Mon 13th – Timmy Of Arabia & Other Assorted Adventures!

(PHOTOS - me @ sunrise, Kev & I at the 3 x Borders & me on a shoosha)


Day Off, Day Off, Day Off! Yay! We’re getting picked up at 1400 and being driven into the desert to go sand dune bashing, swim in the sea & camp out under the stars! It should be great and all food etc. is provided. We’re allowed to bring beer but I reckon a case between the 8 of us is plenty. I want this to be an experience, not another place I drank beer! Although it will be a cool place to add to the list.

Pulled up much better than I thought I would after Sun night – this Doha weather, climate & hours is just doing weird things to the body clock! Packed my daypack and hopped into a 4WD at 1400 and headed off into the dessert! We drove for around 50kms & stopped and had the option of going for a ride on a camel! Of course I took up the option. I’ve ridden one in Alice Springs and now the Arabian Dessert! Was only brief but a lot of fun! Whilst doing this our drivers let a chunk of air out of the tyres to allow for easier tread on the dunes. Don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but Doha is flat, dead flat & we’d been keeping an eye out for the dunes & could see these little sandy hills up ahead. What we actually ended up doing was driving down into the dunes rather than up into them! It was quite strange!

Our driver had been doing it for 15yrs and it certainly showed! It was great – careening up and then over, hitting all the little rises & dips at speed! I sat in the front for awhile and it was bizarre watching the horizon dip, disappear and then right itself briefly before appearing on an angle again! The other 2 4WD’s with us stopped at one point and our guy went hell for leather up the side of this VERY steep dune and then back down again. The car felt as if it was at right angles! When we rejoined the group we were told to do it again as most of the others hadn’t been able to get out of their car in time to take pictures! So we got to do it again! Excellent!

We stopped at the top of this really steep dune that led down to the water. We all hopped out and then one of the drivers (by himself) just went crazy and basically launched himself off the edge, land, continue and then skid in and out of the water’s edge before driving back up to join us! He was at no point actually going forward, he was mainly either slewing left or right before he came to join us! He then asked if anyone wanted to try driving straight down the dune! The car was a manual and I’m crap at manual, especially one that you have to use your other hand to change gears with! Jess jumped in and you could hear her screaming all the way down! We then continued to dune bash and by this time I was in the backseat. I wound down my window, pulled myself out, sat on the door frame and hung on for dear life! Wow what a ride! At one point, Scott stuck his head out the front window and screamed back to me that we were doing 100kph! It was just the best feeling, something that I’d never done & am very unlikely to do again! Very ‘boy’ of me I know but it’s one of ‘those’ experiences that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never be able to explain. At one point, with the angle the car was at, I was basically standing upright as we plowed down and over sideways! Testosterone flowed once again!

We then stopped at another little bit of the sea and were told that Saudi was over the water to the right and that Emirates was over and to the left! Couple of happy snaps were required! All of us were running around like kids on red cordial at the beach. Grinning like fools and running around in the sand. The dunes were great to run down – you sort of sank halfway up your shin and as you took the next step, because it was so steep, it basically pulled you forward! Overall you felt as if you were walking on the moon or bouncing down! The climb back up was a bitch! The workout we’ve been having climbing the Arch was a good help! We then kept bashing away, me leaning out the window doing my best Alby Mangles impersonation! Ah, if only I had hair! Took a heap of photos – problem being that the light, shade & shape of the dunes don’t carry across well to digital prints. Sunset looked amazing, really deep reds as this huge orb sank behind the dunes.

We knew that we were camping and that we had the option of sleeping out under the stars. I was expecting, and would have been quite happy with, 2 man tents or 1 or 2 large tents. Oh no, this was done in style. There were around 10 tents set up around this wide, small sandy strip that was enclosed by the dunes. Some of the tents had tables & chairs, others had rugs laid down with long cushions set up like lounges. There was a volleyball court marked out in the sand, deck chairs, umbrellas woven out of palm and other assorted fronds! It was great and all of this overlooked the beach! Mohamed met as at the gate and told us to please make ourselves at home and that for today, “As you are having fun in my country that tonight, we will make this camp your country and you are free to do as you please. We will forget about everyone else until much later.” And we pretty much did just that! We were told that dinner would be about 2hrs away so we all went swimming in the Gulf Of Arabia! Very thick water and extremely salty. It was so warm too.

As we got changed to go swimming, everyone started asking what I’d done to my back…? Absolutely nothing that I knew of – I was aware that my back would probably be stiff tomorrow due to it being slammed around when hanging out the window. The guys took a photo of it and then showed me. There were these welt/blood blister type marks going diagonally down from halfway up the left side of my back! Hadn’t expected that! They were in the exact place where my back had been whacking against the door frame! They didn’t hurt (and still don’t!). In fact, for all the hanging out of windows that I did, getting slammed about, I only have a couple of bruises on my arms.

