Camping in Qatar
I never even liked tequila until I tried Patron. And the reason I tried Patron, was because it kept getting mentioned in a bunch of R&B and hip-hop songs about five years back. I figured if it was good enough for Kanye and The-Dream it was good enough for me.
See unlike the vast majority of tequilas, Patron is actually half decent. It’s not exactly the ‘Rolls Royce’ of tequila, but it’s good enough that you can drink it straight from the bottle and not fall over dead. Which means you can forgo all that nonsense with the limes and the salt and the yada, yada…
This makes it an excellent beverage to take camping, because after a few hours of starter beers, everyone is drunk enough to just pass the bottle around and get real weird on tequila.
And if you’re going to get weird on tequila, a camping expedition to the Saudi border (and the inland sea that separates it from Qatar), is as good a place as any.
Not Like Sex & The City 2
Saudi Arabia, as most of you would know, is extremely ‘unchill’. Alcohol is totally banned, sex is banned, and women are, for all intents and purposes, also ‘banned’. If you want a crash course in why Saudi is the way it is then Google Wahhabism, but that’s a whole other conversation.
I had plenty of time to think about all the ways Saudi Arabia was ‘wrong’ while working in neighbouring Qatar. Hired to promote the country’s burgeoning cultural sector, I spent most of my days reinforcing colonial stereotypes that would make Edward Said turn in his self-righteous grave. This involved a whole lot of five star hotels, cocktail bars, and chauffeured trips.
Don’t get me wrong, all the above was ‘excellent’ — and I very much enjoyed the daily laundry service — but I’m not a complete monster. After 12 months of luxury and excess I figured I should “actually see the goddamn country for real.”
As it happened, some friends had an upcoming camping trip to the inland sea that separates Saudi and Qatar, a spare seat in their 4x4 convoy, and didn’t mind me schlepping along. I had a bottle of Patron, a sleeping bag, and a tent — which I was about 60% confident I could pitch. Maybe.
In the desert, you can’t remember your name
Getting to the Saudi border is pretty straightforward if you’re in Qatar. Basically, you point the car south and drive at speed for about an hour. Getting to the inland sea is a little more complicated, and means veering of the main highway and heading southeast towards a small oasis / resort / tourist trap known as Sealine.
Make it this far, and the only thing standing between you and an unwanted trip into the Kingdom of Saudi will be several kilometres of sand dunes, and a 500-metre stretch of water.
If you haven’t already done so, this is the point where you should start cracking open your beers, whiskeys, or whatever else you have going, because law and order stops at Sealine. The sand dunes that stretch out ahead of you are home to Saudi dudes who think they’re in MIA’s Bad Girls video, and they drive their LandCruisers accordingly, i.e. at speed, on two wheels, with little regard for personal safety.
Needless to say, they have little patience for a convoy of preppy white kids from Oxford trying to navigate a rag tag mix of 4x4s to “this beach we once found.”
It’s not on Google Maps, though
To the uninitiated, one sand dune looks much like the other, so you’ll want to keep your wits about you. A wrong turn here and you might find yourself driving into a Yemen civil war, a Saudi border town, or God knows what else. This is where a GPS comes in useful (Pro tip: the blue bit representing the ocean stays on your left).
Navigate these dunes for about 30 minutes and you’ll eventually hit a crest, barrel over the top, and find yourself starring out at the inland sea. All snark aside, the view is ‘legit’ spectacular, with the desert dunes of Qatar giving rise to jagged cliffs jutting out of the narrow sea ahead.
…It would be even more spectacular if there weren’t already a bunch of other people pitching tents, setting up campfires, and occupying the space. 90% of these folks will be local Qataris or Saudis, so there’s not much you can do but push on towards the border, and a more secluded spot to pitch your tents and break out the booze and pork products.
The subtle art of diplomacy
All of which brings us full circle, and back to the Patron. There’s something very satisfying about getting weird on tequila as the sun sets over the desert horizon, and the only thing between you and a length prison sentence / public flogging is 500 metres of very shallow water.
That enthusiasm will be short lived. By the time you wake up the following morning (in a collapsed tent, with a random stranger, and a terrible hangover), geopolitics will be the last thing on your mind.
But whatever, whatever; for a brief drunken moment you can stare down the House of Saud. And get as close to the border as you’ll ever want to be…
Not paid for, sponsored, or in any other way associated with Patron… although it maybe should have been.
Note: This article originally appeared in issue 5 of Lost magazine
You can find more tips on living and working in Qatar in my book — God Willing: How to survive expat life in Qatar.