The Liberty Bus

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

You know when a day goes to complete ratshit? When you had plans and they gang aft agley? It was that sort of day last Thursday. Scheduled to be in Warqa for festive nibbles with pals, I'm still in the office at six with a drive to Ajman and back ahead of me and every road in Dubai is crimson on Google Maps. The MBZ is just awful, blocked up south of Mirdif.

And so, desperate, I set off to find The Last Snicket, the tiny gap out by the RTA depot in the desert beyond Mizhar that breaches the insane wall of concrete lumps that very transport authority has constructed in the sands that border two parts of the same country.

I don't know what I was thinking. I mean, if I'd sat out the MBZ mess, I'd have been through in 30 minutes. But something in me, the spirit that sets salmon carving their way across the world's oceans to seek a nice, Scottish river to die in, craved freedom. Driving along the sandy track by the barrier in the darkness, I started to doubt myself. Was this really the smart thing to do? Of course it was, I was moving, wasn't I?

The little gap was closed. They've been plugging gaps opening in their barrier daily. And they've gone further out into the remote desert than ever before. You know that feeling when you just have to keep going around the next corner in the wadi to see what's there? Yep, that. I carry on up sandy hill and down bosky dell, finding gap after gap has been plugged with the ground all around churned up by the tractors they've used to pile up great walls of sand to reinforce their barrier. Until I get to The Last Snicket, literally a few hundred yards from the Emirates Road, the E611, in the deep, deep desert.

They've even blocked that, something I discover as I hurl the car over the piles they've made in their blocking frenzy, the Pajero bucking on the rough, soft sand and then lurching down a steep slope into a deep, pitch black bowl. That's when The Fear hit me, the nasty tingle you get when you know something really, really bad's about to happen and you're powerless to stop it. There are two ways out of the bowl, a long slope that appears to have no ending in the darkness and a steep boggy little track out to the right, all churned up and deeply rutted soft sand. I can see very little because my lights are pointed downwards as I slip down the slope. I'm going too slowly, slam my foot down on the throttle and go for the boggy sand, knowing in my heart of hearts I don't have enough speed. Sure enough, half-way up, I dig in and grind to a halt. I reverse to try and regain some momentum to get back up the steep incline I've come down, but it's useless. I stick right there in the cusp of the bowl in the desert blackness.

I say some rude things and then abandon ship. It's too late, too remote and too dark to do anything else. I clamber up the soft dunes and strike out towards the bright lights of the labour camp that sits between the RTA depot and the snaking lights of the 611. Shoes filled with sand, I realise what a spectacle I present when labourers stop to gape at me - a man has walked out of the inky darkness of the desert wearing a blue suit and carrying a laptop bag. I do what any decent Englishman would do and wave, bidding them a cheery 'Good evening'.

I find a gentleman wearing a 'security' uniform. 'Good evening,' I smile. 'Is there any chance I could get a taxi from here?'

He is speechless, but the chap next to him has more presence of mind. 'Where going?' He asks. 'To Sharjah,' I tell him. He grabs my arm and propels me to a nearby bus full of labourers. 'Sharjah, Sharjah, one way!' he shouts at the driver. A jockey seat is put down and patted by a chap in tatty blue overalls. 'Majlis!' he calls out above the coughing engine noise, a broken-toothed grin welcoming me into the fuggy interior. And we set off, some thirty labourers on their way to enjoy a wander around Rolla and me in my blue suit, poker straight and somewhat bewildered, if the truth be told.

We drive up through a track in the darkness, finally breaking out onto the road by the RTA depot and then through Mizhar and Muhaisna. The chaps are nattering away, cheerful and buoyed by the coming weekend. Their chatter is a constant tide of shouts, laughter and tubercular coughing set against the rise and fall of the clanking engine. We hit bad traffic and a moan goes up from the bus, 'Sonapour, Sonapour,' they tut and sigh. It's as if there's nothing good ever to be got from Sonapour, the source of the traffic snarl-up.

They let me off at National Paints and I bid them a cheery, and genuinely thankful, farewell and get a taxi. The taxi driver has clearly never seen a man in a suit get off a labour bus before and it takes me a while before I can get him to listen to where I want to go.

For what it's worth, I eventually made it back down to Warqa only half an hour late.

The next day I went back in the company of pal Derek to see how we could possibly unstick the Paj. It was pretty hopeless, but some tyre letting down and tugging later, we managed to extricate ourselves both from the bowl. And then, because we could, we pootled over the blocked snicket and home to Sharjah.

It's safe to say, though, that my snicketing days are now over. I enjoyed the new experience of the Liberty Bus but honestly don't fancy making a habit of it...

End Of Snickets

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My first short-cut into Dubai from Sharjah was a wee desert track which ran through low dunes and camel camps, snaking its way down into the outskirts of the big city behind the Dubai abbatoir. These days it's called Beirut Street.

