Driving Qatari Style

I have been out and about with work this week and have been visiting with a Qatari colleague. I have written in the past about driving in this country but this was my first chance to be driven around by a Qatari. Any guess to what he drove? Yep, Toyota Landcruiser. So for those of you who are familiar with Qatar.. we headed back down D ring towards the airport. We wanted to turn left at the lights and straight ahead puts you into the airport. The traffic was heavy and the queue at the lights was large. My buddy didn’t worry. He drove down the straight ahead lane looking for a gap to stick his nose in but it was tight. He then spied that the lights for going straight ahead and turning were both green so gunned it down to the lights and did the big sweep left to merge into the turning traffic.
We got onto the corniche and traffic was also heavy. This did not worry my Qatari buddy. He just drove down the carparks on the side of the road. He would foirce his way back into the traffic until the next carpark came along. So after three of these detours we had made fantastic progress. Each time we entered the traffic people would yield. He would acknowledge and so it was all OK. Further into our journey the road stopped and became desert. This didn’t stop us. We just headed out into the sand until we found a track or another road. It was interesting as it felt incredibly safe and I felt confident in his driving ability. Note: after two days of driving around Doha he did actually use his indicators at least four times.