Because I lack the gymnastic agility to reach the top of the camel, the top of the camel must come to me. The Tunisian herdsman barks a guttural word, and the huge animal grudgingly lowers itself to a kneeling position, fixing me with a withering look of disdain.

I clamber onto the wood-framed saddle strapped to the peak of the hump. The herdsman shouts again, and the camel levers itself up. The saddle lurches sharply forward, then backward, then from side to side. I hold on tightly.

We leave the shade of a date palm grove and strike out across the sun-blasted dunes of the Sahara. My shadow, grafted onto the camel’s, glides smoothly across the waves of sand. The reality is more turbulent. With every stride, I pitch and yaw. I am conscious of how high up I am and try to avoid looking down, keeping my gaze fixed on the undulating horizon.

This is a half-day excursion at walking pace, a dozen camels bearing tourists to the ruins of a Roman fort. Soon I am aching from the effort of holding myself steady. If the camel were to move any faster, I would surely topple off. When one of my companions suggests a race, we all laugh.

Then I recall an encounter I had had the previous year in Saudi Arabia. Driving across the desert, my vehicle was suddenly flanked by galloping camels ridden by young boys. The camels belonged to a member of the Saudi royal family. The boys waved and smiled, apparently carefree as they charged across the sandy wilderness. In this remote setting, I was face-to-face with one of the most unpleasant trades of the modern age.

The boys were no more than 6 or 7 years old and had been imported to Saudi Arabia from Pakistan. Transplanted into bleak barracks, they endured conditions that were little better than slave labor, risking their lives every day in pursuit of the sport of sheikhs: camel racing.

It is a sport with a noble pedigree, having evolved from the Bedouin tradition of charging into battle on camelback. As the peacetime races became more formal and dedicated racetracks were constructed across the Arab world, camel owners looked for every racing advantage, including reducing the weight of the jockeys to the absolute minimum. Adults gave way to children. Healthy meals ceded to starvation rations.

Thankfully, after a high-profile UNICEF campaign, child jockeys were officially outlawed in 2005. They were replaced by remote-controlled robots attached to the camels’ humps. These autopilots compound the fundamental absurdity of the spectacle. There will never be anything refined about a bunch of camels running at breakneck speed while hundreds of spectators in SUVs — horns blaring, dust billowing — follow the race from roads parallel to the track.

A typical Middle Eastern camel race is run over a distance of up to six miles. No betting is permitted. The owners are competing primarily for prestige. An entirely different variation of the sport has emerged in the Australian Outback, where camel races tend to be rowdy affairs involving abundant gambling and drinking, and where the jockeys are often women.

Returning to camp in Tunisia, I am relieved to plant my feet on solid ground. Foolishly, I decide to thank my camel with a pat on its neck. It responds by scrambling to its feet and careening off towards the dunes, chased by three yelling herdsmen. Watching from the shade, I can’t help but admire the unconventional grace of the camel’s long-legged gait as it eludes its human pursuers. This is an animal born to run.