Friday is the start of the weekend here, so we took the opportunity to drive up to see the petroglyphs at Jabal Al Jassasslya which is about and hour and a half drive north of Doha. The road all the way there is under construction, so it probably took longer than it would otherwise. Also, the instructions we had off the web didn't really do us any good as the road we were on, was basically not the original road, and the signposts seemed to be missing. Anyway, we persevered after a few mistakes - thanks goodness for 4 wheel drive cars here as off road driving in the desert is basically a dirt track with huge rocks in. Derek has had the practice of driving in the sand dunes so heading up rocky outcroppings didn't phase him, while I just shut my eyes. Also, our directions mentioned that we would find the carvings near the gate, only to find there were four gates when we got there! This picture shows the kind of terrain we were looking for, where ancient people have made these carvings in the rock. It looks a little like the Badlands in Alberta, but on a rather smaller scale.

This is one of the quite typical carvings. They are on top of the rocky outcroppings, on the flat surfaces on top. There are tons of them, so whoever the people were who made them, were either very prolific or they lived there for a long time. After we had been there for a while a couple of young archeologists came by and they said they had read that these carvings were thought to be made in the bronze age. I had read that they may have been later, but being the archeologists they probably knew more than I did. It is thought that some of them were possibly games, while others, the deeper ones ,could have been used for cooking. I will show some more pictures of them later in the week.

This one definitely looks like it could be part of a game. This was by far the most common shapes that we found. Some of them were together in a line and almost looked like a spine

This one, looks lke an insect, but there are ones that are larger and the centre part is more boat shaped and the lines could be oars. The archeologists were looking for one of a hand with long fingers, but none of us found that one before it started to get dark. We were there as the sunset on the desert. This area is by the coast where lots of people head for the deserted beaches on the weekends. As the sun set, we heard the call to prayer from a nearby compound which was really haunting in the desert with the sun setting.

We headed back into town to eat in the Souq Wakif and then headed home. However, the next hour and a half was spent drive up and down between a couple of areas by the Corniche. We would get to the roundabout, only to find the way we wanted had been closed by the police. So then we inched along, with everyone else, back to the way we came, only to find that roundabout had also been blocked and we were sent back the way we had come from - along with everyone else. Then we saw a bunch of cars waving flags, one car had a bunch of people sitting on top of the car with flags and a picture of the Emir, there seemed to be young men in their white robes riding on top of cars all over the place. We were just hoping none of the cars hit the brakes too fast. I still don't know what it was all about - just kids having fun on a Friday night in Doha, stampede style, or maybe their team had been successful, or as someone else suggested, a wedding! I will see what I can find out! I guess young people on a weekend are the same the world over!