Any resources on Bedouin Camps?

I'm curious about how they're made, arranged, and how many camels I'd need to carry them.

I'm just so done with living in the world. All this chaos and hardship with no apparent reward.

I want to move to North Africa and build a base village in some oasis and ply the sea of sand, and look at the stars.

Welcome to the forum!

I never hear of Bedouin Camps and Mr. Google told me:

Our guided tours by jeep, camel or hiking with overnight bivouac, are the ideal way to escape the modern world and admire the still wild beauty of the desert

This sounds like a great way to plan an escape though I have no idea how many camel will be needed other than the one you are riding on.

I can't answer your question, but Morocco is very welcoming.
Just don't take any of the tours but instead find people who live there (many have relatives in the city) and after they know you a little better, they might invite you to their family in the desert.

There's is a hiking trail in Israel that works together with Bedouins to house people with their village several days.  I am not sure the status of this trail, but these hiking trips would be an easy way to integrate with them for a short term, and see how they would travel.

OH it's the Jordan trail, and that's not exactly the safest place for tourism currently, if I remember correctly.

If you're seriously interested, please read, A Desert Dies. Written by Michael Asher. Published in 1986 by St. Martin's Press.
Mind expanding!

From the "crazy idea department":
1. BC Canada at one point had a business that had imported camels for use as pack animals. A reliable source says that they eventually died out, but Llamas are close relatives and are certainly available around my region, so maybe talk to some Llama owners and if you've never worked with camels, working with some Llamas might build the sub-skills that will eventually transfer?

2. You identify as currently living in high desert. Have you tried going nomad in your current area? There is a fellow in California who's known for being a modern "shepherd" who moves gradually from area to area with his sheep using a very small cart that holds all his needs. Again, this will help you acquire and practice skills that may be essential.

I think it's important to consider that nomadic lifestyles depended on intergenerational skills and responsibilities. You wrote, "build a base village in some oasis," but a village implies a group of people working as a unit. What infrastructure you will need to carry will be very dependent on the size of that group.

When I saw this post on the home page, I immediately thought you were planning to go nomadic here in the states.
I have met many people who live this way here in the States, and there are those who are able to live almost entirely off the land in the same fashion as the "Mountain Men" of yore. Google it.
I have a friend who went nomadic for about a year living out of a small RV trailer and his mid-size SUV. He found a lot of resources on places to stay and areas that were free and welcoming to modern nomads.
Google Boondocking and see what's out there.

The idea of becoming a North African Bedouin does sound very romantic. Do you have any contacts in the area you are considering?

Jay Angler wrote:From the "crazy idea department":
1. BC Canada at one point had a business that had imported camels for use as pack animals. A reliable source says that they eventually died out, but Llamas are close relatives and are certainly available around my region, so maybe talk to some Llama owners and if you've never worked with camels, working with some Llamas might build the sub-skills that will eventually transfer?

2. You identify as currently living in high desert. Have you tried going nomad in your current area? There is a fellow in California who's known for being a modern "shepherd" who moves gradually from area to area with his sheep using a very small cart that holds all his needs. Again, this will help you acquire and practice skills that may be essential.

I think it's important to consider that nomadic lifestyles depended on intergenerational skills and responsibilities. You wrote, "build a base village in some oasis," but a village implies a group of people working as a unit. What infrastructure you will need to carry will be very dependent on the size of that group.

I used to be homeless. Lived out of a backpack in the high desert and the US-Mexico Border region for a couple of years. I used to read this website for information and almost set up a permanent squat with a garden.

Oh, I see, i left out a word. Build a base in a village in an oasis. Ie, the village is already there, I just need permission to build a house in it. Like, somewhere to hang out in the off season. Wouldn't even be there all the time. Plus, the village would benefit from the supplies I could bring in. I have a specific location in mind, and vehicles absolutely struggle to get there. They do get there, but it's not often.

But the only way to find out if that is okay, is to go ask in person. And I am not going to talk about it more, because I want to protect them from tourists.

Even if they said no, meeting them would be enough. And I would find a different location or move on to my plan C. Something I learned from being homeless is always make redundant plans of action to be able to respond to unforseen hiccups.

I'm not familiar myself with Bedouin camps. I have a vague impression of high flat tents with open sides, tall poles.....I suspect you can make this sort of thing as elaborate and comfortable as you wish, down to a blanket on some sticks.

Apparently the tent is called a beit al-sha’r (“house of hair”) and consists of posts supporting a tight framework of goat-hair ropes over which the cloth membrane (fala'if) is stretched. The roof is raised onto the frame and then sides are attached with an entrance away from the prevailing wind.

The interior is divided up with brightly patterned curtains as follows:

The men’s area, always at the end toward Mecca, also incorporates the majlis, where guests are received around a hearth. The private family area (mahram), or women’s section, is much larger and barred to all men except the head of the family. The third space is the kitchen. Of necessity for a nomadic lifestyle, furnishings are sparse. Carpets and mattresses cover the desert floor; pillows stacked around a camel saddle may provide seating for guests.

From: (architectural blog) There's a bit there about weaving the fabric which is also pretty interesting.

Practicalities....do they tend to travel at night when it is cooler or early/late in the day? Maybe you might want a daytime camp and a night time camp with differing requirements? My husband camped in the Atacama desert and the sand was a real problem getting everywhere, even inside the screen of his laptop PC.

I don't have any good pointers to reliable modern resources on camel caravan transport.

In the deep dark days of the pandemic restrictions, I did read a memoir of camel trekking across the Rub' al Khali of the Saud Peninsula.  I think it was "Arabian Sands" by Willfred Thesiger, but I'm not certain of that identification.  Not T.E. Lawrence, but a good adventure.  I don't know how well Arabian camel trekking translates to North Africa, however.

Are there any camel adventure companies in Saharan Africa?  Perhaps that would be an "in" and introduction to the North African context, even if only for a defined period of time before going off on your own.

Hopefully, there are good resources available to you on the wells, tanks, watering holes and oases.  Or, failing that, that you are able to read the signs to find them.  I am sure I would die of thirst in the deserts of the American Southwest, but those who know what to look for can find water, even in dry places - whether from tinajas, other natural catchments or just a coyote well in a bend of the the dry bed of an intermittent creek.

I would imagine that speaking Tuareg and Arabic would be very helpful, as well as a deep understanding of Islamic culture, as practiced in that area.

I do have something in the digital "stash of stuff" on the Mongolian Tibetan "black tents", which fill a similar role as do Bedouin tents, but are constructed for a different climate and disparate social context, and with pack yak transport rather than camel caravans..  Nevertheless, there are likely some similarities in materials and construction, and it may be worth your time to give it a read, if for nothing else than to provide a counterpoint to the Bedouin methods.

I'll attach on edit, when I find it.

As for the base camp house in the village, I would suspect that following the local vernacular architecture as a template would be the safest approach.  Stone (with or without mortar/sarooj), mud brick and rammed earth all have precedent in North Africa, but local conditions of materials availability and climate will determine what is most suitable.

A friend and I once had a scheme, when we were much younger and were footloose and fancy free, of becoming "goat walkers" in the American Southwest.  We never did it (he got married, and then I did somewhat later), but I think I do understand the appeal of saying "chuck it - I'm going to the desert!"

OK, one last thing, then I'll butt out (I promise - well at least for a while!).

Here's a brochure for expeditions with a camel trekking company based in Oman.
https://www.ganeandmarshall.com/pdf/Footsteps-of-Thesiger-Information-Pack.pdf

The suggested reading list given in this brochure might be beneficial background for your plan.

Bagnold's work on sand dynamics is worth a read, though the North African deserts may be more stony than those of Arabia; at least, that is what John Steele Gordon lead me to believe in his book "Overlanding", wherein he recommends a VW microbus as a suitable vehicle for a trans-Sahara expedition, though he offered no recommendations for the Rub' al Khali, since Saudi Arabia was still effectively closed to anyone who wasn't connected to the oil companies.  In another life (metaphorically speaking), I used Bagnold as a reference when attempting to construct computer models of the thermal behavior of various environments - with what I might describe as mixed success.  At that time, Bagnold was the classic reference for the formation and motion of dunes, and as far as I am aware, still is.  Understanding the differences in stability of the windward and leeward faces of dunes, and the morphological types of dunes which form under different conditions, may be (by turns) enlightening and critical to safety.

Psssht.  Olson out.