After swimming Mohamed & I sat down and had a big chat. Apparently there are only two places in the world where the dessert meets the sea – here in Qatar and Namibia in Africa! Also, Qatar only has a population of 700,000 and that only 30% were actually born in Qatar. They have over 120 different nationalities working in the country with India, Nepal & the Philippines making up the bulk of the 70%. Mohammed himself was from Egypt. He told me of how he is slowly building up his camp. He wants in include camels, 4 wheel motorbikes and have “a caravan that is very much like mini mart. You can come to me and buy cigarettes & Coca-Cola.” He then said that he likes to see all the tourists who come and see that they enjoy his country & camp as much as he does. He wishes that the government didn’t have all the access to the oil and gas because they don’t spend any money for tourism as they have an endless supply of income. It was a bit of an eye opener and honestly, if I wasn’t here for work, I probably would never visit!

His mouth nearly fell off his face when I told him that we have payed nearly 5 times more what he pays for petrol. Water is dearer than petrol in Qatar. A 600ml bottle costs approx 1 riyal (36c), a litre of petrol costs one half riyal or 50 dirham’s. He was amazed and very interested. This of course then led to a discussion about Iraq, America and the current wars. It was really interesting hearing it from, for use of a better term, the other side. He told me the bombshell that Donald Rumsfeld got ousted in the recent US Elections! I knew the Democrats had had some big victories but didn’t realise that Rumsfeld was a casualty! Excellent news all round!

We pretty much lucked out on our trip. The camp is big enough to hold up to 300 people – which would be great but would be a whole nother experience. There was the 8 of us and 1 other 4WD load of a Kiwi guy who’s working on the English version of Al Jazeera, due to launch in the next few weeks, his Swedish wife & 3 of her friends. It just meant that we all had some space and that there wasn’t hundreds of people. We were one of the first people to go as the Tourist Season is just beginning – on the Thurs they were having 180 people. Like I said, if I was on holidays, 200 people partying in the dessert would be fun but for all of us it was great to be alone, all by ourselves and have the freedom of the whole place. We were able to have chats to the drivers – basically just unwind.

Dinner was this huge buffet of koftas, sausages, kebabs, spicy chicken, bread & salads – all tasted fantastic and we all went back for more. Prob the biggest feed I’ve had since arriving. Traditional food, sitting cross legged on a rug, in a tent where the ocean meets the dessert – yep, pretty frickin’ cool!

Where 200 people would have definitely ruined the after dinner experience! We all sat around the camp fire and we were all offered Shooshas (no idea of spelling), which are Arabic pipes that produce flavoured smoke. They come in all sorts of sizes but these ones were about thigh high. They have a water chamber at the bottom and then one or two pipes/hoses coming out. The top chamber has the flavoured tobacco sealed in it and then a hot coal is placed on top to heat/cook it. An ornamental piece is then placed over the coal so it looks pretty and then you smoke away! They were excellent – far more unhealthy that normal ciggies but it was great. There were a few different flavours floating around. We were all sharing – mine & Sarah’s was Apple, the Kiwi & his wife had Strawberry. All very different and it was weird that the smoke actually tasted like it’s flavour – you now how things say that they’re ‘blah, blah, blah, blah’ flavour but they taste nothing like it? Well this did! Strange! And the Arabs have been smoking these long before the world of chemical flavours and enhancers.

One of the drivers called us across to one of the tents to show us a medium sized, white scorpion! It blended in very well to the rugs and it appeared to be dead – when the driver dangled a string at it, it’s stinger went up and it charged us! Well, off into the dessert ran 9 people! There were also these really chunky beetles. They were standard beetle size but were very tall and had hard shaped backs. I likened them to the scarab beetles in The Mummy! Some of the girls didn’t like that & combined with the scorpion, decided to sleep in the middle of the campsite on the raised platform where DJ’s play when there are larger crowds!

A group of us went for a walk along the beach around midnight – very dark and oh so clear. We saw numerous shooting stars and it was all very peaceful. Way around on the bay there was a huge oil refinery – basically attached to Doha but it was producing a large amount of light and you could see the huge flames but once we walked far enough away, the sky was fine. Now this is something that I’ve never noticed before in my travels but the moon changes shape/position depending on where you are – or so I’ve since been informed! Now, I’m aware that sinks drain differently in the Northern & Southern Hemispheres (thank you Simpsons and yes, I have tested it for myself!) but wasn’t in relation to the way the moon faces! In Qatar, when the moon is crescent shaped, the curve is either at the top or bottom – not on the side like it is for us! Which makes sense as a lot of Arabic symbols, flags, emblems etc. have the crescent moon on it as described above! Hey, call me strange if the above is blatantly obvious but aren’t you supposed to learn new things when travelling? Don’t even get me started on how the contents of Orion & The Saucepan were spilling all over the sky!

A little hesitant to sleep with the scorpions and with little room on the DJ platform, I pulled up a deckchair under a beach side thatched umbrella, gazed at the moon high above the Gulf, breathed in the fresh air and drifted off to sleep. Not a bad view and the perfect end to a fantastic day!