The bedu babes of the Singing Sand Dunes

Another long read of mine.. Another experience made in Qatar another lesson learned while living in Qatar. I stole the idea of the photos from Novita! Thanks for the idea. This first appeared on ilq.net.

"The bedu babes of the Singing Sand Dunes"

Since I arrived here a year ago it has been an ardent desire of mine to experience and see the Singing Sand Dunes. It has taken me about a year to find them and I don't know why because I did a search on QL and there were the directions in VIVID detail by our very own Tallg who posted a VERY exact description of how to get to the dunes. We (the family and I) followed the directions and made it there on the first try without any hiccups. Alhamdulillah.

1 year on the search, we're here! YAY!

Upon arrival we fell in love with the place and I took about a million pictures and videos trying to catch every piece of the beauty of the place. The wind was blowing like the big bad wolf over at lil piggy's house and was getting the baby powder fine sand in our mouths, noses and lederhosen.

3 of my MANY kids on an "adventure!"

Everyone had a blast running up the dunes and sliding down them as a team to maximize the sand hum matrix causing them them to reverberate so deep I thought we ended up at a Disney movie with the THX intro. The sound the dunes made with 4 of us sliding down them was so loud it started to become uncomfortable to the ears. I eventually had to surrender my sand sliding because of the heat of the sand which my children seem to be impervious to.

Too hot to trot!

So me in my infinite wisdom decided to take my over glorified AWD minivan (a.k.a. GMC Acadia) over to a larger and even higher sand dune I had spotted from the top of the one I was at already. So I hop in the car kill the traction control and head out over the sharp rocks like a Dohadian ( a resident of Doha) going to Villagio on Friday night on “everything is free here” night. No that night doesn't exist but by the way some people here in Doha drive you would think it does (that's another tale for another time inshaallah.)

Anyhow I tear out across the rocks risking a puncture on the jagged stones and cant find a way to get to my new destination without crossing....... the dreaded sand dune... Now for all of you in the know.. we know that if you don't have a solid 4x4 with sand/off road tires you don't mess around out there on the dunes. For those not in the know, know that if you don't have the above the sand will swallow your car with you in it.

NOT built for serious off road!

I say (to myself in my head) BAH! I can handle it and I cut across a short corner of a dune to test out the ride on “swallow me sand”. It was cooooooooolll. So I tear around high speed and drive on the sand right at the edge of the dune swerving left and right getting my drift on and enjoying it thoroughly. At last I decide that this isn't enough and I drive across the top of a dune kicking up sand and drifting having a blast!

The wife is waving me down at a distance (no she wasn't in the car) and I think to myself “aaaww man the fun is over” and she is about to give me a lashing about beating the ride up on the dunes. Surprise surprise, I pull up to her grinning grill only to have her eject me from the drivers seat into the passenger side only to have her start bashing the dues herself (she is good at it too!)

After a bit I kick her outta the cockpit and I head for the new dune over the corner of a small dune and I ... let off the gas bringing the car to a awkward halt. I'm stuck and I know it but I give it gas and more and more and more till the tires are in a pit up to the lugs.. sigh I'm a genius.

We pile out and dig, dig, dig some more and then put rocks, carpet and anything else we can find under the wheels to try and make traction. All fail and now the car is in a HUGE and I mean HUGE hole of our own efforts. Sigh I'm a genius and now I am a panicked one at that. We are in the desert with the sun going down without a soul in sight and no house or village in sight. Being a sane man I do the most logical thing I can think of... I start digging again because HEY it was so successful up till now why not keep going? Sigh... Out of the blue two families pull up in a couple of sedans and w go back and forth trying to get the car out to no avail.

Just when all hope seemed lost up pulled a Welsh hero to save the day with a full “get the newbie fool outta the sand kit”... sheesh I think “where can I get one of those?” “Carrifour” he says and I think GAAWWK he can read minds! He breaks out his shovel and plastic tracks and we get set up to attempt to get us unstuck but its looking grim and I can tell he is willing to try but wasn't hopeful. He put on a brave face for me but I could tell he was thinking “how the hell did this genius not see this pit and drive around it?”

At that point a while land cruiser appears over a dune and pauses at the top like a hero on a white horse making a dramatic entrance. The LC pulls up and gets into to the “toe newbie outta the sand position” clearly ready to help.. We walk around to the drivers side to greet the driver and out pops a woman to our surprise (the passenger is also a woman), in retrospect I don't know why we were surprised but hey we were so... whatever. She looked like.. well kinda awesome man, real Xena type lady. She was a Qatari but she wasn't wearing a hijab or face veil no, she was wearing a turban! I stood there mouth open in ... I dunno.. shock? She was tough looking and had STRONG hands like she could wrestle an adult camel to the ground with one hand while talking to her habiba with the other hand.

She handles the situation totally and takes control and pops her trunk, I glance in and she has a “get the newbie fool outta the sand kit” and now I'm like sigh... I'm a genius. She pulls us outta the sand pit and blazes off over a massive dune in the direction of the now setting sun with a smile and a wave goodbye.

My Scotsman has a pump and inflates my tires for me and we pass the goodbyes and I head back to Doha where my not so bedu ilk belong.

The most beautiful place in Qatar?

LESSON LEARNED
All in all it was an absolute blast and getting stuck in the sand is a sure fire way to learn that no matter how ugly things get you have no excuse to lose faith in your fellow man. With all of the racisim and discrimination threads, the accusations and the stereotypes and generalizations, 3 Asians, a European, and a Qatari all stopped to help us even thought the situation seemed hopeless. Nothing mattered to them at that moment other than to help their fellow man out of a situation of his own making.

I cant stop but think that maybe we should abandon out keyboards a little more and get out there instead of screwing each other into the ceiling. One posts a thread and another follows with a comment which are increasingly negative, one person pinging off the next one. In my off line experiences I have had more pleasing encounters than negative ones and maybe we only notice the negative ones because all we do is come on line and talk about them so when 10 good things happen we pay no mind but one bad one happens and we type away and hit post and put off another person to a beautiful country and a once in a life time experience of traveling to a new place to make a new experience.

Small lesson of the day for me.. anyhow....

Two generations of one family happily back home.

Thank you to all of you who helped us and made us appreciate the strangers around us. A big thanks to the two families who first stopped to help us. An extra thanks our Welsh hero and an especially huge thanks to the bedu babes of the singing sand dunes.

On this day our supplications to Allah are yours, may he accept them from us.