A Day at the Races

Camel races, that is. Most camel-oriented activities smack of tourist trap (e.g. rides around the Pyramids, of which I've been guilty, but just a little bit), but we caught wind of a local camel racing track, horribly (and happily) undermarketed and found about 18 dusty and unimpressive kilometers from Doha in a village called Shahaniya. Most of the traffic out there was in the form of oil tanker trucks and construction vehicles (a good sign) and the exit to the track was also under construction. However, there was a sign for the race track itself, in that comforting coffee brown used the world over for places of historical, natural, or cultural significance, like Stonehenge, or the Grand Canyon:

This is Qatar's answer to overhyped and non-interactive Places of Interest. After about ten minutes of searching for a diversion that would allow us to actually get there, we were on the road to the races. The blue parking signs we saw at what looked like the track building and stands were of course, merely subterfuges to embarrass naive and trusting tourists. The "stands" were completely empty and as we walked around form the parking lot, we saw they were also too far from the track for anyone without a spotting scope. We quickly realized the best thing to do was follow the camels which seemingly appeared out of nowhere and were being driven across the road by Sudanese trainers wrapped tightly against the blowing sand and dust. Here was our romanticized Orientalist image of the mysterious Middle East, updated just a bit, emerging slowly from the National Road 18 to Dukhan, complete with camel crossing signs and the odd Toyota Land Cruiser.

The young camels were muzzled with bright woven wool baskets of sorts - think of it as a camelmouth cozy. We made it to trackside (literally) and peered over the outer fence of the track, waiting for the camels to be led out. We noticed to our dismay that given our position, the apparent size of the track (6km I was told later) and the fairly safe assumption that even if we were so inclined, we could not outrun camels, it didn't look like we'd see much more than the start of the race.

Luckily, just after the camels burst out from the starting line (OK, "burst" implies too much speed - maybe "lurched forward in a tangle of necks and hooves"), Michelle, who was about twenty meters down the track from Nadia and I heard someone call out in Arabic "want to get in?" The race was about to get much more interesting...

(to be continued)