There are certain places in the world where you wouln't expect to find yourself but you somehow end up. However, after you visit the place it turns out to be an uncanny experience.
This happened to me with Qatar, my stay there was a result of a flight delay on my way to Thailand. Having a 16-hour layover in Ad-Dauha (known as Doha) it would be a true sin to resist the temptation of sightseeing Qatar's capital. I haven't ever been to the Middle-East before, the opportunity to grasp this new experience was great. No visas were needed. So why not?
Qatar is an arabic country occupying the small Qatar Peninsula on Persian Gulf. It's natural landscape consists mostly of deserts and dunes, as seen from the plane there was hardly anything else... Doha is a super modern metropolis raised literally in the middle of nowhere, by the shore of the gulf.
The climate was unbearable. My friends and I learned this as soon as we left the plane at 4 a.m (the time when the temperature is usually the lowest during the whole day, right?) and an intense heatwave hit us hard in the faces covering everything with a layer of vapour or something. The temperature at that hour was 33 degrees. During the day the thermometer hit 39 degrees but according to the weather forecast the feelable temperature was around 52 degrees.
Yes, we were insane enough to go mid-day-sightseeing in these conditions. I must fairly admit that this was probably a stupid idea considering that we were stubborn enough to avoid getting taxis or any other means of transport you need to pay for. Quite often we were literally the only people on the streets. I do not tegret this decision, though. We started off from the hotel we stayed it for a short sleep and walked through a less-fancy district of Doha.
We came across a few mosques and ended up having a free tour in some sort of Islamic Cultural Centre. To be fair, we entered it mostly because the venue looked as if it had AC. It was quite cool though (oh god, what a bad pun), at least 4 people took their time to tell us about Islam with it's pilars, traditions, customs and history free of charge, give us traditional saffron tea and stuff.
What you need to know its that Qatar is a really orthodox country, what is visible literally everywhere. To respect the culture and in order to avoid any problems I wore a shirt with long sleeves and long trousers, both made from a special light fabric. And a cap. Without any hat I reckon a heatstroke would be imminent. But being a very pale white blonde I couldn't possibly hide the fact that I was foreign, I did catch a few pretty insolent and slightly disturbing stares from Qatari men. Even though I was travelling with two guys.
So our next stop was the Museum of Islamic Art. I hightly reccomend this one, the setting is nice, the building is modern but its design strongly relates to the local culture, it was free and the exhibitions were interesting.
We walked by the marine with a pretty awesome view...
And then we arrived to Souq Waqif - the old market. Too bad that it was closed down at these hours. But no hard feelings, I could enjoy its old architecture without facing any crowds. We visited the old market and the bird market. It was yet a totally different world, it felt like travelling both through time and space.
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