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We drove in a caravan of four vehicles-filled with tourists from Japan, Spain and Ireland-and tore across the sand. He seems happiest once he’s left the paved road, deflated the tires and entered a land of never-ending brown-sugar-colored dunes. “You go to sleep, you get up, there’s a new building.” Abdul said he makes this trip to Khor Al Udaid every day, and I doubt he does it for the money.
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“If you ask me, things are changing very quickly,” Abdul said as we sped along a flat stretch of desert. Instead, Doha sets itself apart from its Middle Eastern neighbors by investing heavily in education, science, sports and art, and hoping that when the construction is complete, tourists will come. city of superlatives known for, among other things, having one of the world’s largest indoor ski resorts and building Burj Dubai, set to be the world’s tallest manmade structure on its completion next year. The airline, half owned by the government, last year unveiled its $90 million premium terminal at the existing airport-complete with spa, martini bar and 24-hour medical clinic.īut although Doha is on a building spree, it categorically does not want to be the next Dubai, the U.A.E. The Doha Olympic Games Committee announced in September its bid for the 2016 Games, and the first phase of the $5.5 billion New Doha International Airport (which will be managed and operated by Qatar Airways, will open in 2009. Cranes hover over Doha like praying mantises, and buildings rise at an amazing rate. It’s also one of the fastest-growing economies in the Middle East. This little Islamic state, just 36 years old, is ruled by an emir and has a per-capita income of nearly $62,000, one of the highest in the world. Hearsay, no doubt, but the more time I spent in the capital city, the less unfathomable the comments seemed.įor sure, Qatar has pockets deeper than most Americans can imagine, thanks to its huge reserves of natural gas. I’d heard all sorts of remarkable statements: that 30 years ago, Bedouin tents filled this now construction-laden city that Qatari women spend $3,000 a week on cosmetics that one-quarter of the world’s cranes are at work in Doha that the country earns $50 million a day from ExxonMobil alone. When I first arrived in Doha, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It’s not a safari in the typical sense of the word (although one can see the occasional fox or camel), but it’s the best way to see the natural side of a country that is, essentially, one big desert. The desert safari, also called dune-bashing, is the most popular tourist attraction in the state of Qatar, a peninsula the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island that borders Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and juts into the Persian Gulf.
#Last stop on market street activities series#
“You happy?” Abdul glanced back at me in the rearview mirror after we went over a series of steep dunes and my stomach was somewhere between my shoulders. A small bottle of cologne sat in the driver’s-side door pocket, yellow prayer beads hung from the grab bar, and A-B-D-U-L was spelled out in silver bubble-letter stickers below the dash. He wore a gurta (long headdress) and white sandals, drove a 2007 white Nissan Patrol and played ’80s pop music on the radio.
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Accessorizing Abdul’s thobe (the traditional ankle-length white shirt) were a diamond-encircled watch and sparkly cufflinks that could only be described as bling in the United States. One of the locals I got to know during my visit to Qatar was Abdul, a big, jovial man who drove my photographer and me over 60-meter-tall sand dunes at up to 50 miles an hour. Doha, Qatar, makes its opening salvo as the next big travel thing, looking to prove that big bankrolls for education, science and art can bring forth many happy returns.