Camping in Dukhan

So my home Internet fried out for whatever reason. It took a good number of days to fix, mostly due to finding a time in my schedule when I could be at my apartment to meet the technician from the phone company, so wasn't able to update the blog while the wi-fi was out.

Thus I’ve got some blogging catching-up to do. I haven't even posted photos from my trip to Italy and that was almost a month ago! Anyway a couple of weekends ago friends of mine organized a big camping trip on Dukhan Beach. About 25 people went. You didn’t have to stay overnight but if you did there were buildings with majlis seating that you could crash on. This was not “roughing it” camping, it was actually a semi-private beach owned by a Qatari company, one of the organizers works for the company so booked it for us.

I arrived in the afternoon and while we waited for others to arrive many of us sat in the outdoor majlis, chatting or playing FIFA on a gaming console (yes, outdoors, I think the electricity was provided by an extension cord to the building). A Nespresso machine was next to the TV.

It was too cold for swimming, and there was a brisk wind which was kicking up waves.

After more guys arrived there was a break to play some soccer at a nearby field.

Dinner was goat, Yemeni-style. A Yemeni friend of ours likes to come to these trips and do the cooking. A pit is dug and wood is burnt in the pit until it forms a hot charcoal.

At which point the packages of marinated goat are placed on the coals in the pit is covered up with more wood burned on top of it. The meat stays in the ground for hours.

While that's cooking they cook up a huge pot of rice that contains various spices such as saffron and cardamom. My contribution was to bring some pots of my homemade chili, which a lot of the guys like to have with the rice.

We played a lot of Brazillia, FIFA and even chess while we waited for the meat to cook.

Dinner is served! (This was just one tray of six)

After dinner we spent a few more hours chatting and so forth, mostly around the fire as it starting getting quite cold, until it got really late. I decided to head home rather than sleep there as I had some stuff to do next morning.

Winter is the time for camping in Qatar. I went on a smaller camping/picnic trip the following weekend, I hope to go to a few more in the next few months.