A Qatar desert experience with a difference

A dune-bashing, camel-riding sojourn, inclusive of a night spent under the stars, complete with Arabic hospitality and good food in the desert, is high on the list of every visitor to Qatar.

It had been high on mine.

I’d seen the alluring sun-soaked, deserted desert photographs, read the enthusiastic feedback of visitors and researched the various tourist company websites for the best deals.

With the FIFA 2022 World Cup visitors come and gone, and just the odd convoy of cruise liner passengers being shipped out into desert daily, I bargained that we would have just the right balance of fellow travellers on our adventure in the great yellow beyond.

The early April 25C-plus temperatures would be ideal in finally realising my dream desert experience. I had been living in Qatar for just over a year. I had waited long enough.

And besides, it was our 35^th wedding anniversary.

Honeymoon is over

So off we went with Mohammed, expectant for all that lay ahead.

The fully robed and thobed (a white thobe is what Qatari men wear) guide picked us up in his swanky white Toyota Landcruiser at our apartment at 2pm sharp. (Tour companies often do this. It’s part of the service.)

After a quick introduction and welcome, Mohammed switched on his ultramodern music system, complete with a video, and we sashayed off towards the desert with Shakira belting out her Waka Waka 2010 World Cup hit.

Qatar is small country, so it takes less than two hours’ driving to get anywhere. It took us less than an hour to get to our first stop.

Our questions went unanswered or got lost in translation. Shakira and her fellow international pop artists took centre stage.

Let’s just say, Mohammed simply wasn’t the talkative type.

I knew then that the honeymoon was over.

Until now, there has been little to fault Qatar in terms of its hospitality and multiculturalism. I had been lulled into believing the same high standards were emulated everywhere.

But, to quote my former boss, “you never get everything in one pair of underpants”.

Camels, falcons and majilis

Our first stop outside of Doha, and surely, the same one made by every other desert tour operator in Qatar, confirmed this.

Camels, falcons, tiny ponies, places to have tea and hawkers abounded in a confined space next to the road and at the foothill of an undulating desert.

There were tourists aplenty, most of whom were being led around the camp on camels for a minute or three at a quick QAR30, or for a longer and more costly saunter up a dune and back. (The exchange rate for rands is 5:1).  

You can pose with a falcon for another QAR20 or get a free cup of karak (Arabic tea) from one of the pretend majilises.

We opted for the majilis, which is an Arabic sitting room or lounge, and generally only frequented by men.

We did so, not just because it was free or because we had already enjoyed a camel ride and obligatory falcon photograph elsewhere, but because of the weather.

Never mind the weather

It wasn’t just windy; it was blowing a gale!

The infamous shamal wind, a north-westerly wind that blows over Iraq and the Persian Gulf states, was showing off.  Of course, wind rarely fazes us because we are from Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha or GQ, but also fondly referred to as the Windy City and Friendly City.

But we are in a desert!

There was – and is – sand everywhere.

I suddenly appreciated the Qatari ghutra (headdress) as it protected our guide from the sand and longed for the safety of the ubiquitous Landcruiser.  

Onwards and upwards

The word “safety” is of course relative when you knowingly commit to “dune-bashing” on a desert safari.

This is where Mohammed came into his own.

For the next hour or so we clambered and careened across the undulating desert landscape under the silent one’s consummate driving ability. (He has been doing this for ten years).

It is adrenalin-pumping stuff and not for the faint-hearted or those with gammy backs.

We enjoyed a number of stops to admire the view, and also to dip our toes into the inland sea.

Inland sea

The inland sea or Khor Al Adaid is one of just three places in the world where the sea meets the sand dunes (one of them is Namibia).

This big tidal embayment (a recess in the coast that forms a bay) is connected with the Arabian Gulf and a narrow channel about 10km long. The area is mutually shared between Qatar and Saudi Arabia with shorelines in both countries.

We also saw a coastal sabkha, which is a flat area that is found between seas and desert that has a crusty surface made up of deposits like calcium carbonate, gypsum and salt, as well as wind-blown sediments and tidal deposits. It’s often a reddish colour.

I know all this now. Unfortunately, the facts were not forthcoming from Mohammed.

