Snow in the desert

This is very silly.

This makes no sense and there's something about being part of this that makes me feel guilty.

But this was still an experience I wanted to try at least once.

I was skiing in the desert.  Not skiing on sand, but actually skiing.  Snow, skis, stocks and everything.

The complex is enormous.  You walk into the middle of the shopping mall and you walk towards a shop front that feels like the front of a large department store.

Of course, it isn't a department store, it's actually the entrance to one of the largest indoor ski fields in the world.

I went inside, paid my money, got my gear and went skiing.

It definitely wasn't the "best", but it was far better than I expected and it was much longer than expected as well.  There were two runs (well.... there was one run that was split in half) and it was a few hundred metres long.  I did my runs and it was enjoyable.  It had been a long time since I had been skiing, the first time I had skied since my knee reconstruction in fact.  Who would have thought that the first time I would ski again would in fact be at a ski centre in the Arabian desert?

At the end of it all, it just felt a bit wrong.  I was pretty much alone skiing, with only the occasional office worker coming in to do a few runs (clearly a European expat longing for home).  It all seemed like an enormous waste that was there purely so that whoever sponsored the project could tell people it was here, rather than for it to actually provide the benefits of skiing.  On top of that, the poor workers inside (who looked to be Indian foreign workers) looked truly miserable in the cold.

After being blinded by the whiteness of the snow, it was extra surreal to be outside again and looking at the endless sands of the desert.