PG_Qatar

Qatar

Doing it in the Dunes..

When I first got offered a job in Qatar I was pretty excited, a chance to do some paragliding in another country always gets the blood flowing...I should have looked at a Topographic Map first...Qatar, in the middle east, is flat, the highest point being about 90m ASL.

I arrived in the capital city Doha, and went about my job as a 3D designer for the 2006 Asian Games.
My Glider arrived a few days later, and it wasnt until a day or so after that that I started to hear mixed stories about the legalities and logistics of paragliding in the middle east.

Apparently it now just "tolerated", there had been incidents resulting in glider confiscation, but not recently.

A colleague organised a "Desert day", a trip down toward the Saudi border in 2 4WDs. It was in the late afternoon, as the summertime mid day temperature is well over 50 degrees celcius.

This is where I got my first view of the desert sand dunes here....absolutely Amazing.

Mark had told me that he knew of two PG pilots who were moving from Abu Dhabi to Doha, and after a little ringing around I managed to catch up with one of them, Pakistani pilot, Ahsan.

The other pilot, Canadian, Dean, also arrived in Doha after a flying trip in India, and we, along with Spanish pilot Lewis and Belgium pilot Bernard, have since managed to get some nice flying in on the huge inland dunes.

There does seem to be a catch to flying in Qatar, The S.E. wind you need for flying the steep side of the dunes is in Summer..when day time temperature soar to 50-55 degrees.

When its cool enough to venture out into the desert, the wind is generally N.W., over the back, still soarable, but you have to find the right dunes. (out of the thousands to choose from)

I am pretty sure that with the huge numbers of ex-pats in the country (80 percent of the population), and the growing acceptance of "avaiation sports" in the middle east, it will become a great paragliding destination.