feldmanlarry

I worked it out so I would have a long layover on Qatar Airways in Doha, Qatar. As long as it’s under 24 hours, there’s no extra charge. My schedule was packed. Khalid met me at the airport and took me out in the desert. I liked his costume, definitely would turn some heads wearing it in Indiana, PA.

When we got to the desert, he deflated the tires down to 13 psi for our sand dune ride. If the tires were fully inflated the SUV would sink into the sand.

Before the sand dunes though, I was treated to a camel ride. The camel got way down low.

I wish I had that kind of flexibility

I got on and they told me to hold on to a bar. The second I held on, we were suddenly flying up to the camel’s full height. I’m very glad to have been holding tight. I had been on a camel once before, in Jordan in front of the building at Petra that was used as the Temple of Doom in the Indiana Jones movie. I remember being more uneasy in Jordan than I was here. It felt like being on a horse with a big hump. My iPhone Moves app, which keeps track of every place I go, recorded my time on the camel as cycling. I appreciate the free extra exercise.

The sand bashing through the dunes was really wild. At first I was worried that it would hurt my back, then I thought it was OK, but the next day I was definitely feeling it. There were several types of maneuvers. One was just going straight down a dune at high speed. I’ll stop saying “at high speed” since that’s a given. Another was going along the flats while turning the wheel wildly to the left and right. The one I liked the most was going at an angle down a dune. The sand gets pushed up like a fountain to the side. Another move was going in reverse up a dune. All of these moves were done with his “party mix” of Arab music playing in the background. That music is not my favorite but it really worked for the energy of the driving.

Khalid was obviously enjoying himself. He took a lot of pictures and videos, not as much as me of course but a lot. Sometimes he’d be taking a video while doing one of these maneuvers which looking back on it should have made me a little scared.

These were the only desert flowers I saw.

We stopped at the southeast edge of Qatar, with two islands belonging to Saudi Arabia probably a half to quarter mile away. Khalid joked that I could swim to Saudi Arabia. But, he said not joking that they would shoot without a warning shot if I did so. There was a Saudi police station right just to the right of the Saudi island in the picture below. You will not be surprised that I did not swim there.

Saudi Arabia begins at the line just below the blue marker where we were.

Khalid took me to a resort just a few miles from there where I had lunch and a chance to swim in the Persian Gulf. No oil tankers or pirates in sight.

We returned to the edge of the desert and Khalid had the tires inflated back to normal pressure. Next was a tour of the city of Doha with a guide of Indian descent. This tour turned out to be a little disappointing because it was (very surprisingly) raining and when we went to the places with great views it was after dark. Qatar has the highest GDP of any country in the world but that statistic is a little deceiving. Only a small part of Qatar residents are citizens. They get free health care, education through college, and many other benefits and are very highly paid. The majority of residents are from all over Asia and don’t earn much. I sensed a touch of bitterness from my guide.

It was obvious that Qatar had too much money floating around. The Museum of Islamic Art is designed by I. M. Pei who did the Louvre additions, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and numerous other amazing buildings. This was a stunning building and filled with priceless art. I’ve been fascinated with Islamic art since I began studies in math education. Since it is against Muslim rules to show pictures of people, they developed beautiful geometric art. The famous artist Escher was influenced by Islamic art. I taught lessons at IUP that spun off of the geometry of  Escher’s work. Naturally I focused on anything at the museum that had repeated geometric patterns.

The market was massive.

The traffic was very heavy and after seeing some large, expensive developments I was done. I had very little sleep the last two nights. I had been doing stuff since my arrival in Qatar at 6:30 AM and by 7 PM (noon my time) I was done. This was equivalent to staying up all night. I bowed out of the last part of the tour and got to the airport early. My flight was to leave at 10:30 PM and arrive in Colombo at 5:45 AM, which was a 2.5 hour time change from Qatar and a 9.5 hour time change from home.

The image that will remain with me the most this day is of the big smile on Khalid’s face as we barreled down a sand dune while he had one hand on the wheel and one hand holding his iPhone to take a video. I’m really glad to have made this side trip. From now on, I’m going to try to do this every time I have a stopover.