, which has a shelf life of six months, Amul also sells camel milk powder, camel milk ice cream, and chocolates. 

To supply the growing demand, 60 to 70 camel herders milk nearly 2,000 camels, a business valued at between 40 to 50 million rupees (around $538,000 to $673,000 U.S. dollars), says RS Sodhi, managing director of Amul.

Ramesh Bhatti of Sahjeevan Trust, a nonprofit that works to protect camels in Gujarat, says anecdotal observations suggest Gujarat’s camel population has increased due to the rising interest in camel milk, though there has not been an official census. “There is definitely a demand for camel milk, and right now more than we can supply,” Bhatti says. (Read more about how people consume milk around the world.)

Still, developing a camel-milk industry isn’t the only solution the Raika need to get by, Vyas warns.

With the 2015 law choking off their main line of income, they also need more access to grazing lands for their camels, as well as better support from the government, for instance by encouraging the use of camels in transport, promoting sustainable tourism using camels, and creating government-run dairies.

“We have bank loans for all kinds of vehicles,” but when it comes to supporting herders in hauling their goods via camel, “there is hardly any financial help,” he says.

As for Bhanwarlal, he says keeping camels is permanently intertwined with the Raika culture.

“This is what our ancestors have done, and I hope that we are able to continue it too,” he says. “It’s a sacred vocation and cannot be allowed to die.”