Ah, salaam. Welcome to the the Arabian Adventures: Arabian Night. This tour entailed a vary scary ride from the city into the desert for a dinner and entertainment in a Bedouin camp (sort of). The first part of the tour was to see a demonstration of falconing. Although today the falcons are captive, the original Bedouins simply caught a migrating bird, trained it to hunt (more-or-less come back after catching the hunted animal) and then, after a period of six months or so, let the bird continue on it's migration. There are no native hunting bird species in Arabia even though they have the falcon as their coat of arms. Such respect is associated with this animal. I'm glad that I'm not a rabbit :)
Beware the German tourist. A number of low tables were laid out for dinner. Each person had a cushion to sit on at the table. Before we got to sit down, the Germans had collected all the cushions and build arm chairs for themselves.To annoy us further, they smoke as well without regard to others around them.
Enough complaining. Apart from the personality problems the tour was fantastic. Again, it was Ruth's great idea. Again, I don't have editing software so you get to see raw footage.
The Bedouin hunted Gazelles, Arabian hare, stone curlews and houbara bustard using falcons. The saker falcon and peregrine falcon were most commonly used by Bedouin falconers.
Apparently if these birds can't see something it simply ceases to exist. This is why, to keep them clam, the have hoods covering their eyes.
This is at the end of the demonstration after the falcon simply grabbed a fast moving lure out of the air. The handler kicked some sand over it and, poof!, it's gone.
The next part of the tour was to take a four wheel drive ride through the sand dunes and, if still alive after that, see the sun go down over the desert.
After the "dune bashing" we waited for the sun to go down. As in the tropics, the sun goes down quickly.
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