Sand dune takes a center part in Qatar’s outdoor activities. It’s like you’ve not been to Qatar if you haven’t been to sand dune; play with it, drive over it, sleep over it 🙂
25 December 2010, a new record broke. If last month dune trip attended by 35 cars, this time was about 50 cars plus 2 motocross (mostly Indonesian plus 1 Western and 2 Qataris). The number is unsure since people come and go for different purposes. I noted there were people coming from Qatargas, Rasgas, QP, Qtel, Qapco, Qatalum, Qchem, Oryx, and contractors and engineering company.
Managing a large number of cars seems a quite difficult task. There are a number of participants who are first timers to use his 4WD to dune. Though prior to trip most have been briefed with basic 4WD and sand dune drive. Nevertheless, we had several number of cars bogged down on a dune along ‘highway route of inland sea’ due to failure of maintaining safe distance.
“Highway route” was selected to accommodate many first timers. This route is basically a quite level offroad route with few small dunes to get over it. Our destination was an area near Ministry of Environment camp at the southern end of Inland Sea.
Other than that, it was fun. People could use the opportunity to get to know each other who otherwise only known by their email or nickname in virtual mailing list. Potluck lunch, kids beach play, and beach football added the joy to the team.
Indeed, sand dune unites people.
[pictures will follow]
CGK-DOH 