My second was a little further out, again a desert track and a fun drive each morning and night, a little dune bash to settle the mind. I've long said, if I had to sit on the Ittihad Road and that jostling, snarling line of cars I couldn't live in Sharjah. But I never have, so we've continued to embrace the joys of the Cultured Emirate. Time and progress eclipsed my second snicket, which is called the Mohammed bin Zayed Road now.

A few years ago, my current snicket was blocked by faceless forces. Well, Dubai's RTA. A running battle developed between JCBs laying an insane barrier of concrete blocks across the desert dividing Dubai and Sharjah. The Orcs were clearly intent on forcing the little band of 4WDs, who daily bumped their way over the short sandy stretch, onto the roads. For a time, to my great amusement, cars would dart around the lumbering yellow earth-movers, blocks would be pulled aside when the baddies weren't looking and we'd continue our merry way across the snicket. This went on for a while and The Man clearly gave up and left us to it.

Quite right.

But, of course, we always find a way to ruin things and word started to leak out about the snicket which slowly developed from a couple of holes in the barrier to great multi-laned super-snickets. We obviously reached Peak Snicket, because the other day, someone in authority clearly decided enough was enough. The JCBs came back in force, great fresh concrete barriers laid right the way along the border, earth-movers piled up huge sandy berms and the forces of Mordor kept at it relentlessly, quickly repairing any breaches that would appear. Their work is complete. The whole thing is now functionally impassable.

That's it. End of snicket.

And so this morning we went to school on the 611, the Emirates Road. It's a nasty, aggressive little high speed drive, the road at times seeming close to capacity and clogging slightly but it moved freely for the most part.

I was highly amused to find it took about the same time to get there as going across the snicket...

Heroes

These heroes decided to escape last night's awful traffic by taking the sandy snicket between Dubai and Sharjah. What on earth made them think that you'd get large lorries and a cement mixer across undulating, churned up desert sand is beyond me. I drove past them laughing at their idiocy and they laughed right back at me with a cheery "Fie mushkila!".

Which just goes to show, everyone's doing Ten Word Arabic these days...

The weather man says we're gonna get an inch of rain tonight and another two tomorrow, which means chaos.

Take care, all of you...

Poo

Of the many things that Grumpy Goat has written that have amused, entertained and even informed me, one of my favourites was this post, which I thought neatly summed up the whole Dubai waste treatment dilemma. It links, in turns, to Seabee's posts on the very same topic. And if you're really into deep background, there's this.

Today, Gulf News tells us (with an exquisite lack of irony) that the 'short to medium term solution' to the problem is to be a big hole in the desert, which shall in time be filled with what fan makers like delicately to call 'the brown stuff'. The gigantic 'La Pooa Pit' will take up to 500 tanker-loads a day and will be 'aerated naturally' which is, I think, waste management speak for 'smelly'.

Watch out for it out there in the sands when you're picknicking, chaps! You really don't want to yarp down the sharp leeward face of a dune and realise that your inexorable progress will land you in the 'soup'...

Salik Debate Rages as 4WD Shortcut Blocked

Shock horror! Gulf News today reports widespread negative public voice regarding Dubai's proposed Salik road toll system. Salik (see earlier post) aims to charge users of two of Dubai's busiest roads a little over a dollar each time they pass the RFID scanner. Residents, expatriate and local alike, are more than a little concerned about how the scheme will affect traffic flows as people try and avoid the toll, according to GN's unusually critical report.

Reader polls carried out by GN reflect an overwhelming 'no' vote to the whole scheme. While you'd expect this from people who are about to have to pay money they don't want to pay, over 70% don't think the toll will reduce congestion on the tolled roads although over 70% also said they wouldn't use the tolled roads. And 49% said they won't buy the Salik tags.

Woopsie!

The scheme goes live on the 1st July, so that'll be all very interesting.

Meanwhile my journey to work today was enlivened by the fact that some blockhead has decided to dump a load of huge concrete blocks across the desert tracks that an increasing number of 4WD owners have been using as a short cut to work between Sharjah and Dubai. Why anyone would think that there was any harm or damage being caused by a few intrepid souls slipping over the short stretch of deeply rural sand dunes that separate the Sharjah back road from the Dubai back road is a mystery. Another mystery is why anyone thought that you could block the desert by dumping concrete blocks across a few tracks.

But the consequences this morning were remarkable, to say the least. There must have been at least fifty 4WD vehicles in various states of bogged down out there, ranging from just starting to bog through stuck in a ditch that they hadn't noticed to utterly bogged down and hopelessly stuck. There were people running around, digging and towing other cars out, bouncing trucks flying over sandy humps, their grinding wheels throwing up clouds of sand over everyone on foot and all manner of offroaders trying to circumnavigate the blocked tracks. A massive, fantastic fairground of Hollywood road movie style vehicular insanity. Think Smoky and the Bandit mixed with the Cannonball Run and Lawrence of Arabia and you're starting to get the picture.

I picked my way through it all, as well as past the silly, redundant blocks, hardly able to focus on my path through as I watched the madness all around me, open mouthed and in a state of blissful wonderment.

What you need, chaps, is a Salik station in the desert. That'll sort 'em out...