Photo : Jerome Bon from Paris, France — CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Giza · Birqash
Birqash camel market
Cairo's camel market, early in the morning: animals, sticks and dust.
Greater Cairo's camel market settled at Birqash, in farmland north-west of the city, after moving out of Imbaba in the 1990s. The animals come up from Sudan along the caravan route, finishing the journey by lorry, and change hands here between breeders, dealers and butchers; the rest of the market sells goats, sheep and donkeys. What you are looking at is a livestock market and not a show: camels often hobbled by one foreleg, packed in rows, herders turning them with a stick, shouting, and dust that never settles. Buyers size the animals up, argue, seal the deal with a slap of the palms, and nothing is written down.
The extra bit
Come early, on a Friday: that is the big day, and the serious business is done before nine — Sunday comes next. The market holds on the other mornings, but thinly. Take a taxi for the day from Cairo and agree the return before you get out: do not count on finding a way home out there.
Know before you go
Plainly: the way the animals are handled upsets a good many visitors — sticks, hobbles, animals sold for meat. If that will get to you, don't come; this is not a place you leave cheerful. Nor is it somewhere to buy: it is not a souvenir market. Closed shoes, clothes the dust cannot ruin, cash. You may be asked to pay at the entrance or to take photographs: that varies, and this guide cannot promise otherwise. Ask a herder's permission before photographing him close up.
