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Qatar in One Day I’m including here a short video of a trip that I took around the entire country of Qatar last spring with one of my colleagues from work, Shashi. Shashi, a bright, young fellow from India who helps Nafez run the IT system in our office, is a great guy and, as with Nafez, he and I have become good friends. That’s partly because Nafez, Shashi and I all work within a few feet of each other and face each every day, quite literally, because we have an open seating design at our office with low partitions. The three of us joke and tell stories quite often. It’s amazing that we get any work done, in fact.
I knew there wasn’t much to see in Qatar, but I still wanted to travel around the country, having lived here for a year but not having a car. So one day last spring I hired a driver and paid him to drive me around all around Qatar, from top to bottom and from east to west. Qatar is about the size of Connecticut and has few roads, so it’s quite possible to “see” the entire country in one day. Shashi wanted to join me and I welcomed him along.
Our driver, Padam, who was from Nepal, picked up Shashi and me at the Beverly Hills Tower in Doha at 10 a.m. on a Saturday morning, then we headed north for a couple hours, to the northernmost point of Qatar, then drove south for a few hours, and then back to Doha, getting back around 4:30 p.m. I videotaped much of our trip, which I later condensed into a six-minute video and have posted here.
Our cheerful and friendly driver, Padam, had been driving in Qatar for eight years. When we got back to Doha that afternoon, I asked him how many people had ever hired him to drive completely around Qatar in one day, so they could see the entire country. He replied with a smile, “No one. You’re the first!”
Above left: Shashi before leaving on our all-day trip around Qatar last spring. Above center: Our driver, Padam, from Nepal. Above right: The freeways in Qatar are modern and well-maintained. All road signs in Qatar are in both English and Arabic.
Above left: Fort Zubarah, Qatar's only UNESCO World Heritage site. This is the site of an ancient pearl-harvesting settlement. Before oil was discovered in the 1950s, pearling was the mainstay of Qatar's economy. Above center: Shashi and I at Zubarah. It was over 100 degrees on this March day. Above right: Camel crossing.
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