Thursday, February 5th.
I spent a couple of hours at the beautiful large pool at my hotel while they were cleaning my room. Then I decided to head back to Waqif Souk before my evening Night Safari in the Desert. I wandered around discovering areas and watching people. I revisited the Falcon Souk and found several more shops with all things relating to falconry including live hooded falcons on roosts. I watched as soldiers or guards walked their camels diagonally across a busy intersection to the souk where they hobbled and draped them with a carpet with a hole for the hump and then fed them. I sampled many kinds of dates at the date festival. I ate at a small takeout place and then walked three blocks to the shore of the sea to get a view of the impressive night skyline of Doha. Then I took the Metro to the meeting place for the tour. There were five of us this time, a middle aged German couple, Vojta, a 21 year-old from the Czech Republic and myself. This was basically the same tour as yesterday but at night. We drove to the camel riding place and Vojta enjoyed the short ride before we went dune bashing again. As we drove I was amazed at the number of camping sites that the locals use. They are all lit up and pollute the night sky with light, thus inhibiting the start gazing I was looking forward to. But it was also partly cloudy and there was a lot of dust and fine sand particles in the air from all the dune vehicles, so it was a moot point. We enjoyed the drive as we rode up and over several very large dunes. The driver reduces the tire pressure from 40psi to 12 to facilitate this. We stopped at a lookout on top of a dune overlooking the inland sea whre our guide took photos of us using our phones. He played with the settings and took some good shorts of me, the moon, some stars and the inland sea. Then Vojta tried the sandboarding and wound up with sand everywhere. Then it was time to return to Doha. I really enjoyed Vojta company. We parted at the Metro and I got back to the hotel by midnight.