He was simply the driver.    

Alone is an ideal

But we were never alone.

We were part of a convoy of four vehicles and all around us there were other convoys plotting and playing their way across the desert. (Almost all were Land Cruisers since “they are best for desert”, according to Mohammed).   

There are no animals and very little vegetation. But sadly, there is litter. Another blip on my I-love-Qatar rating.

Overnight adventure

At this stage, we left the rest of the convoy for our overnight accommodation, an additional 20 minutes’ drive, passing the odd caravan or fully-equipped camping site. (These are temporary sites set up during “camping season”, which ends late in April or early May.

The seaside resort was large, alongside similar laidback beach camps with simple rooms, communal areas, large fire pits and easy access to the Arabian Gulf.

I imagined that these spots must have hummed with hundreds of visitors throughout the World Cup, but right now they are simply sad and lonely spots.

The hoped-for high-end accommodation showed up in the shape of a youth camp igloo with a loo door that didn’t close and a shower in which you might have come out grubbier than when you entered.

But at least it was indoors because said the wind was still howling and the sun had set.

And dinner was at 6.30pm.

Food, ordinary food

Given the standard of accommodation, I lowered my expectations of the food.

This was a wise decision both for the evening meal, and especially breakfast.

Yes, there were kebabs, roasted vegetables and hummus.

But there were also only two staff members, four other guests and far too many flies.

Supper was a hurried, tense experience that was over within 30 minutes.

No matter, we’d go outside and star gaze as the travel brochures had advised. But since the temperature had dropped to 13C and the wind was still blasting us, the call of the great outdoors had lost its allure.

We settled for a game or ten of billiards before heading for the igloo.  

Alone, really alone

Breakfast was at 7am. Well, it was that time or 6.30am. There’d been no other choice.

We were up early hoping to watch the sun rise, but the wind was still putting PE to shame. By 7am, we hadn’t seen a soul.

No guests, no staff, just two cats and us.

The H went walkabout, knocking and calling. No response. The place was empty.

We were alone, really alone.

And, then a man with a slick hairstyle, the latest trainers and a red branded T-shirt arrived. I mumbled a hello, while the H immediately sailed forth, seeking assistance …

The trendy chap was none other than Mohammed, out of his traditional tour-driver gear, set to return us to Doha at 8am, once we had enjoyed our breakfast.

The silent one was suddenly verbose and agitated without our understanding a word of what he was saying. He went in search of the staff. (We later learnt that the other guests left straight after supper. Wise choice.)

It’s a breakfast I would have preferred to forego (you check the pictures), but I’m still too polite to disappoint people.

We soon learnt that there had been lifeform during those earlier eerie hours … it had simply been in a deep sleep. It was Ramadan when life in Qatar is turned on its head – and day becomes night in terms of eating and sleeping. The individual staff member on breakfast duty had simply overslept.

He was so apologetic in his stilted English that I felt obliged to eat his omelette.

But the rest I left to the flies.

Lessons learnt

Age has mellowed me. I get less upset over such disappointments nowadays. I see most aspects of life as an adventure, particularly the time we are spending in Qatar. This means assimilating the good, and not-so-good, with the bad.

This paid-for overnight trip into the desert may not have been ideal, but I had learnt a thing or three from the experience.

Please don’t let it deter you from such a venture. Perhaps you can simply learn from the following:

1. Don’t let the touristy pictures fool you. (I know, for example, that the pyramids of Egypt are not in the middle of a desert. They’re on the edge of big, noisy, dirty city so I should not have been surprised as our Qatar experience).
2. Ask like-minded friends for their input – those who have undertaken the self-same trip – for more honest answers.
3. You do pay for what you get. Converting the cost of this trip into rands and thinking it was lot of money was silly because everything here is five times more expensive.
4. Always have a good book at hand because you never know when the wind is going to blow and there is no alternative entertainment.
5. Read and research as much as you can in case your guide is actually more of a driver than walking encyclopaedia!
6. Avoid travelling or pretty much everything else during the holy month of Ramadan.
7. Oh, and brush up on your billiards and table tennis skills as you never know when you might have to put them to the test.