Yesterday, we (the guys) rode in a motorcade of CMU-Q students to Saleh’s desert tent. Despite thinking we were already in the desert, we went to what the Qataris consider desert, which is about an hour and a half away from our beloved Movenpick, which means the desert is about an hour and half away from “the desert.” So we basically crossed the entire country of Qatar…in about an hour and a half.

Riding in the night to our desert oasis, I kept my eye out for license plates of all the expensive cars. Now I know that the number of numbers on a license plate is a symbol of status. The fewer numbers you have, the more expensive it is.

Everyone is identified in relation to their cars (and hey, you need a way to identify your friends in the Land Cruiser conga line). By that logic, the shorter the number, the easier it is to remember. You wanna be 111? Well, you better be the Emir, but you can purchase shorter, sweeter numbers. The Ministry of Transportation actually assesses each number and puts them up for auction based on how cool the number seems (license plate number 1574 in Arabic spells “love” in English, which is pretty cool). A 702 plate was auctioned for 140,000 American dollars, and that is on top of the money spent on the car.

We followed Mr. 702 to the desert, along with a fleet of Toyota Land Cruisers, which are kind of a big deal here. Everyone has them, everyone wants them (so they buy more than one). They are seen as the best and most reliable vehicle to have out here. They are big and beefy and won’t get you crushed in a roundabout. I heard about some kid who got hit by a schoolbus (wait, that kid was riding with us). They are spacious for stuffing in your sixteen best friends and heading to the drive-through for a late-night round of karak or McArabia meals. Unlike in America where SUVs just guzzle gas cruising suburban neighborhoods and freshly sweeped streets, here you can drive on pavement, on sand dunes, over roundabout dividers, off-road, and over curbs.

After seven days, we’ve seen it all. In addition to regular off-roading and curb-jumping, they frickin race these things here. This is not your grandma’s Toyota. This is a souped-up Land Cruiser with turbos, superchargers, and NOS.

Showing off your Land Cruiser is part of the foundation of Qatari culture. The running joke here is that you could put a picture of a Land Cruiser on the Qatari flag. No one would have a problem with it.

— Joshua Debner