Since the earliest days of domestication, the camel’s hump—or humps—have challenged would-be riders. In Africa, Arabia, India and Central Asia, saddle designs have long expressed both utility, beauty and culture.

From Bedouin banquets to hipster hashi-burger food trucks, Camel is one of the world’s fastest-growing health-and-heritage consumer product sectors. How does camel taste? There's only one way to find out.

Herded, saddled, loaded by traders; cared for, sung about and even sung to—one-humped dromedaries prove extraordinary in deserts where the sun is hot; two-humped Bactrians rank no less in others where it is not. Let the rhythmic gaits of our calendar camels carry you along for the year.

The first time I tasted camel was some 25 years ago in Damascus, Syria.

To get camels ready for races, they are taken out for tafheem, an Arabic word that has two main meanings in English.

Ten years in the making and the first universal museum in the Arab world, the newly opened Louvre Abu Dhabi sets out a dozen themed galleries to tell cross-civilizational stories about the relationships of cultures—in every land, from the earliest settlements to today—that informed and inspired each other along their myriad respective quests of expression and beauty.

No matter what my assignment is, as a photojournalist, I usually keep a camera ready all day. You never know when there will be a chance to make an interesting image that can tell a different story. 

This dish was invented a year after I moved to New York, with the help of my large Asian pantry, especially curry leaves, whose smell reminds me of my innocent and unbound childhood.