Kitesurfing and the Al Gharbia Water Festival

Friday, a week ago, Virginia and I decided to go up to Mirfa to check out the the Al Gharbia Watersport’s festival. The festival running from 1-9 May is an initiative by the Western Region Development Council to promote the Western Region of the UAE. It is one of four major festivals to be held, in part to publicize the region’s new name “Al Gharbia.”

At least five different events are considered part of this initiative, the camel beauty contest (which happens in MZ in December), the falcon festival, the Liwa date festival, the Desert Challenge which filled up almost an entire week for us in March, and of course the Watersports Festival.

On Friday after Virginia had finished up at work we picked up Carolyn (who had also joined up with us at WOMAD) and headed out to see what it was all about. Sam and her friend from overseas also joined us in their own car. Leaving Madinat Zayed it’s one straight desert road of about 60km and then another of similar distance heading away from Abu Dhabi. Following Water Festival flags flapping in a brisk wind we turned off the highway (which eventually empties out at the Saudi border) onto the main road of Mirfa. It is a pretty town of clean looking whitewashed block houses, dominated by a huge mosque on one end. Once we reached the other end we were pleasantly surprised to find that across from the beautiful (and strangely looking like a futuristic spaceship) Mirfa hotel is kilometers of wonderful beach, being lapped at by azure, tropical-island looking waters.

Before heading out to the beach, we stopped in at the Mirfa to grab a lunch… yes the buffets still have not stopped… and they’re still a treat. Out on the beach things were partly set up for the festival, and we spent a couple hours wondering around the small souq, and seeing what else was around. We were a little disappointed to find very little happening in the way of watersports. It is really starting to heat up in the UAE now, with daytime temperatures sitting at above 40C, and fairly quickly decided to call it a day as little was happening and we were baking even in the shade.

Before we left though, I met up with Jakub of UAE Kitesurfing, who along with Samah, had been hired by the organizers to give free kitesurfing lessons during the week. We also got entry forms to the photo competition which the Western Region Development Council is running. These both seemed like worthy pursuits for the following week.

Last Monday I decided to head back to Mirfa to learn how to kitesurf, and also to have a second look at the festival. Speaking to a few people who had gone on other days of the weekend we discovered that we may have judged too quickly and also left too early, as it seemed quite a bit went on later on in the evening. So later in the afternoon it was, late enough that Virginia could join me after work too. Having had a tough couple of days at work, I think an evening at the beach, if nothing else, was just the thing to brighten up the day for her.

We arrived, this time not really expecting much, but looking forward to the beautiful beach. We went for a bit of a walk, met up with a few brave little girls who tried their English out on us, before running off to check out a horse that had suddenly arrived on the beach, had some Arabic food for lunch (wonderful chicken shwarmas), and then headed off to where they were doing the kite surfing, where I was determined to give it a bash.

It’s really cool! First of all they set me up with a small kite to practice flying on the beach. Using the 2 meter kite gives a feel for how to use the controls, essentially a cross-beam, and also the first feelings of where in the sky the kite must be.

I was then hooked into a waist harness which feels like wearing a nappy (diaper) all over again. This time they gave me a 6 meter kite, much more fun to play with and slightly more difficult to control. There are two lines which go to the outer edges of the kite while a central line is attached from the middle of the kite to a hook on the middle of the harness. This seems to be for two things, to control the attack of the kite, and secondly to stop your arms from being ripped off in heavy wind (the kite is held in place by your weight in the harness, and then only tiny movements by each hand are used to steer it in the sky). This all took somewhere between an hour and two to get right. At this point the lesson ended as there were plenty of people now who wanted a go.

We returned to Mirfa and the festival twice more last week; on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday the wind was low, and I was put on a twenty meter kite. It was insane to handle. At one point it dragged me of the ground for a second, and then about thirty meters down the beach. This was part of the lesson; getting the kite to pick up power and pull you from a sitting position up into a standing one, with heels dug into the beach until the kite stop pulling you along. It kept getting better I thought.

The next part of the lesson involved using the kite to drag myself through the ocean. After a short bit of practice I got the hang of this and used the kite to drag myself and Samah out toward the horizon and then back to shore 3 or 4 times. It was revealing how easily it dragged both of us together at a pace more rapid than you could swim.

(While Ty was having his lesson, I sat on the beach and chatted with Linda, a new work colleague who has just arrived from New Zealand. We went back up to the Mirfa hotel for supper, then treated Linda to her very first try on the shisha. She agreed that heading to the beach after work is a very good way of chilling out from the stress of work, even though we don't get back home until much later at night than is preferable for a 5 am wake-up.)

On Thursday was the final phase. Bringing it all together. I wondered how on earth it would be possible to co-ordinate keeping the kite stable, diving the kite to generate power, and actually getting up on the board (which is like a really wide snowboard), and then staying there. Once we were out in the water, kite floating above us, I actually asked Jakub this, how would I steer, what would I do if I was speeding toward the shore and the kite pulled be through the rocky landing. Jakub just laughed at me and said “Do you actually think you’re even going to get up on the first go?” Point taken.

It took me about ten goes of swooping the kite to even get enough power to get myself out the water and onto the board, and another five before I did anything but look surprised and fall over, or be dragged along in the water by the kite, until Jakub shouted for me to LET GO!

Finally, and Jakub had just said this would be my last go, I managed to get up, board going the right direction, back foot kicked down, wind flying through my hair, kite stable. It lasted about 3 seconds. It was awesome. I’ll definitely be giving this another go at sometime (although for the roughly 4 hours of training I got for free, the usual price is about DHS 300 and hour… plus the kite is somewhere between 4 and 8000 dirhams).

The souq was much better on Monday and the following days, and more was happening (people kitesurfing all over, people out on jetskis, and even a couple of pretty dhows, with brilliant white sails flapping off in the distance.)

Since we’ve been in the UAE I’ve not seen such a big meeting of mostly Arabic people with so few expats between. It was good to see so many people in their ghutras, thobes, shaylas and abayas. We have started getting used the traditional dress and personally I’m beginning to really like the look of it, after arriving in the country with a head stuffed with negative images and connotations. Now it’s just families and friends I see, nose rubs as greetings between the closer ones, here a robed father showing his son something in the sand on the beach, or carrying him on his shoulders, and there a group of teen girls in abayas laughing, and in general looking like they’re up to some kind of adolescent mischief. All over, the signs of “normal” life happening, not the rare crazed robed men of CNN infamy, of media induced fear.