The use of camels is a balancing act. If you have none, you will struggle to fill your hand…However, if you take many at once, you risk leaving…
-Player Instructions to the board game Jaipur
We had to balance our gear carefully. Forty 10’ rolls of 16mm film, blank audio cassettes, a camera body and lenses, a tape recorder and two microphones, a tripod and boom. KhairAllah alone acted as loadmaster in the first few days until the other drovers got the idea that gear marked Fragile meant fragile, like their tea glasses which broke within days of setting out if they hadn’t been properly stowed and lashed to the saddle. We usually stood by watching, even though if the balance was off we risked leaving it all behind in a heap, arriving in Cairo after forty days, empty handed.