We had to go, didn’t we? A camel festival? On the Saudi Arabian Peninsula? That’s like going to see thoroughbreds in the middle of Kentucky’s Blue Grass region. Elephants in Kenya. A place where they know their animals like nowhere else.

And didn’t we have to go … when they bill the Al Dhafra Camel Festival as the largest gathering of camels in the world?

Had to go. Couldn’t pass up the chance to see some 23,000 of the grunting, misshapen beasts in one sandy patch of the sprawling and nearly dead Western Region of Abu Dhabi.

So we arranged things with Benjamin, our trusty Filipino cabbie, to get a ride out to the town of Madinat Zayed, the emirate’s answer to Barstow (except there’s no Las Vegas at the other end),  some 100 miles or so into the desert and near the verge of the infamous Empty Quarter … And before it was over, we did nearly everything we wanted to do at the festival.

And if you couldn’t call it a truly authentic experience — not with hundreds of late-model SUVs parked all over the grounds — it certainly was an echo of the nomadic recent past of the region … one that was still real just 50, 60 years ago.

So, first. The Welcome area.

We didn’t know what was inside the fence. We assumed it was some sort of visitors area.  Perhaps a map of the place — which we already realized was spread out over maybe 10 square miles — and a schedule of events.

Instead,  it was a traditional Bedouin welcome for strangers. Which, as always, is known for its astonishing generosity, extreme courtesy and surprising (to Westerners) comfort.

We entered the gate, and off to our left was a three-sided tent, about 30 yards wide, about 10 yards  deep and 5 high. (It’s photo No. 1 in the series of 20 photos that Leah has posted here.)

It was a little intimidating, actually. Four guys in traditional dress — dishdash gowns and checked keffiyah headdress — looking at the guy in a white dress shirt and khaki pants. They were in their element; I was completely out of mine.

But even as I was nearly overwhelmed by my awareness of the potential for social disaster, given what I do not know about traditional Bedouin practices, not to mention the Arabic language … I also felt that once I had turned the corner the biggest insult I could contrive was to turn around and leave.

As I approached the tent, one of the men got up and came out to meet me. He shook my hand and said “Salaam aleikum” and motioned for me to take a seat “please” in one of the overstuffed chairs that lined the long back side of the tent.

I said “thank you a lot,” mixing in a “shokrun” when I could remember, and tried to remember to smile.

I had barely taken a seat when my host, whose name was Saif, opened a box and offered me some cubed dates. I took two. I like dates, but in small quantities; they are profoundly rich and almost overpoweringly sweet. But dates are very much a Bedouin tradition, one of the few fruits obtainable in the vast desert that was their home.

Soon, a servant wearing genie-like clothes (puffy pants, a colorful vest, turban) appeared carrying an urn. Saif asked me if I would like something of whatever it was in there (I assumed tea or coffee) and I nodded yes. I was handed a small cup, and the servant poured in some hot coffee. Not as gooey as Turkish coffee, but certainly not cut with milk, either. Thick, but sweetened.

I sipped that, and about then Leah arrived, having gone back to the cab to get the camera. She was seated next to me, which actually is quite progressive in this region, considering that a few generations ago allowing a woman to sit in a tent with men would have been unthinkable. She received dates, too, and coffee, and then we both were offered and accepted heated and sweetened milk.  No, not camel’s milk,  we were told.

Meantime,  I was getting a crash course in etiquette. To ask for more coffee, extend the cup. To indicate you are finished with coffee, extend the cup and tip it left to right,  rapidly. Before eating food, dip your hand in the bowl of water that has just been set out. And if you want some of the fruit from the gigantic plate of it on the table ahead of me … wash that in the bowl, as well.

Saif said he spoke no English but, actually, he spoke more than a little. We were able to communicate that …

–Camels would be displayed at a viewing stand just outside the tent at 4 p.m.

–No, there was no falconry demonstrations at the camel festival, but we could come back next Wednesday and go up the road another 50 miles to the oasis town of Liwa (which truly is on the edge of The Empty Quarter) and see them there.

–We were impressed by the enormous rugs that had been placed down on the sandy ground to create a colorful floor, and by the cozy chairs, and even the flat-screen TV that three other men were watching. A closed-circuit set up of the camel competition pens.

While there, two more Westerners joined us, an attache at the German consulate in Dubai and his wife. (Our cabbie didn’t join us. He decided he didn’t want to go,  and waited in the shade near the entrance.)

After 20-25 minutes of sitting in the shade, and eating sweets and getting a caffeine buzz … Saif motioned for us to follow him to a small structure close to the entrance of the Welcome area. Inside were small-scale models, under glass, of projects coming to the Al Gharbia region (which is how the Western Region usually is known, now). At Ruwais, at Delma Island, just off the coast. Housing and commercial areas and industrial areas. This is a country with lots of plans, most of which come to fruition. (Unlike, say, the desert between San Bernardino and Las Vegas, where “coming soon” signs are crumbling into dust.)

While we looked about, a photographer with the festival took our picture.  For all I knew, we were in the presence of one of the Abu Dhabi royals. If we were culturally attuned, maybe we could have known by Saif’s manner of dress.

Then he led us (“Come.”) to the viewing area where, at 4 p.m., the camel auction would take place, he said.

Camels are very big business here, not surprisingly. Camels rank right up there with any temporal (as opposed to spiritual) expression of Arabian Peninsula culture. Inextricably tied to almost all forms of activity. Like horses in the Old West of the U.S.

Fast and beautiful camels are prized. Highly prized. Our paper, a few days ago, ran an item about how more than $13 million in camel sales had been made, at auction. Only halfway through the event. And how one particular prized camel had sold for something like $3.2 million.

