Saturday, April 10, 2010

Pedal to the Metal, or Day 98 in Doha

One of my Qatar dreams came true today.

Abdalla took me on a roadtrip.

I've officially seen more of Qatar than just Doha!

Can you tell I enjoyed it?

We started off remarkably early, waking
up and out of EC by 8:15. It was still about 90F (low 30s C) though. Summer is coming...

Our first stop was the a random circuit racetrack we saw on the Google Map. (Ok, not that random since the Grand Prix of something is happening at it. You can see I care a lot about these sports.)

We spent all of five minutes there, getting told by the guard that "you and the madame need passes to get in" then continued driving on to Al Khor.

Of course, there is the classic "Engrish" photo in front of a sign:



This was at a resort close to Al Khor, which was our next stop (after the racetrack... so our first real stop). I was super excited about taking a picture by one of the towers, but they are apparently all over. So much for that being a unique thing. Still a cool thing however.

We walked a bit along the Corniche (Al Khor's Corniche) and I got to look across at the mangroves. There is apparently a nature preserve back there somewhere, but we just took a peek from underneath the palm-leaf sun umbrellas. The whole corniche was a bit faded, but had potential.

We swung through Al Dhakira/Thakira (depending on who you ask, Google or Abdalla), jumped out on another bit of rock to look at the mangroves.

I really wanted to see the rock carving at Jebel Jassasiya, but I didn't find good enough directions. So instead we just ended up going toward Ras Laffan, an industrial city, but turning back when it said we had to present our credentials at the next gate.

After that, it was just a "long" drive up north, or "shemal." And by long, it was not more than 40 minutes with some construction in the way.

And so I got to see to the north! And realize how small and similar Qatar is throughout.

There were some fishermen bringing in a bunch of bundles. Abdalla and I waded in the water after our attempt at staying in the sand ended with us sinking in the silt. There were these little crabs with red-tipped pinchers scuttling around, and it was not a swimming beach in the least. But it was pretty in its own way.

Funny story: we were starving and looking for a place for lunch (it was 11:30 at this point). Yesterday when we were mapping out the route, we saw a picture of a restaurant up here, and Abdalla jokingly said that he had to eat there.

Well, while wandering the small city of Al Ruwais, we, of course, ended up eating lunch at this place, Lewan Shemal Restaurant (or something like that).

It was another "long" drive to get to Al Zubarah, where my thirst for forts was finally quenched. At first it looked like it was closed, but then we went to another entrance.

We walked up, and we greeted by a man asking for 10 riyals from us. Abdalla started chatting with him in Urdu, told him he was from Pakistan, and got us a discount. A discount for him, at least; I still had to pay the $2.70.

We started climbing around inside the well-kept-up fort. These little French boys were playing some version of Cops and Robbers and crawling all over the place. I managed to get a picture of the fort without them (but with some nice wind in the skirt).

The guy who took my admission money convinced Abdalla to take us further west, where there were some ruins of a giant city that was here however many years ago.

We drove along, over not too gravelly roads, and found some disintegrating walls and structures. As Abdalla said, it's not what is here now that is cool, it is what was here that you have to imagine.

We continued on to hit the beach and give me north and west in the same day. The shoreline was made of these little, pretty (but sharp) seashells.

And then we headed back towards EC... and entire country before noon prayers were over.

It was 320 km exactly when Abdalla dropped me off at my dorm at 3:00pm, which means that I can easily convert that to 200 miles! It was exhausting site-seeing all morning, so I subsequently took a nap before starting my many projects. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable day.


View Qatar Roadtrip in a larger map

No comments:

Post a Comment