Desert Trip

At 3:15 AM today I stumbled back toward my tent at the oasis where we stayed the night and was in awe of all the wonderful experiences I had in the last 12 hours. I feel inadequate in trying to describe it to you, but I never in my wildest dreams thought I would ever have a day and night like this.

A group of 12 of us headed out at about 2:00 in the afternoon on a desert camping trip. We loaded into 2 Toyota Landcruisers and one Nissan Armada, the Armada belonging to the family of Iman Galal, one of the staff members in Public Affairs at UCQ. Her family included Iman, her husband, Mohammed, daughter Janna (7 ½ - that ½ being very important) and son Abdallah (6). We left Doha and less than an hour later we turned off the road onto the dunes. For about ¾ of an hour we did some “dune busting” – riding up and down and sliding sideways down some of the miles and miles of sand dunes, speeding along some of flatter areas to get momentum to climb the higher dunes.

Heading down a dune! Note how deep into the sand the tires are.

One time we were actually airborne and came crashing down – my head hit the roof of the vehicle and all of us were laughing with nervous relief. I believe our driver, Ibrahim, who is a police officer in Doha, and has driven these tours for 12 years without ever having had an accident, was a very skilled driver, and he also loved showing us a thrilling time – a bit more so than the other driver! Our vehicle did some amazing climbs and descents! I remember riding the sand dunes at Indiana Dunes State Park as a kid, but it was nothing even close to this experience!

We then arrived at our oasis for the night where we unloaded our bags into our Bedoin tents and set off to explore the area. Granted, this was a tourist oasis, but we were the only group there. It was obviously an oasis used as a day area as well, because there was only sleeping room for about a couple of dozen people, but outdoor eating and mingling space for a couple of hundred! It is located right on the Arabian Gulf and the water was warm and beautiful. It didn’t take long for the camels to appear and we all took a turn riding the camel. Poor camel – reminded me of the sad pony giving rides to kids at Stampede, but we simply couldn’t pass up the opportunity! The camels were both very docile – neither one spit as I’ve heard camels will do, and they had the loveliest long eyelashes! The camel kneels and then lies down for you to mount up; the getting up and getting back down are the most interesting and fun parts of the ride!

Kathy's camel ride

The camels call it a day!

Since the Bedoin lifestyle (and all of the Middle East, for that matter) is very slow and laid back, we spent a lot of time wandering around the oasis and the shore, chatting, enjoying the scenery, and relaxing. As the sun set, it cooled off a bit, and for the first time in Qatar, I put on a fleece vest! Iman and her family were all freezing, but they are from Egypt and have lived in Doha for a number of years – not hearty Canadians!

Dinner was served and, although it was billed as typical Arabian food, I was surprised to find cole slaw on the menu! We also had green salad, hummous (you get that everywhere here – and it’s usually really good), pita, mutton stew, barbequed chicken and Kofta (lamb kababs with some very good spices), and rice. Since it was Cathy’s birthday, Jenny and Arun had stopped and picked up some birthday cake; so we all sang and enjoyed this delicious honey (dripping in honey) cake!

After dinner, the adults retired to the majilis tent where you lounge on these cushions and enjoy Turkish coffee and smoke the shisha pipe. Shisha is tobacco that is way more moist than what is smoked in cigarettes and cigars and it is flavoured. Women generally prefer the fruitier flavours, men the muskier flavours. Iman says women generally do not inhale the smoke but the men often will. I didn’t partake at all, wishing not to make myself ill out in the middle of the desert. Yes, I’m a big chicken!

Inside the majilis tent

All the while this was going on, Iman’s children, Janna (who is a pure show person), Abdallah (the fastest 6-year-old boy I’ve ever seen), and 7 year-old Julie (the daughter of another couple on the trip, Brad and Brigitte) were busy creating and delivering handwritten invitations to each of the adults to attend their disco. The 'disco' involved Janna singing Miley Cyrus songs with all the choreography, while Abdallah and Julie twirled flashlights around to simulate a disco ball- with the rest of the lights off, of course. Janna is quite the performer and it reminded me of all the silly shows we put on when we were children for our parents, and my kids put on for me . . . it’s the same all over the world and from generation-to-generation!

A fire in the fire pit ended the evening. Iman had brought along marshmallows (yes, they roast those here too!) and I had a good giggle watching them being roasted in an enormous fire on shiskabab skewers (yow! talk about burning your fingers:

One of the guys on the trip, Arran, has been learning Arabic and wrote some of our names in the sand in Arabic. Here's what my name looks like in Arabic:

Most of us headed to bed at about 10:00 because we were getting up at dawn to watch the sun rise. We slept in sleeping bags on the floor of the tent – rather hard and completely uncomfortable. As I lay awake, I wondered if I was in a tent with very quiet sleepers (no snoring or heavy breathing) or if no one else was sleeping either! As mentioned above, I was up at about 3:00 and I stayed outside for a while just absorbing the beauty of the desert under the full moon, and marveling at the fact that I was there at all. It was all so beautiful!

I said "most of us headed to bed" because Mohammed and Iman went fishing until about 1:00 a.m.. They had some success:

Janna and Abdallah with Dad's fish catch

We all stumbled out of our tents at dawn after having listened to a rooster for about an hour. The sunrise was short of stunning, but lovely nevertheless.

Dawn over the Arabian Gulf

Sun rises over the Arabian Gulf

We had something they called breakfast – you don’t go on this trip for the food – and then headed back to Doha. Even tho Ibrahim told us we would be taking the ‘flat road’ out, he made sure he threw in a few more dunes to leave us with a thrilling end to the trip.

Actually, the trip on the highway was quite thrilling, too, since the highway was full of slow moving trucks and Ibrahim is an expert in passing in a way that has you wondering how close you are going to come to a head-on collision!

I’m home and exhausted, but have fantastic memories and lots of photos! Here's part of the happy group:

Arran Fisher, Jenny Conway-Fisher, Brad and Brigitte Johnson, me, Cathy Whitehead and Ryan Tanner

And here's a video of some dune-busting. I have a way to go in film production, but you'll get the idea! It may seem a bit boring, but stick with it (I know, it's 5 1/2 minutes of your life you'll never get back, but . . . ). You'll see we slowed down and sped up intermittently; that was to get the momentum for climbing the dunes. The parts where the camera is bouncing all over the place are when it was so rough that I was bouncing all over the place and couldn't keep the camera pointed in any one direction. This was shot on the second day as we were leaving the oasis and heading home; the stuff we did the previous day was rougher and scarier.

Enjoy!