(Also,  some of the sheikhs here are interested in cloning some prize stud camels. True story.)

We thought we were done, but we weren’t.  Saif disappeared for a moment, and we began wandering toward an exit on the increasingly hot and sunny day … when he came back out of a room and gestured us toward a Toyota Prado SUV parked in the sand.

Well, sure. We’ll go for a ride.

I thought perhaps he would take us to the hotel we could see up on a rise, the one charging about $400 a night during the 10-day festival … or perhaps over to the race track …

Instead, he was taking us on a bit of “dune-bashing” … as the Brits  and Aussies seem to call it.

He drove across some flat, compacted sand … and out into the dunes just west of the sprawling festival encampment.  He accelerated as we climbed up the side of a dune and careened down the back.  He made a point of looking for sand that wasn’t really deep and drifty, so we wouldn’t get stuck … but it also was a four-wheel drive vehicle, and if we could keep up our speed, we would be OK.

Leah remarked on the smoothness of the ride, considering the massively uneven terrain. Mega-shocks, I suppose.

It was very close to a thrill ride. A roller-coaster sort of experience that included a sobering dash down a particularly steep bit of sand. The back end got loose a time or five, and Said steered into the skid, as race drivers are taught to do, and kept us moving.

I was nauseated within five minutes of this. I had a stomach full of sugar and coffee, and we were diving and rising like a plane in heavy turbulence. It was fun, but if it didn’t end soon …

Said pulled to a stop at the top of the highest dune in the area. He stopped the car. We all got out. It was amazingly queit. The wind was coming up, and in the distance was nothing but dunes, gently undulating, shifting in the breeze. (The photo of the man in white, with his headdress blowing, was taken by Leah while we were stopped there.) If it wasn’t quite The Empty Quarter (because at least one oasis town, Liwa, was between us and the Rub al Khali), we decided then and there it was certainly a lot like it.

He drove us back to the welcome area, at a slower pace, pointing out the “race track” on the way, and noting where we could park there.

Earlier, he had presented each of us with a gift — a box of “royal quality” stuffed dates from Liwa, nicely wrapped and with the eagle seal of the emirate of Abu Dhabi pressed on it.

Saif was kind and helpful, and no more direct than he needed to be, and quite patient.

We found Benjamin, who had napped a bit in the cab before moving over to a shady spot, and we drove to the race track. We parked and got directions to the “family” area; women are not allowed into most of the grandstand, which is for men only. As we walked past an ambulance, Benjamin waved at the attendant standing outside it. “He is a Filipino,” Benjamin explained. “Many Filipino people work as nurses here.” Ethnic solidarity.

We went through a tunnel and entered the grandstand. Behind us were about 20 rows of seats in a temporary structure with plenty of covering (for shade) … and in front of us were maybe a dozen pens packed with camels.

On the left, were the lighter-colored Asayel camels. The sort that would seem familiar to zoo visitors. On the right were the dark-colored Majahim camels (which originate in Saudi Arabia, apparently).

During the course of the festival, camels are raced, auctioned and judged for beauty, both individually and in groups. All the camels in the enclosure were female.

And what makes for a beautiful camel? Long lines, mostly. A long neck, long legs, long eyelashes. (I am not making this up.)

We thought perhaps we were about to see some racing. Benjamin was hoping for it. But I was worried, because the track around the pens was short, not more than a half-mile, and on the one occasion when I witnessed a camel race (in Qatar, in 1993), I was impressed by the enormity of the “track.” The race was one enormous loop of 3-4 miles, and observers followed the loping camels in SUVs and pickup trucks.

Instead, what I believe we saw was … a group beauty contest. After sitting for about 45 minutes (along with perhaps 500 Emirati nationals) … several pens of camels were opened and every camel inside — and each group appeared to be about 25 strong — was led out and around a half-loop of the track.

Apparently, judges need to see the camels move, and see them proceeding in some sort of sequence, to determine the attractiveness of the herd. The Arabs cheered and clapped from time to time, but I had no idea what they were cheering. The arrival of someone or some development on the track?

Benjamin told us, before we left, that he had never seen a camel. After watching them from the grandstand, he decided “they look like dinosaurs.” And they do, actually. Think brontosaurus, with a long neck and small head and a curved back.

After an hour or so (which included more coffee from an ornate urn, as well as a bottle of water, and more dates, all given to us at no charge) … we determined there would be no racing.

It was pushing 100 degrees, and it was midafternoon. We decided we would see the “traditional souk” on the way out. It was constructed atop a hill, in a square, each shop built out of palm fronds. All the merchants were women, or children. They sold baskets and hats and some clothes and portraits of current royals but no food, and my stomach could have benefitted from some flat Arab bread.

Leah got some pictures of two little girls who mugged for the camera … and we headed back out to the car.

Benjamin drove us back, and we dozed in the back seat, a bit sunbaked and even dehydrated from sitting out, and from the hot, dry wind that was whipping up sand. We were back in the city by about 5:30, about seven hours after we had left, and about a 350-kilometer (about 210 miles),  Dh560 cab ride (about $140) from start to finish.

It was instructive. As SoCal natives who have made plenty of runs to Las Vegas, the desert didn’t bewitch us quite in the way it does for most Europeans, who come from green and well-watered environments and go almost limp at the concept of a desert. We know dry. We know sun- and sand-blasted.

But we benfitted from everything else. We saw the camels. We met the Emiratis. We drank coffee and heated milk and ate dates and careered among the dunes in an expensive 4×4. We expanded our understanding of contemporary Arab/Bedouin style and preferences a bit — even if we have lots left to absorb.

We had fun, and we learned. That’s a winning combination.