I See You Winding, Grinding..., or Day 104 in Doha

This weekend, I signed up for the "Undergraduate Conference for Information Systems."

The main reason? Because today they took us on a desert safari.

I believe the term more widely used around here is "dune-bashing."

There were about two dozen of us in eight Land Rovers, driven by guys who would do this on the weekend anyway. Our drive, Mahmoud, was probably enjoying getting his car full of girls (and Abdalla) to cheer as we bounced around in the sand.

After a little under an hour's drive to the Mesaieed area, all of the drivers got out, deflated their tires, and after that... no roads, just sand.

And, like always, the most thrilling part was coming up to the crest of a dune and only seeing sky in the windshield, until slowly it pivots down until all you can see is sand.

I didn't hurt that as soon as we started the real fun, he put on current pop music with some great pounding bass as a soundtrack.

We spent a good hour trundling around, stopping every so often to take pictures on the top of this or that dune, or overlooking the Saudi Arabia border (that's as close as I'm going to get to a country that's not very easy to enter as a tourist... a female one at that).

After the amazing dune-bashing session, we stopped at a camp alongside the Arabian Sea for our late lunch. They pulled out a volleyball, which we tossed around for quite a while. (It was clear that the drivers were way more practiced than the students). Then there was a bit of wading (my pants are still damp), a bit of posing with a camel (which stepped toward Allan every chance it got) before the call to dinner.

I had smelt the meat being grilled for a while, so it was easy to sit around, dig into the pita (that no one around here calls pita, they just call it bread) and dips and hotdogs and kabobs, and chat with the others around.

The way back had a few little hills and bumps, but the most fascinating part was seeing the amount of people around. As it was getting dark, we went down a dune to a flat area, where there was a Cruiser drifting with another dozen parked toward it, watching; right next to it, a steep hill that a half a dozen Land Cruisers were waiting to race up and coast (slide) down. There were little 4x4s and dune motorcycles and buggies doing their thing too.

Not to mention the vehicle every twenty meters along the beach having a family cook-out. I'm convinced that the half of Qatar that doesn't go picnic on the Corniche on Fridays after prayers goes to Sealine.