The annual Pushkar Fair in Rajasthan’s Thar desert is considered the largest camel market in the world. Camels are at the central feature of the fair at which livestock, including horses, cattle, goat and sheep, is traded during the week-long event, which began on October 30.

But the camel herds that once dotted the horizon of the desert state are becoming rare. In villages near Jaisalmer and Bikaner, herders say they now struggle to find grazing land and buyers. “Each of us used to have hundreds,” a herder from the Raika pastoral community in Bikaner told us in 2022. “Only a few have such numbers now.”

From an estimated 11 lakh in the 1970s, India’s camel population plunged by 75% to just 2.5 lakh in four decades, according to the 20th Livestock Census data released in October 2019.

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