The Sandpit - Al Ain road trip

Before living in Dubai, my Aunty had lived in Al Ain for 2 years. Al Ain is in the Abu Dhabi Emirate, about an hour and a half from both Dubai and Abu Dhabi towards the Oman border. It is interesting driving out there, passing the camel race track, massive sand dunes, and being able to tell when you cross Emirates because all of a sudden there are palms planted in the middle of the road to make the drive more prettier.Upon arriving in to Al Ain after traveling through mostly flat/duney desert, amazing rocks/mountains start to jut out of the sand. A very pretty change from the flat land we'd be going though.

Heading to the camel markets was first on the agenda, and you could tell we were approaching them as the number of camels in the back of ute's and small trucks were almost every second vehicle. Pulling up we were quickly pounced on by 2 local's eager to show us around. We were shown baby camels, big camels and they even felt the need to show us mating camels. I was ever so grateful that the 7yo with us didn't ask me what they were doing.

As we walked around all the different types of camels, ones for eating, ones for breeding (complete with live show) and ones for racing, we were allowed to stop and feed them. Oh, did I mention camels stink? Wish I hadn't taken to opportunity to pat them. I am sure the smell was just baked on me from walking around the markets anyway. It was upon standing there feeding the camel, that I became aware of a conversation going on behind me between my Aunty and the local guy. It went something like this:

Man: She have husband?

Aunty: No

Man: She have man?

Aunty: No she is mine 

*which of course, means that any deals can be done through her if anyone is interested in buying me

Man: Hmmm ok, you take 2 camel's for her?

Aunty: *long pause* no I think she is worth more than 2 camels, plus my brother wouldn't be happy if I only sold her for only 2 camels

My "almost" husband

I hope that they were at least fast racing camel's that he was offering. Also, can I just say, I think if he had said 3 camel's I would be married by now, and my Aunty would have three smelly camel's in her backyard. Thankfully the rest of the walk around the markets didn't bring any more offers of camels, goat or sheep. It was an interesting experience in seeing the local Emirate men driving up in their 4wds, and having the farmers leading the camels out in front of them to see if they liked what they saw, all without them stepping out of the air-conditioned car. If they like what they saw, a price would be agreed on and then the camels would be chucked in the back of a ute and transported to their new home.

Showing a camel to a potential buyer

After that we got shawarma's (local traditional sandwich's) and headed up to Jebel Hafeet, which is the second tallest mountain peak in the UAE, which looks out over Oman and Saudi Arabia, and also down to Al Ain itself. Unfortunately for us it was a very hazy day, and we could only see down to Al Ain.

Looking back over Al Ain from Jebel Hafeet

Final stop of the day was to the Al Ain zoo. The zoo was very nice, with a massive field for all of the African wildlife to run around on, and all of the animals looked happy and healthy. It was amazing the amount of lion's that were in the zoo, it seemed as though every second enclosure were lions. After seeing a plaque outside one of the enclosures thanking a Sheika for donating the lions from a personal zoo, it all seemed to make sense, most of these lion's would have also come from private animal collections, and then donated to the zoo once they had become bigger and more aggressive. Oh to have that much money to have pet lion cubs in your own personal zoo!