The camel doubled up camel-fashion, like a two foot rule, and sat down whimpering.
-Kipling
Kipling lost count. When camels couch, they don’t double but rather triple up, first falling to their elbows, then down to the knees as they fold underneath their rear legs, finally folding their forelegs and stretching out in front, all this pitching their riders in a three-way tilt. Forward. Backward. Forward. Standing up adds a fourth tilt, as they start up to their elbows, then up on the knees, next jerking up on their rear legs, and finally up on the forelegs. Backward. Forward. Farther Forward. Backward.
The camels we rode didn’t like us swinging our right legs over the saddle equestrian-style. They’d rise before we were fully settled which loosened the girth. We soon learned to mount as the drovers did, standing just forward of the saddle horn facing ahead, then hopping back over the horn and quickly crossing our legs and pressing them down over the camel’s neck to brace ourselves from falling forward as it gained its feet.
I liked mounting first because my camel was never in a hurry to rise if he saw the others still couched. Only when I was last was he eager to get up quick, sometimes too quick, to join them. That’s when the worst could happen, my rear impaled on a saddle horn. The drovers would all be watching out of the corner of their eyes. Anything for a laugh on the Darb al-Arba’een. That never happened but they had their laughs anyway. We gave them plenty of others.