Dune-Bashing

Having been away from main campus for nearly two weeks, I needed my Georgetown fix and thusly pilgrimaged to SFS-Qatar. I met up with the Student Affairs crowd, who are Class of 2008 and 2009 and other affiliated people for the weekend.

The highlight was dune-bashing, a desert staple, especially in cities where there is little else to do. In Doha your weekend options are pretty much dune-bashing or refining more gas. Which is fun, up to a point.

Friday morning our cars (we dune-bashed in 4x4 SUVs) pulled up to the Georgetown apartments. Out of the first car jumped a Qatari man in his late 20s. Dressed in, no joke, a fedora and a vest. In fact, he looked like the bearded version of someone I had seen before...but where...oh wait yup here ya go:
We piled into our SUVs and plowed off into the desert south of Doha. Our driver, I'll call him JT, switched the music from traditional Qatari songs to his Akon mix and we were set. The dunes were untouched - it was almost like skiing fresh powder. Except for you're in a car. Dune-bashing is a lot like a rollercoaster. There's a lot of dread as you drive up, and then you scream like a little girl on the way down. In fact, I took video of just that. Unfortunately, it won't upload to Blogger...

It was hard to get good photos but here are the other two cars in our caravan. They often stayed unnervingly close: