The missing camels of Kirsan’s caravan

The GPS signal drops before the road does.

A narrow tar strip outside the village of Bhansoli (Sawangi), an hour’s drive south of Nagpur, dissolves into a dusty road, drawing a line through the cotton and pigeon pea fields.

Kirsan Jagmaal Rabari is waiting on a motorbike. We must leave our four-wheeler here, the 45-year-old insists. His caravan, which includes around 2,500 sheep and goats, has crossed a shallow rivulet down the road and can’t be reached by car.

On the other side, four families – Kirsan’s constantly mobile dera – are on the move. Two metal carts pulled by sturdy bullocks are laden with their sundry belongings – charpoys, steel utensils, bundled clothes, pitchers, ropes, nets, and trunks. Women clad in their three-piece traditional black attire – a choli (blouse), ghaghra (skirt), and ludki (veil) – are driving the carts. The offspring of sheep and goat are bleating, and a puppy strains at a rope, rehearsing the job of herd manager that it will one day inherit.

The caravan is off.

When they reach their designated destination where they will spend the next three-four days, the women and men unpack their retinue; bullocks are freed from the carts; carts become tents; women begin to fetch water from the open well on the farm.

But something is missing. The caravan has no cargo camels – the abiding symbol of the pastoralist community. Their absence is stark, and Kirsan notes the expression on our faces.

“I sold them last year,” he grins as his uncle Jaimaal Rabari settles beside him and nods his head. “From now on, we will only use bullock carts. No one here will keep camels anymore.”

For generations, Rabaris – the pastoralists originally from Gujarat’s Kachchh-Bhuj region – moved with camels across Vidarbha’s shifting agricultural landscapes. The Rabaris (also spelt Rebaris), earn by selling the male goats and sheep in bulk to local trader networks once or twice a year. As Kirsan quips in Hindi mixed with Kachchi, “Ye bakriya hi hamari chalti phirti sampatti hai bhai [These animals are my movable assets].”

The dromedaries once carried not just utensils and bedding, but also young children unable to walk the long stretches. Their height made them visible from miles away; their bells announced entry into a new settlement. They were indeed the markers of identity as much as mobility.

Camels are the community’s essential working animals – not just for transport, but infrastructure for the pastoralists’ seasonal circuits. In Maharashtra, Rabari shepherds used male camels to move household equipment between night halts, covering hundreds of kilometres in their annual migration cycles across harvested cotton, forest edges and open grazing lands.

Now they are learning to move without them. In recent years repeated police cases have troubled the Rabari pastoralists across Maharashtra leading to confiscation and deportations of camels. Authorities and activists have sometimes alleged that cargo camels were destined for slaughter or improper transport — despite the fact that shepherds use them as working animals to move their families and flocks.

In one case not far from here, over 50 camels belonging to Rabaris were seized and held, alleging illegal transport — even though the Rabaris had documents to show their ownership, and prove that their sole purpose was migration. Read: Kachchh camels’ custody: ships of the deserted

As recently as in December 2025, over 30 camels were seized in Dhule district, in north Maharashtra; they are still languishing in detention, their owners worried that devoid of the feed, some of them will eventually die.

Rabari leaders from Vidarbha rushed to Dhule as they do every time their camels are seized by the police. Kirsan says camel owners are troubled by this unnecessary harassment and delays in getting their camels back. “Usme paisa bhi jayega aur samay bhi, aur pareshani hogi voh alag [They will lose money and time both, in addition to the unnecessary trouble],” he says.

So now most Rabari pastoralists in Vidarbha and across central India are doing away with their camels.

“It has become very difficult and expensive to keep camels,” Kirsan adds.

Until last year (2025), Kirsan’s dera had three camels. Now, he has none. “In Nagpur and Wardha, maybe five families still keep camels,” Kirsan estimates. “Earlier there were at least 2,000. Now maybe only a handful remain.” He is talking to us in the middle of the sprawling cotton fields where his dera has just settled; his sheep and goat herds are out somewhere, he says, grazing.

“Most camels of Rabaris in Vidarbha have been passed on to their networks outside Maharashtra where they don’t face any harassment,” says Sajal Kulkarni of the Nagpur-based Centre for People’s Collective. Few are willing to buy them anymore. What was once an asset has become a liability. Kirsan sold each camel for something between Rs. 30,000 to 35,000 to Rabari friends in Chhattisgarh. A bullock costs significantly more – around Rs.50,000 – so it is not a profitable substitution, merely a practical one.

Camels are built for the landscape — adapted to drought and capable of carrying heavy loads without intensive feed input. They graze on local trees like neem, babul, peepal among other varieties – a climate-adapted lifeline for communities that could not rely on tractors or trucks in the absence of roads and fuel subsidies.

But access to fodder has grown uncertain. Cropping patterns have changed; fences in fields stretch longer distances, and harvest residues are cleared faster, and grazing corridors have shrunk. Rabari families have increased in number — from three to seven in their cluster, increasing pressure on the land.

Finding young camels to replace aging ones is problematic. “It is very difficult to acquire camels from Kachchh,” says Mashru Mama, one of the Rabari leaders in Vidarbha. “Badi problem hai.”

Part of the problem is regulatory confusion: the repeated seizures and bureaucratic hurdles point to a broader misunderstanding of pastoral livelihood systems, Kulkarni says.

Camels aren’t a luxury; they have been a mode of mobility for the pastoral communities criss-crossing vast agricultural landscapes.

Each year, Kirsan Rabari’s dera trudges a wide loop across eastern Vidarbha — from Nagpur to Sindhi, Bela and Butibori; through Bhandara, Mohadi and Tumsar; near Kamptee, Kanhan and Kondhali — and back again. Their migration follows harvest cycles, and each step has a purpose.

The sheep and goat feed on post-harvest crop residues. Their droppings enrich the soil. This give and take is called ‘penning’, a traditional agro-pastoral practice where shepherds camp their goat and sheep in farmers’ fields usually in the open and enclosed by nets to deposit nutrient-rich manure. Farmers, who pay small amounts of money to the Rabaris for this service, have observed improvements in soil texture and yield after the flocks pass through.

This mutual rhythm between shepherds, soil and crops form part of an ecological exchange that sustains both livelihoods and farming landscapes.

“After the sheep pass,” Kirsan says, “the soil improves.” That is why Rabaris have sustained in the region for so long. “We have friends among farmers in this region who invite us.” Without camels, the nature of that mobility is changing. bullock carts are fewer and often need repairs, and they cover less distance each day. Routes once easy to traverse with camels become difficult or inaccessible. Camels can navigate rivers, forests, hillocks, and difficult terrain. “We usually preferred to tread along the non-tar roads,” Kirsan says and adds, “we can’t do that anymore.”

The afternoon sun is falling on the metal trunks and the bundled bedding. The Rabari women, faces covered by veils, get busy with their chores. The bullocks lower their heads.

The caravan will be here for two days, before it moves on, sans camels.