Camel train A camel train is a series of camels carrying goods or passengers or both in a group as part of a regular or semi - regular service between two points . Although they rarely travelled faster than the walking speed of a man , camels ' ability to withstand harsh conditions made them ideal for communication and trade in the desert areas of northern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula for centuries , though they could only travel on routes with sufficient sources of food and water . Camel trains were also used sparingly elsewhere across the globe but during the 20th century they have been largely replaced by motorized vehicles or air traffic . Africa , Asia and the Middle East . By far the greatest use of camel trains occurs between North and West Africa by the Tuareg , Shuwa and Hassaniyya , as well as by culturally - affiliated groups like the Toubou , Hausa and Songhay . These camel trains conduct trade in and around the Sahara Desert and Sahel . Trains travel as far south as central Nigeria and northern Cameroon in the west , and northern Kenya in the east of the continent . In antiquity , the Arabian Peninsula was an important route for the trade with India and Abyssinia . Camel trains have also long been used in portions of trans - Asian trade , including the Silk Road . As late as the early twentieth century , camel caravans played an important role connecting the Beijing / Shanxi region of eastern China with Mongolian centers ( Urga , Uliastai , Kobdo ) and Xinjiang . The routes went across Inner and / or Outer Mongolia . According to Owen Lattimore , who spent five months in 1926 crossing the northern edge of China ( from Hohhot to Gucheng , via Inner Mongolia ) with a camel caravan , demand for caravan trade was only increased by the arrival of foreign steamships into Chinese ports and the construction of the first railways in eastern China , as they improved access to the world market for such products of western China as wool . Australia . In the English - speaking world the term " camel train " often applies to Australia , notably the service that once connected a railhead at Oodnadatta in South Australia to Alice Springs in the center of the continent . The service ended when the train line was extended to Alice Springs in 1929 ; that train is called " the Ghan " , a shortened version of " Afghan Express " , and its logo is camel and rider , in honor of the " Afghan cameleers " who pioneered the route . North America . The history of camel trains in the United States consists mainly of an experiment by the United States Army . On April 29 , 1856 , thirty - three camels and five drivers arrived at Indianola , Texas . While camels were suited to the job of transport in the American Southwest , the experiment failed . Their stubbornness and aggressiveness made them unpopular among soldiers , and they frightened horses . Many of the camels were sold to private owners , others escaped into the desert . These feral camels continued to be sighted through the early 20th century , with the last reported sighting in 1941 near Douglas , Texas . Camels were used from 1862 to 1863 in British Columbia , Canada during the Cariboo Gold Rush . Camel caravan organization . While organization of camel caravans varied over time and the territory traversed , Owen Lattimore ' s account of caravan life in northern China in the 1920s gives a good idea of what camel transport is like . In his " Desert Road to Turkestan " he describes mostly camel caravans run by Han Chinese and Hui firms from eastern China ( Hohhot , Baotou ) or Xinjiang ( Qitai ( then called Gucheng ) , Barkol ) , plying the routes connecting those two regions through the Gobi Desert by way of Inner ( or , before Mongolia ' s independence , Outer ) Mongolia . Before Outer Mongolia ' s effective independence of China ( circa 1920 ) the same firms also ran caravans into Urga , Uliassutai , and other centers of Outer Mongolia , and to the Russian border at Kyakhta , but with the creation of an international border , those routes came into decline . Less important caravan routes served various other areas of northern China , such as most centers in today ' s Gansu , Ningxia , and northern Qinghai . Some of the oldest Hohhot - based caravan firms had a history dating to the early Qing Dynasty . Camels . Caravans originating from both ends of the Hohhot - Gucheng route were composed of two - humped Bactrian camels , suitable for the climate on the area , although very occasionally one could see single - humped Dromedaries brought to this route by Uighur ( " Turki " , in Lattimore ' s parlance ) caravan people from Hami A caravan would be normally composed of a number of files ( , " lian " ) , of up to 18 camels each . Each of the rank - and - file caravan men , known as the " camel - pullers " ( , " la luotuo - de " ) , was in charge of one such file . On the march , the camel - puller ' s job was to lead the first camel of his file by a rope tied to a peg attached to its nose , each of the other camels of the file being led by means of similar rope by the camel in front of it . Two files ( " lian " ) formed a " ba " , and the camel - pullers of the two files would help each other when loading cargo on the camels at the beginning of each day ' s march or unloading it when halted . To do their job properly camel - pullers had to be experts on camels : as Lattimore comments , " because there is no good doctoring known for him [ a camel ] when he is sick , they must learn how to keep him well . " Taking care of camels ' health included the ability to find the best available grazing for them and keeping them away from poisonous plants ; knowledge of when one should not allow a camel to drink too much water ; how to park camels for the night , allowing them to obtain the best possible shelter from wind - blown snow in winter ; how to properly distribute the load to prevent it from hurting the animal ; and how to treat minor injuries of the camels , such as blisters or pack - sores . The loading of camels was described by Mildred Cable and Francesca French in their book " Through Jade Gate and Central Asia " ( 1927 ) : « In the loading of a camel its grumblings commence as the first bale is placed on its back , and continue uninterruptedly until the load is equal to its strength , but as soon as it shows signs of being in excess , the grumbling ceases suddenly , and then the driver says : " Enough ! put no more on this beast ! " » Caravan people . A caravan could consist of 150 or so camels ( 8 or more files ) , with a camel - puller for each file . Besides the camel - pullers the caravan would also include a " xiansheng " ( 先生 , literally , " Sir " , " Mister " ) ( typically , an older man with a long experience as a camel - puller , now playing the role of a general manager ) , one or two cooks , and the caravan master , whose authority over the caravan and its people was as absolute as that of a captain on a ship . If the owner of the caravan did not travel with the caravan himself , he would send along a supercargo — the person who will take care of the disposal of the freight upon arrival , but had no authority during the journey . The caravan could carry a number of paying passengers as well , who would alternate between riding on top of a camel load and walking . Camel - pullers ' salary was quite low ( around 2 silver taels a month in 1926 , which would not be enough even for shoes and clothing he wore out while walking with his camels ) , although they were also fed and provided with tent space at the caravan owner ' s expense . Those people worked not so much for the wages as for the benefit of carrying some cargo — half of a camel load , or a full load — of their own on the caravan ' s camels ; when successfully sold at the destination , it would bring a handy profit . Even more importantly , if a camel - puller could afford to buy a camel or a few of his own , he was allowed to include them into his file , and to collect the carriage - money for the cargo ( assigned by the caravan owner ) that they would carry . Once the camel - puller got rich enough to own close to a full file of 18 camels , he could join the caravan not as an employee but as a kind of a partner — now instead of earning wages he would be paying money ( around 20 taels per round - trip in 1926 ) to the owner of ( the rest of ) the caravan for the benefit of joining the caravan , sharing in the food , etc . Diet . The caravan people ' s food was mostly based around oat and millet flour , with some animal fat . A sheep would be bought from the Mongols and slaughtered every now and then , and tea was the usual daily drink ; as fresh vegetables were scarce , scurvy was a danger . Besides the paid cargo and the food and gear for the men , the camels would also carry a fair amount of fodder for themselves ( typically , dried peas when going west , and barley when going east , those being the cheapest types of camel feed in Hohhot and Gucheng , respectively ) . It was estimated that , when leaving its point of origin , for every 100 loads of merchandise the caravan would carry around 30 loads of fodder . When that was not enough ( especially in winter ) more fodder could be bought ( very expensively ) from dealers who would come to the caravan route ' s popular stopping places from the populated areas of Gansu or Ningxia to the south . Cargo . Typical cargo carried by the caravans were commodities such as wool , cotton fabrics , or tea , as well as miscellaneous manufactured goods for sale in Xinjiang and Mongolia . Opium was carried as well , typically by smaller , surreptitious , caravans , usually in winter ( since in the hot weather opium would be too easily detected by the smell ) . More exotic loads could include jade from Khotan , elk antlers prized in Chinese medicine , or even dead bodies of the Shanxi caravan men and traders , who happened to die while in Xinjiang . In the latter case , the bodies had been first " temporarily " buried in Gucheng in light - weight coffins , and when , after three or so years in the grave the flesh had been mostly " consumed away " , the merchant guild sent the bodies to the east by a special caravan . Due to the special nature of the load , higher freight rate was charged for such " dead