I’ve been gone for a few days without saying goodbye. Did you miss me? Of course you did.
In my continuing quest to learn what I can about our fascinating planet, I was delighted when an opportunity arose for me to visit Qatar in the Middle East, heart of the Arab world. A long standing friend of mine is working there on a contract and invited me to visit, and although I had reservations about going, he managed to convince me that Qatar is a safe and moderate Arab state. I’m not one to stop flying or stop travelling because of the perceived risks of terrorism, and my own belief is that I would learn more about the Middle East by actually going there than I would by going, for example, to a café in North London where I might hear a few guys speaking Arabic. Not for me the self delusive mantra of “we have everything we need right here”.
Qatar is situated in the Persian Gulf, also known as the Arabian Gulf or the Arabian Sea, adjoining Saudi Arabia. The capital city is Doha. My airline was Gulf Air, co-sponsor of the recent Formula 1 Grand Prix in Bahrain. AFAIK they don’t fly non-stop from London to Doha, so I had to fly to Bahrain first, Bahrain being a tiny little island country just west of Qatar, only 80 miles from Doha. Indeed, the flight time for the onward flight was only 20 minutes! There is a +3 hour time change between London and Doha, meaning that it was mid evening by the time I got there. My friend’s apartment was just a short taxi ride away.
Of course, as most people know, alcohol is forbidden under Islamic law. But rules were made to be broken, and as 75% of the population of Qatar is composed of expats, a licensing system exists whereby the expats (but not the indigenous Qataris) can obtain alcohol. Thus, upon arrival at the apartment, I was offered a beer!
The following day we drove down to the Sealine Beach Resort. As my friend pointed out as we got into his leased Nissan Pathfinder with a 3½ litre engine, Qatar is into gas guzzling petrol cars, with SUVs being particularly popular for three main reasons: 1) They are well suited to driving in desert conditions where 4X4 is essential; 2) They ride high – quite useful given the state of some of the roads, on which a low slung sports car would scrape the road quite often; 3) Cheap gas. On the way down we had to pull off to refuel. It’s just like Oregon – you’re not allowed to pump your own gas, and a gas wallah has to do it for you. The price of gas is the same everywhere and is government controlled. It works out to about 75 cents for a US gallon. At 25°, it was a very warm day and we were able to catch up on all our news at the pool. Later on we had dinner at the Doha Marriott which offers a special deal with an open buffet, with all (alcoholic) drinks included in the price! Being a hotel, the Marriott can serve alcohol, but… you are not allowed to have more than one drink in front of you at any time! I tried to order a Shiraz for the cheese course, but was denied because I hadn’t finished the Chardonnay I had with the preceding fish course. Well! I was only trying to save her an extra trip… And what a meal it was - I counted ten different types of fish on offer, and tried three of those myself. There was even a joint of roast beef, huge selection of vegetables and Qatari salads, cheese board and desserts.
By this time, we had already fixed up a trip to Qatar’s Inland Sea – a journey which has to be made across the desert in 4X4 vehicles. We didn’t drive ourselves, but went in a convoy organised by a tour company. I thought the Pathfinder was big, but our vehicle for the day was a house sized Nissan Safari with a 4.8 litre engine. I wondered how much fuel this thing would consume, but what the hell – the demand for oil is never going to be stemmed by warnings about the disastrous consequences of global warming, and cannot be solved by eco-friendly token gestures made by a relative handful of green minded do-gooders. There is one factor, and
one factor only that has the ability to curb demand for oil: Price. And at 75 cents per gallon, it wasn’t going to happen today. So wheyhey! All aboard the SUV convoy and let her rip…
Upon arrival at the dunes, the first thing that had to be done was to deflate the tyres of all the vehicles down to a pressure of ~15 PSI. Then it was time to begin. Of the 6 SUVs in the convoy, we were #6. The others were all Toyota Land Cruisers. I did see a few Fords up there.
Getting into it – the fun is about to start…
Up to this point our only concern had been how our drivers would find their way out of the desert at the end of the day! Now we were being asked to speak up if we felt squeamish about riding the dunes. What this entailed was the car being aimed at a dune from about 300 yards. The driver floored the accelerator and reached about 80km/h by the time we got to the dune. If you want to see what it was like, I made an .AVI file which you can download from
here. (20MB but worth it!) Later on we had to descend an extremely steep slope. The other five cars looked like dots as we peered down from above. .AVI file
here. (Only 14MB!)
Our car had a 4.8 litre engine. It was working very hard at times, and I doubt that our fuel consumption would have been any better than 5-6mpg! LOL
Taking a break
Some wildlife we passed along the way...
System of Government in Qatar.Qatar is a Monarchy. The head of state is the Emir, who has absolute power. As such, it isn’t a monarchy like the British monarchy in which the queen is no more than a figurehead, but an
absolute monarchy – for those of you who understand the difference. In Qatar, the people may indeed be considered “subjects”. The example of the Emir’s power that my expat friend gave me was that the Emir wants to restore part of the city near the banks of the Corniche to its old town status. But there’s a problem. There is a modern HSBC bank building/office block standing in the way of reconstruction. The Emir has ordered that it be demolished, so demolished it will be! What’s more, none of the parties who will suffer the inconvenience and expense of this decision is to be compensated.
Now you may think that the Qatari population is living under a repressive regime and would wish to “break free of the shackles”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Emir is well respected and much loved by his people, and any proposal by a foreign power to “install democracy” in Qatar might well be met with the footprint – Arabian equivalent of the finger. It just goes to show that one can never assume – and can never assess the status quo of one country by using the scale of values of another.
Qatar is a very safe and peaceful country. There is no crime to speak of or, as my friend put it, the level of crime is two fifths of bugger all. One can walk around the streets at night in complete safety – but careful crossing the road! Owing to the restrictions on alcohol, there is no alcohol related crime – no city centre punch ups after a night of binge drinking as can be seen in certain western cities. There is no culture of illegal drugs, and therefore no drug related crime. There are no weapons. Some of you may consider that an unarmed country which is also very safe to be an anomaly. It isn’t, but unless you have spent any length of time living in an unarmed society, I wouldn’t expect you even to begin to understand.
Gulf AirlinesThe airline has a mixed fleet. Of the four I flew on, let's just say I went anyway! Interestingly, the airline
can serve alcohol, but you can tell they're not used to it. If ordering a glass of wine, they pour a whole tumblerful!
The entertainment system consists of touch-screen operated displays in front of every passenger. The programme choice includes the SkyMap. Interestingly, one of the SkyMap pages showed the distance and relative bearing to Mecca throughout the flight. Neatest of all - and I'd never seen this before - is a camera mounted on the nosewheel gear leg which relays pictures to the entertainment system. I enjoyed watching the takeoff and landing. With the gear stowed, the camera provided a bird's eye view of the earth below.
I'm very glad I went to Qatar. I know that Arabs/Muslims have sometimes received a bad rap on this board, and that's partly understandable after 911. But it has to be said that any friction between the western world and the muslim world is not the result of a clash of interest between the two cultures, but because of local difficulties in particular regions. Qatar is a very polite society. Even as obvious westerners, we were treated with respect and the utmost courtesy by everyone we met.
As most of you know, I'm very quick to admit when I'm wrong.
It's just that owing to the lengthy interval between such occurrences, most people seem to hold the opposite point of view.
But I don't mind admitting - I was wrong about Arabs/Muslims and the Arab world. It was only a four day trip but I learned a lot from it. Not bad for £387.
