desert safari

I've managed to mess up the order of things since I already posted about the final work week.  It's due to a variety of technical issues with my camera, Mac, and PC.  Sigh.  Between the camera not charging properly, then the Mac suddenly deciding its not going to recognize videos, then hosing up the Mac with too many photos (I think?), I've been pulling my hair out.  Technology is great until it's not.

So now I'm going to backtrack a tad and hit on something that I actually really really wanted to do before we came:  the desert safari.  We did this on Saturday of our last full weekend; Oct 6, to be precise.  I had heard about the desert safari (maybe assisted by Sex in the City, Part 2?), so I knew it needed to be on the Must Do list.  In my head, undulating hills of barren sand reflected the fiery setting sun as we gently bobbed along on camels to some isolated Bedoin tent, then we gently disembarked (potentially tangling layers of fabric fluttering in the gentle breeze), reclined on piles of cushions and were fed dates and flatbread by attractive Arab men (or women, for the guys on the team... I'm all about equal opportunity).  The mournful tones of Arabic music would entwine with fruity sheesha smoke and float up to the star-filled heavens.  The 11 of us would laugh and eat as night yawned over the desert and we'd head back to civilization, confident that we'd experienced life as a nomadic desert dweller.

Yeah, ok.  Turns out I have a vivid imagination.  (surprised by that, are you?)

In reality, you'll need to picture about maybe 300+ sweaty and disoriented tourists who arrive in SUVs that have just gone crashing over those undulating desert hills, with sand spewing into the sky.  This, my friends, is dune crashing.  I'll admit, it was super-fun and probably the best part of the safari (I'll post a little video from the back seat in an upcoming blog).  I got a bit of a clue when me and Karen hopped into the back of our SUV and discovered roll bars across the ceiling.  Yeah, ok... what's this??

Falcon - isn't he beautiful?  She?  I didn't really check

Ritesh with falcon - is that falcon saying, "whatchoo lookin' at dude?"

Karen and Kana about to depart on camel

Sheela and Catherine as camel assumes the seated position
their expressions are priceless!

When you arrive at the compound in the desert (a large area with little huts around a central stage, surrounded by a fence of vertical wooden posts like you'd see around a fort), you're greeted by a cacophony of whirring engines, then smacked by the smell of gasoline.  Not my favorite olfactory or auditory environment.   People descend on you to ride ATVs around a little circle outside the fenced area, or get your photo with a falcon.  There were 2 bedraggled camels that gave short rides to the tourists.  I did do a camel ride, but only because I had said from Day 1 that I Will Ride A Camel.  Well, my little vegan heart broke for those two camels because they had to get up, walk 20 paces that-a way, walk 20-paces back and collapse back down again.  Over and over.  On their bony legs with arthritic-looking knobby knees.  And they were muzzled.  And I wasn't wearing some filmy, layered, wafting in the gentle breeze exotic fabric thing, but jeans and a T-shirt.  Talk about killing a fantasy.

But then it started to pick up when we went into the fenced compound.  Inside the little huts were a henna artist and, what the UAE does best, shopping, for all kinds of little trinkets.  A bunch of the guys bought little bottles with sand art for their significant others at home and we looked around the other shops.  There was a separate area with trickling water and sheesha smoking - fine, I guess, if you're into that kind of thing.  I've maintained I have enough problems breathing just as it is.  Several of us girls got our hand painted with henna.  A small group of us also climbed up one particularly large dune to check out the sunset over the desert.  Just beautiful.

Inside the compound, there were long tables on top of patterned carpets.  Large cushions surrounded each table.  You sit on the ground to eat dinner and watch the show, which turned out to be some guys playing some nice exotic mournful music on traditional instruments (don't ask me what, a clarinet-type thing was one of them but at least it sounded like I imagined it would), a belly dancer (man, wish I could do THAT!) and a Sufi dancer (aka Whirling Dervish).  The Sufi dancer won for most bizarrely talented because the guy just spun around for 15 minutes straight, while doing interesting things with the many layers of his costume.  I would have seriously barfed after about 30 seconds and fallen on my face after 45 seconds.  But he just kept spinning, spinning, spinning.  The whole team was talking about him afterwards and for several days later.

For dinner, there was a buffet and they gave you enormous oblong plates that were more like serving platters.  Everyone filled up on roasted meats (chicken, I think?  obviously I skipped), salads, hummus (because it wouldn't be a meal in the Gulf without hummus) and rice.  Since pretty much every meal I've eaten in the UAE has consisted of hummus and salad, I would have been just fine.  Next,  I toddled over to the meat station (since I was obediently following the line), then when I realized what it was and said "oh, no thank you," 3 different guys started barking "vegetarian, vegetarian" at me and pointed crazily to a table in a dark corner.   Ok, first, it's a little freaky that my refusal of some chicken makes strange men bark the word "vegetarian" at me in the desert.   Second, it's a little weird to have to go by myself to some dark corner apparently allotted to vegetarians.  I don't think I need to tell you that my active imagination came up with all kinds of scenarios in those couple of seconds.  Turns out that on a desert safari, they also have more food for veggies, with maybe 3 different types of curries, in addition to my requisite hummus and salad.  Get OUT!  Vegetarian options in the desert?!?!  Well, this just turned the whole night around for me, letmetellyouwhat!  How is it that in Memphis, I can't go to a restaurant and get more than a wilty pile of barely green head lettuce with 3 strips of carrot, yet in the middle of the DESERT I can get a veggie buffet?  Are you kidding me?  So, I, just like the rest of my team, got an excessively large pile of food that I scarfed down with about 300 of my new closest friends while watching a young woman with jiggly hips.

Afterward, we rode back to Al Ain (little over an hour drive) and I got into a discussion with Felipe about politics and guerillas and life in Colombia.  Super interesting.  He says I'd be at zero risk of getting kidnapped by guerillas and starving in a remote mountain hut for years as the U.S. attempts to negotiate my release.  I wonder how many veggie options they have in Bogota?  #ibmcsc uae