As well as the beauty contest and auctions, the festival also has contests in traditional pursuits such as camelracing, camel milking, falconry and date packaging.
It's perhaps the only festival in the world where you can watch camelracing while listening to amped-up desert blues, where hawkers sell headscarves rather than burgers and where you can camp in a Tuareg tent among miles of empty sand dunes.
"This significant breakthrough gives a means of preserving the valuable genetics of our elite racing and milk producing camels in the future, " Dr Lulu Skidmore of the Camel Reproduction Centre told Gulf News newspaper.