Inland Near-Death Adventure

...Just a quick experience...

My friend, Kyle Crass, and I took advantage of an R&R program that the military offers for personnel to take a four day pass to Qatar, stay on the Army/Air Force base there, Al Sayliyah, and enjoy some of the local tourist trips. However, as a result of Ramadan throughout September we were limited on what could be done off of the Base. Nonetheless, we adventured out for one tour that was offered, called the Inland Sea Picnic.

This picnic was hosted by a company called Qatar International Adventures, and an adventure it was! I thought for sure I would lose my life in a car accident on the streets of Qatar! They drove like lunatics! I’ve never been so nervous in a vehicle before…driving just as fast they could swerving in and out, running other cars literally off the road, slamming on their brakes inches away from other vehicles, and then imagine creating three lanes of traffic out of two, where the first lane is a large dump truck, the second is your vehicle pressed as closely to it as possible while passing it on the left, and the third lane is the oncoming traffic honking and swerving half off the road to get around you! Yikes! Then when traffic came to a halt they didn’t let that stop them, they squeezed between the large tractor trailers in the right lane and proceeded to cruise down the highway off of the shoulder parallel with the highway. It was crazy! Even now I find myself at a lack of words to express it. We finally arrived at the part where we left the paved roads to cruise the sand dunes. That was more my style (I’m from the West, what can I say, off-roading is in my blood) and although it was obvious they were trying to scare folks with their sand dune driving skills I found that I could probably have shown them a thing or two.

At last we arrived at the picnic area where a small camp was set up next to the Persian Gulf. We were able to swim around in the very salty water; watch out for jelly fish! Then a man named, Salem (“sawlem”), walked over and said we could take pictures with his camel for $5. What a bargain, I thought! The camel was obviously less than enthused and kept growling and squeaking his few remaining teeth against his upper gums. I’ve included one of the shots I had taken of me below in an effort to keep up with the rest of the naked family on this blog :-)…Salem made a fortune off of us funny Americans that day and probably still wonders why we would pay $5 to take our pictures with a camel.

I prayed the entire way home that I would be spared and live to return home, so far so good. No doubt we had fun and the new experience was worth any inconvenience, but the adventure was indubitably in the ride there and back!