Camping in the Desert

I've been camping my whole life in Germany, Switzerland, France, Monaco, and of course in Canada. Most of this was done when I was a boy where we went camping almost every weekend, so I consider myself somewhat of an expert on such activities.

This time was a whole different story ... camping Arabian style in the desert.
In all my previous experience, we camped at a campground with specific campsites. Desert camping in Qatar has no campgrounds nor campsites, and for that matter, no roads to get to where you want to camp. Instead you take a 4-wheel SUV out into the desert, find a sand dune to your liking, and voila ... instant campsite.






Obviously, you also need to go with Arabian friends or you may never find your way back.The area we went to is called the Inland Seas and is about a one-hour SUV drive into the desert. (the blue area at the bottom of the map)

You'd expect that driving into the open desert, at night, with no roads, there would be no one else around.  Surprisingly there were literally hundreds of other SUV's scurrying through the desert in all directions heading for their campsites.


At last we found an empty sand dune right on the sea that we chose as our campsite. Now this camping trip was of the minimalist type ... no tents (other than the one two-man tent you see) ... sleeping under the stars. Like in the Old West we circled our wagons (Cadillac Espalade, Range Rover, and two other SUV's) to define our spot and cut down any wind, or any prying eyes.
After laying down a large carpet and setting up the barbecue, we all had drinks and delicious beef and lamb kabobs.


We did have a night visitor ... a desert fox who liked the smell of our kabobs. He was quite bold and came very close to us. In fact, after some of us had crawled into our sleeping bags, he came right up to sniff each one of us. I named him Rommel ... the desert fox.









As usual, I was up at literally the crack of dawn and took a few pictures of the site and neighbouring areas.

As you can see the sand dunes are large and spaced conveniently apart making for excellent private camp areas.

It was actually quite cold at night (first time I've said that since I've been here). There was a constant cool breeze off the water that made you hunker down into your sleeping bag. Apparently Rhonda wanted more warmth as she was sleeping on the fire pit.

As I said, we were doing a minimalist camping trip, but there were some campsites that were permanently set up for the season which had large tents, trailers, generators, air conditioners ... an apparently large flat screen TV's!

The day was perfect for being on the beach. It was around 30 degrees C and the water was warm and clean. we did discover that there were a lot of small stingrays sharing the water with us but they were skittish and kept out of our way. They bought a few air mattresses on the way to the desert and they turned out to be very popular ... mostly as an improvised swim-up bar. In the picture are Rhonda (who you have heard me mention before), Lizzy (a very bright Canadian girl who can talk the ears off a cornstalk), in the water Muhammed (a Palestinian friend), and standing on the beach (a Qatari) and (Escalade driver).

We stayed at the beach until late afternoon and it was time to go. How did we know that? The drinks had run out ... what else? My first desert camping trip was a lot of fun and sure to be not my last.