Stuck in the mud at Zikreet...

When we planned for the trip, we planned it in such a way that the trip would be a breeze... Easy drive with early preparation with GPS coordinates..

The aims were to visit at least 6 places with picnic by the beach as our last stop.. Well, we did picnic by the beach but not quite at the place we intended it to be.. At least not before we visited all the planned places..

The story went like this... We departed from Doha at 10.30am. An hour late. We blamed it on the food preparation... hehe.. We must make sure we had enough of everything. It would be a long journey, mind you... It took us less than 1 hour to reach the entry point where the journey started on the off road ie jalan berliku.We stopped over at the scenic area for photography shots... I decided to leave my car at that spot. I certainly did not want to get stuck in the sand. I, once, stucked in the sand near Sea Line. It was really an experience. I was lucky then because there were many people around to push the car out of the sand.. We marked the coordinate of the place to make sure we would be able to find the car on our way home..

We continued our journey in 2 cars based on the direction on our GPS. We decided to follow the beach area.. That was when our problem started..

I was travelling in CX9 as a passenger, not the driver.. We noticed that the other car tried to do some fancy manouvering . It managed to safely get out on its first attempt. Deep in my heart I knew thing would get out of hand if he ever tried to do it again. I was also thinking aloud & talking to Khairil (the proud owner of CX9) about the possibility of the other car got stuck... From the rear view mirror, Khairil saw the action unfolded... We turned back & tried to help.. With limited equipments (that is understatement), we tried everything. We practically had nothing with us except kid's sand shovel. We tried to push. It was like pushing a brick wall. The car did not move an inch.. Instead, it got deeper in the mud because the tyre spinned the mud out.. sigh... We shovelled, we pushed. We found few metal plates near the area (That sounded like movies now but it was true).. We took the plates & inserted them under the tyres to provide the grip. In the process, I cut my finger... We pushed. Nothing happened. After almost 1 1/2 hours of shovelling & pushing, we almost gave up. The kids were already having fun on the beach (off course without their sand shovel.. hehe). They did not seem to worry about the car unlike the owner..

Then our prayers answered. A group of Qatar Aluminium ( Qatalum) staffs came to help. I noticed they had been watching us "terkial-kial" trying to get the car out. They offered us their help. Now, we had 6 men pushing the car. To cut the story short, we finally managed to get it out. It was not that simple, really... The good thing was that we managed to get the car out, the bad news was that the CRV lost its front left tyre. It could have been torned by the sharp metal plates... At least we could get the car moving now. It was much an easy job to change the tyre...

It was almost 2pm then. At that point, we decided to picnic at the spot itself. Everybody was tired & hungry then... We even invited the Qatalum staffs for lunch to show our gratitude.. They declined as they needed to head back to Maisaeed.. For memory, we requested them to have a group photo..

Right after lunch, we headed to Ostrich & Oryx Farm. On our way, we stopped to ask for direction at a Qatari camp site. He was a pleasant & nice guy with many helpers around him. He invited us to use the toilet as well as pray in his majlis. He even lead us to 3/4 way to Ostrich & Oryx Farm. However, he advised us not to proceed as it would be dark soon. We decided to call it a day & turned back to the main road but not before getting back my car...

At the end, we decided to visit our friend, Khairil & Kak Jas in Dukhan...

Missions unaccomplished .. We would come back, we promised ourselves..

p/s some photos are courtesy of D700 owner...