Arabian Days : Day 8

Today was another red-letter day in our holiday. Today was Friday and M and C were at home for the weekend. After a lazy morning with a light-and-early brunch of kandepohe courtesy M (there's a reason for brunch being light) we rested a bit and then set off for…………………our desert safari!! Better known as dune bashing, it involves crazy driving up, – and more terrifyingly, down towering sand dunes in the desert in a 4 wheel drive. No wonder M insisted we eat light and at least 3 hours before the safari began. All that lurching about would NOT be pleasant on a full tummy!We (A, VK M and I – C had office) drove to the pickup point by 1:45 PM. There we met M's and C’s khaas friends M (lets call him M2!) and V (a lovely friendly couple originally from Bombay) who were going to be with us for the safari. There were other tourists waiting for the safari too. At about 2:30 we set off in a Land Cruiser (disappointingly common in Doha!) WITH OUR SEATBELTS WELL AND TRULY FASTENED. After about 30-45 mins drive through the starkly beautiful desert, we reached the dunes.

There, the air pressure from the car’s tires was reduced so that we didn’t bounce right off the sand. There were camel rides available while we waited but we chose to do our own TP instead. (i.e. posing for wacky photos)THEN the adventure began. Unlike dune bashing in Dubai, where the drivers plough up the steep slopes and then simply skirt the edge and come down again, here in Doha the drivers well and truly take you up the dune and down the other side. (But then Dubai has a sensuously beautiful belly-dancing performance as part of the safari which is banned in Qatar) At one point, our driver actually cut the engine while we were perched at the top of a dune, teetering at a steep angle so that we had a spine-chilling view of the cliff-like slope waiting for us. And then DOWN we went, screaming with both fear and excitement!

After every spectacular bit of driving, we would cheer our driver on (in Hindi, English and with non verbal signs like claps and whistles and thumbs-ups). Our driver understood Hindi and could speak in broken/ Hindi himself. Everytime we congrtaukated him after a scream fest, he would smile and say (exactly with the same accent like that Arabic guy on Zabaan Sambhalke!) “Yeh toh kucch bhi nahi. Aage dekho aur bhi hai!” Here a word about our driver is necessary. We’d thought about tipping our driver at the end of the day for giving us such a memorable day, but then we realized that he was a local, a Qatari gentleman who owned the car we were in. Qataris are almost always very rich and big spenders. He was doing this taking-people-on-day-trips-with-a-tour-agency not as a source of income, but for kicks! We concluded that in the end, he only might tip us (with his diamond-studded wristwatch) for being such good sports! ;)

The 'drivers'

During the safari we saw the inland sea (a narrow creek of water which has cut into the desert) and the hills of Saudi Arabia across the sea.



This is one of the rare places in the whole world where the open desert and the sea are next to each other. The white-gold desert dunes gently slope down to the sea, forming a beach. It’s a beautiful spot with blue and gold being the only colours in sight, as far as the eye can see!

After an exhausting afternoon of non-stop thrills-and-chills and being almost drunk on excitement and laughter, we came back to normalcy and civilization by 6:00 PM. Not wanting the good times to end, we stopped for falafel and shwarma at Petra, a chain of Middle Eastern fast food joints. Unlike our past encounter with falafel and shwarma at Al Meera (where the falafel and shwarma were rolled up inside a roti with raw cabbage and capsicum and hummous), Petra served a flatbread (a crisper and chewier version of a burger bun)split open and stuffed with the same falafel and shwarma and veggies and hummous. I liked the Petra version way more – the falafel and shwarma were tastier and in more generous quantities. We also split a plate of falafel (not in a sandwich) – garma-garam moong bhajis which are soft and bright green on the inside and brown and crisp on the outside. These were nice and moist too, unlike the dry mealy ones I'd had at Dubai. We washed these treats down with masala chai from Bombay Chowpatti, a chaat-and-other Indian fast food joint located in the same supermarket as Petra.We (us and M2-V ) decided to meet up for dinner and then headed our separate ways home, to a hot shower and a blissful hour relaxing on the oversized couches in M and C’s living room. For dinner, we went to Sukh Sagar (yes!!), a branch of the famous restaurant (or is it restaurants?) in Bombay. But instead of the Udipi-gone-mod décor we see in Bombay, this outlet had dim lighting, gorgeous coloured paper lanterns and china on the table. Thankfully, the cuisine was reassuringly same – Indian Chinese, Chaat and South Indian snacks. This time around, we chose Indian-Chinese and had a nice time getting reacquainted with Veg Manchurian Dry and its siblings after a week of exotic food!