Category Archives: Animals I love a good zoo – and Singapore Zoo is one of the best. I know there are ethical concerns around keeping animals in captivity, and I’ve talked about these before (see: A Tale of Two Tarongas). Singapore Zoo ticks all the positive boxes: it actively works towards wildlife protection and conservation of biodiversity, it […]  “Send us more camels!” Last year when I was in Jordan, that was the exhortation of every second person I met, once they heard I was from Australia (see: Desert Rains and the Seven Pillars). Who knew we actually sell camels to the Middle East? I knew there were feral camels – at least 300,000 […]  The Kazakh people of Western Mongolia practically live on horseback. For hundreds of years, Kazakh nomads had been roaming across the Altai Mountains – between what is now Mongolia and Kazakhstan – riding their small but hardy Kazakh horses (similar to Mongolian horses, but daintier), herding their fat-tailed sheep, horses, cattle, goats, Bactrian camels, and […]  The desert is a magically beautiful place. It is also unforgiving. You have to be tough to forge a life in these hostile, barren expanses where almost no precipitation falls. Bedouin or “desert people” – from the Arabic badawī – have made the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East their home for thousands of years. Even […]  The annual Golden Eagle Festival in Bayan-Ölgii Province, Mongolia is a recognition of the Kazakh practice of hunting with eagles and an attempt to foster these skills into the future. But it is more than that: it is a celebration of the rich cultural traditions of the between 100- and 200-thousand ethnic Kazakhs who live here […] |
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