the desert beautiful

On Friday we left Kuwait city behind and drove southwest down Route 70 towards the Saudi border. There was a sand storm, not a severe one, and the sky was reddish-brown to the east.

In some places the sand glowed golden in the ethereal light.

We reached a wide expanse of desert where there were several cars parked haphazardly. We pulled over to see what was there. All-terrain bikes (ATV) were available for hire.

People were riding them at top speed across the miles of flat sandy desert and up and down gentle slopes. We had a go too. Half an hour of riding at a good speed with no traffic (and certainly no traffic jams of the kind I’m used to in my home town Bangalore) and no kerbstones to set boundaries, was exhilarating. Liberating.

Kids were amazingly good at handling them! And they were having good, clean fun outdoors too.

We drove further to what we think is the Al Ahmadi ridge where we saw a family picnicking near their parked car, a common sight in Kuwait.

There were a couple of people walking on the escarpment, deep in conversation. Nice place to have an interesting conversation actually.

Some men had ridden the ATVs all the way up the road to the escarpment from the place where they were being hired out.

We drove back down and took Route 70 towards the border of Saudi Arabia. The storm had driven sand onto the road and it was piled on the hard shoulder.

It was a great day!

Note: No photo has been edited. This is exactly how the world looked that day.