passengers " . Speed . According to Lattimore ' s diary , caravan travel in Inner Mongolia did not always follow a regular schedule . Caravans traveled or camped at any time of day or night , depending on weather , local conditions , and the need for rest . Since the caravan traveled at the walking speed of the men , the distance made in a day ( a " stage " ) was usually between , depending on road and weather conditions , and distances between water sources . On occasions several days were spent in a camp without going forward , due to bad weather . A one - way trip from Hohhot to Gucheng ( by Lattimore ' s reckoning ) could take anything from three to eight months . Smaller caravans owned by Mongols of the Alashan ( the westernmost Inner Mongolia ) and manned by Han Chinese from Zhenfan , were able to make longer marches ( and , thus , cover longer distances faster ) than the typical Han Chinese or Hui caravans , because the Mongols were able to always use " fresh " camels ( picked from their large herd for just a single journey ) , every man was provided with a camel to ride , and loads were much lighter than in the " standard " caravans ( rarely exceeding . These caravans would typically travel by day , from sunrise to sunset . Such a camel train is described in the accounts of the journey made by Peter Fleming and Ella Maillart in the Gobi Desert in the mid - 1930s . Logistics . It was necessary for camels to spend at least two months between long journeys to recuperate , and the best time for that recuperation was in June – July , when camels shed their hair and the grazing is best . Therefore , the best practice was for a caravan to leave Hohhot in August , just after the grazing season ; upon reaching Gucheng , weaker camels could stay there until the next summer by grazing whatever vegetation is available in winter , while the stronger ones , after a few weeks of recovery on a grain diet ( grain being cheaper in Xinjiang than in eastern China ) , would be sent back in late winter / early spring , taking along plenty of grain for fodder , and returning to Hohhot before the next grazing season . Vice versa , one could leave Hohhot in the spring , spend the summer grazing season in Xinjiang , and come back in the late fall of the same year . Either way , it would be possible for the caravan people and their best camels to make a full round trip within a year . However , such perfect scheduling was not always possible , and it was often the case that a caravan sent out from Hohhot in August would end up staying on the other end of the route until and through the next grazing season , coming back to Hohhot about a year and a half after its departure . Loss of camels ; camel hair trade . On almost every journey quite a few camels in each caravan would be lost . On a particularly exhausting section of the trip , an animal already worn out by many weeks of walking , or accidentally poisoned by eating a poisonous plant , would kneel down and not rise anymore . Since killing a camel was considered bad karma by the caravan people , the hopeless animal — whose death , if it was owned by an individual camel - puller , would be a huge material loss for its owner — was simply left behind to die , " thrown on the Gobi " as the camel men would say . Since camels moult in the summer , camel owners received additional income from collecting several pounds of hair their animals dropped during the summer grazing ( and shedding season ) ; in northern China , the camel hair trade started around the 1880s . Later , caravan men learned the art of knitting and crocheting from the defeated White Russians ( in exile in Xinjiang after the Russian Civil War ) and the items they had made were transported to eastern China by camel caravan . Although the hair shed by the camels or picked from them was of course considered the property of the camel owners , caravan workers were entitled to make use of some hair for making knitwear for themselves ( mostly socks ) or for sale . Lattimore in 1926 observed camel - pullers " knitting on the march ; if they ran out of yarn , they would reach back to the first camel of the file they were leading , pluck a handful of hair from the neck , and roll it in their palms into the beginning of a length of yarn ; a weight was attached to this , and given a twist to start it spinning , and the man went on feeding wool into the thread until he had spun enough yarn to continue his knitting " . Cultural associations . " In The Desert " ( " Верблюды " , lit . = " camels " ) is a " traditional Russian " song , performed by Donald Swann . He provides an English - language translation after every line . The song is extremely repetitive ( " Another camel appears on the horizon " ) , rendering the translation largely redundant , " a whole caravan of camels is approaching " . Fritz Mühlenweg wrote a book called " In geheimer Mission durch die Wüste Gobi " ( part one in English " Big Tiger and Compass Mountain " ) , published in 1950 . It was later shortened and translated into English under the title " Big Tiger and Christian " ; it concerns the adventures of two boys who cross the Gobi Desert .