Bikaner Camel Festival

The Bikaner Camel Festival is a dedicated two-day cultural celebration of the camel's role in desert Rajasthan, held each January in the city of Bikaner, historically one of the region's great camel-breeding centres and home to India's National Research Centre on Camel. Where the Pushkar Fair grew out of a working livestock trading event, Bikaner's festival was created specifically as a cultural celebration from the outset, organised by the Rajasthan tourism department to showcase the camel's genuine, ongoing place in desert life rather than as a byproduct of a trade fair, with a smaller, more curated programme as a result.

The festival opens with a procession of elaborately decorated camels through the city, their handlers dressed in matching festive colours, moving from the grounds of Junagarh Fort through Bikaner's streets to a soundtrack of drums and traditional instruments. From there, the two days fill with camel-specific competitions — races, camel dances, decoration and tattoo contests, and a best-breed competition judged by camel experts — alongside more general desert cultural performances: folk music, fire dances, and puppet shows staged against Bikaner's desert backdrop each evening as temperatures cool.

Because Bikaner sits on Rajasthan's western desert circuit, the festival pairs naturally with the city's own considerable sightseeing on either side — Junagarh Fort, a genuinely well-preserved 16th-century fort that (unlike many Rajasthan forts) was never conquered, and the old city's sandstone havelis, built by wealthy merchant families along historic trade routes. Most visitors combine a Camel Festival visit with a day or two in Bikaner itself, and many continue on to Jaisalmer, a few hours further west, as part of a wider desert circuit.