 An animal with a long-curved neck, deep-narrow chest, and a single hump with a longer hair length on the throat, shoulder and hump is characterized as a dromedary camel. The size of the hump becomes smaller to non-existent during the time of starvation. They live an average life of 40-50 years and are found mainly in Africa & the Middle East.
Being herbivore the main food of a camel is thorny plants and dry grasses.
Dromedaries usually form groups of 2-20 individuals in which there is one male member and one to many females, subadults and young. The male member is the dominant member of the family group he only directs the family from the rear while the females take turns leading. Dromedaries tend to travel by walking single file.
After the gestation period of 15 months Camels have 1 offspring at a time. Before reaching adulthood young ones are raised for a period of 2 years. Camels reach the sexual maturity at an age of 4-5 years when they start mating.
The dromedary camel which provides human with milk, meat, wool, leather and fuel from dried manure is used as a beast of burden by humans.
Department of Tourism, Art & Culture of Rajassthan has organized a lively and colorful Camel festival in Bikaner every year in the month of January. The festival starts with a colorful procession of camels decorated with ornaments against the beautiful rugged backdrop of the Junagarh Fort. Then it gets forwarded to the open sand-spreads of the ground and then comes the breed competition, the tug-of-war contest, camel dance and acrobatics etc. These camels show amazing footwork, dancing gracefully to every small to big direction of their trainers. There comes hundreds of tourists and thousands of local residents to see this combination of man and animal where the camels decorated like bridal, bridles, jewelled necks, jingling anklets and long lanky camel shadows on sand.
They end with a traditional gathering in the evening with famous artists of Rajasthan and local folk performers. The city of Bikaner gets lighted up with the jubliant skirt-swirling dancers and the wonderful fire dance and the dazzling fireworks.
 The annual Camel fair on the low hills outside Pushkar cannot be compared with any other market in that place. One desert hill is the reserve of draught cattle and other for Rajput horses and the rest of 300 hectares of area is covered with camels which dominate the state. 50,000 camels were brought to Pushkar for sale by the Rajka in the year 2004.
The bright turbaned Raika whose main concern is access to grazing. A huge area has already lost for the traditional grazing due the irrigation agriculture and after the orders from Supreme Court of India who has banned all grazing animals from national wildlife reserves. The camel herders opposed this order as the area of Kumbhalgarh Sanctuary in Pali and Udaipur is the place for grazing for thousands of camels since ancient times. The mangroves in Gujarat which were the seasonal resource for these camels but now even that is closed. Thousands f young female camels were sold at pushkar in 2003 for their flesh to illegal dealers who smuggle their meat to Bangladesh and Middle East.
One third of the total population of camels in the world is in India. It has reduced down to 5,00,000 which is just half of what it was years before and it is still falling. It is a great loss to Rajasthan as the loss of camels is not only the loss of an animal but for people in Rajasthan it is a loss to 2,00,000 human lives who earn there living through these camels only, 10,000 Raikas who breed them and many more thousand who earn from different products of this animal like milk, hair etc.
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