Camels

Today was the Camel Wrestling competition not far from where we live. As stated in Wikipedia, "Camel wrestling is a sport in which two male camels wrestle in response to a female camel in heat being led before them. ..."

A folkloric Anatolian tradition, now specific to Aegean region ...

I really do not understand what makes it a sport cause almost everyone leaves the arena completely drunk, but indeed a very colourful event where all camels are colourfully decorated. The camels with their mouths full of saliva bubbles, either push one another or make rounds until one surrenders or is forced to kneel. The loser often will run into the crowd of spectators causing panic as onlookers try not to get trampled. This is the fun part in my case :) where there is a higher risk on people than the animals themselves. I really hate to see how people take advantage of the poor camels especially in their weak moments. Another thing I very much dislike the most is that they sell camel sausages (as you would see on the forth picture below) while they BBQ them for the spectators. The poor camels wrestle while breathing the smoke of their cooked relatives or once acquantances and trying real hard to win the heart of the female that will continue their race.

I had been to one of the camel wrestling festivals again held at the same place some years ago and had taken some pictures ...

Now that we're talking about camels, I really have no idea how they ended up at the neighbouring territory behind but we had some very happy moments with the visiting camels a few years ago which is not very usual to see any more. In fact, it was the only time I have seen them over the six years that we've been living here.