Well, actually, it’s camel season the year round, here in the Gulf. The aficionados talk about the ships of the desert all the time.

But winter is when it goes to another level, in the UAE, because of the Al Dhafra Festival, where the biggest “camel beauty contests” are held each year.

The news this time around?

Appreciating and judging camel beauty is no longer the preserve of old guys and traditionalists.

The National’s Anna Zacharias has decided camel beauty is a young man’s game now, in a shift from recent years.

She opened her story from the festival with these words:

“The must-have accessory for a teenager in Madinat Zayed this season is not the latest smartphone or a new car. Rather, it is a decal of a beautiful camel, plastered across their windscreens and surrounded by lines of poetry.”

Camel decals!

Wonder if those will catch on, outside the region.

Uh, no.

Camels are huge in local culture, of course, and buying and selling them and deciding which are the most attractive … will be big out there on the edge of the Empty Quarter in the coming days.

We attended the festival, nearly four years ago. We missed the beauty contests that day, but we did have a fine reception in a carpeted tent, and experienced some stomach-churning “dune bashing” in a monster SUV.

Ah. Good times.