Doha – Qatar

I wrote a simply wonderful blog about living in Doha back in August but I haven’t had the balls to publish it yet for fear of deportation. It’s funny, it deserves the light of day, but it will have to remain as a parting gift to Qatar once I finally no longer wish to take advantage of their hospitality. A lot of time has passed since August and as such my views on Doha have softened. I finally got my residency permit after four months of hassle which permitted a bank account and a chequebook which allowed for my very own apartment. O yeah, cheques are still going strong here in Qatar with most properties taking 13 postdated cheques when signing a tenancy agreement. Still, I have my own lovely little apartment in a much nicer part of town devoid of stupid little fluffy dogs and Europeans weighed down in excessive gold jewellery, pink chino shorts, greasy hair, and fake tits. Doha in general is not like Dubai, but turns out I was living in the one area of town trying to behave so. Now all I have to contend with is an army of locals beeping their horns all weekend as they descend on the drive-through food court opposite my flat. Oh, and then there’s the couple of guys that love to rev their motorbikes up and down the road all night long. I had gotten to the point just before Christmas of fantasising about running out onto the street, kicking them off their bikes while waiting at the traffic lights and beating them to death with their helmets. Instead, when back in the UK I treated myself to some sexy earplugs for Christmas and now I sleep soundly all night and feel much less violent as a result. Hopefully they will f*** off when the hot weather returns and they can’t bare to be outside without an air-conditioned box. My earplugs have also cut out the noise coming from not one but two mosques on the road outside my apartment that compete five times a day for vocal supremacy. I like the call to prayer, but they haven’t quite hit the smooth dawn chorus that Hollywood can do so well. Anyway, this has to be a positive blog and what can be more positive than Formula 1.

One wonderful thing about Qatar is that it tries to bring in a lot of big events, from DJ Tiesto, Real Madrid, and the World Cup of course. There was talk of the Rugby Championship coming here which would be splendid – rather mess with that than the Six Nations. Most of it goes by without much notice from me as I’m too afraid to make friends, and well, it’s just not the same as going out as most other countries. However, on one of those rare occasions when your mates say they will come and visit and actually do so, a weekend of F1 in Doha was quite the blast. Three completely unrelated friends came out from the UK and all of us united under the weirdness that is Qatar. I don’t think they really believed me until they were kicked off a beach they had strayed on to take a few pictures, or had to use a public toilet two minutes down the street because the fancy restaurant didn’t have their own. However, the good thing about Qatar is that they size everything as though it was for the size of country it aspires to be. Therefore, the F1 circuit has enough tarmac parking to park an entire Silverstone crowd and a road network to disperse such volumes of traffic in about 30 seconds yet the circuit has a crowd capacity about a fifth of this and still didn’t sell out. Therefore we pretty much got to park in front of the entrance, with the generous help of 10,000 parking attendants that clearly had no idea where they were, never mind what they were doing. And despite having a massive road network, in typical Qatari fashion they closed most of it off during the race weekend and funnelled everyone through some traffic management system out onto the back road into the city which is always miserable with traffic, instead of allowing people to go down the much emptier coastal road that is conveniently my road home. Let’s bring it back to positivity. It was bloody cold. Sorry, but it was, but that wasn’t really anything to be sad about once we learnt to pack warm clothes after the first day at the track. As for the F1, it was a great weekend. We had grandstand tickets on the final corner but chose to sit in the free seating area on the first corner. For £200 for a three day ticket who cared if we had a grandstand seat or sat on a grassy bank, it was a bargain. And this is one of the benefits of living in Qatar, there wasn’t a rush to get to the track because you knew you would get good parking whatever, if you didn’t want to queue for food you could order delivery, you could walk around the F2 garages, it wasn’t raining, it wasn’t overcrowded, dare I say you could take the kids and not worry about them disappearing for five days. Yeah it lacks the festival vibe of Silverstone, it lacks alcohol, it lacks a driver’s parade because 85% of the circuit is closed off to spectators, but for a stress-free bargain of a three day weekend it can’t be beaten. And that’s the thing about Doha, it can be annoyingly pleasant.

A work colleague and mate – who happens to be one of the few readers of this fine publication and pretty much forced me into writing this blog – decided it would be a good idea to take part in the Doha marathon in January because after all, what else is there to do at weekends other than run many many kilometres. He wasn’t wrong, and Doha comes with the added benefit that it is flat, dry and cool during the winter, and unlikely to be clogged up with tens of thousands of people going through their mid-life crisis. I didn’t need to do it, I had nothing to prove, and my life is a constant crisis of sorts so that couldn’t have been the reasoning, but I had always been curious about doing one and so against all the odds I took the training seriously, actually enjoyed it, while simultaneously s***ing myself with worry about the big day. When the big day did arrive, I didn’t have much time to worry because after all this is Qatar and so despite the race scheduled to start at 6.15am they decided to get on with it 15 minutes earlier – fine by me. Stupidly I agreed to trying to keep pace for a sub two hour half marathon, a feat I achieved, but at great cost with my mate running off into the distance to complete the full marathon in a little over four hours and me left to haul my aging body over the line 25 minutes later. But I did it, and boy I needed the year to start with a win. I limped to the car, got kindly driven home, fell out of the car, messaged my mum, and spent the rest of the day lying alone on my couch eating all the KFC I could muster. It was a strange and empty end to such an achievement, but I feel that’s the Qatar way.

My reward for the marathon did come the following day mind; a round of dune bashing, camel riding, and sand boarding. Oh yeah, you read right, camels. I’ve done all of this and felt no need to do it again the day after a 42 kilometre run but the invite was there, I do very little here in Qatar, and I complain there is bugger all to do, so it would be ridiculous to not do something when it is on offer, and I’m glad I did. To begin with I had made an astonishing recovery overnight transitioning away from pain and unable to walk to feeling sore but walking relatively normally – my recovery from long distance running has done nothing but impress me I have to admit. I was collected from my apartment by our guide for the day and his Land Cruiser and he immediately proceeded to run a red light at maximum speed at a major intersection. Two of us being seasoned Middle East residents calmly pointed out the red light to our driver and he hit the brakes screeching and swerving to a halt many meters beyond the white line; the day was looking up! Heading south of Doha towards the Saudi border, through the depressed looking industrial heartland of Qatar there is a sizeable desert Disneyland apparently for little other reason than people on long haul flights getting off to stretch their legs, ride a camel, go dune bashing, and continue on with their journey to wherever it may be in the world. It makes Qatar’s tourism figures look wonderful, but I believe that’s all they are wanting; come for a few days and then feck off. Relative to the purpose it serves, it’s a wonderful day out. We had selected the short camel ride which turned out to be a great decision for it was not more than five minutes. A long ride was only 15 minutes and thus no need to worry about sore legs, crotches or arses. After a shot of tea our driver than whisked us up into the sand dunes, past row upon row of desert camps in the valley where Qataris enjoy their free time during the winter. We gathered momentum along the crests of the dunes until we passed a 4×4 with its wheels in the air at the foot of a dune and surrounded by emergency response units. In all my years of doing this, Qatar has been the first where I’ve seen an accident which doesn’t really surprise me, but then of course it could be complete coincidence.

We continued on with our little adventure with the Arabian Gulf glistening to our left, rolling sand dunes to our right, and the mighty Saudi Kingdom beckoning ahead. A stop with a view provided the chance to do some sand boarding but I immediately sat my ass on the sand like a grumpy dog refusing point blank to do it. Going down would be fun I knew, but clambering back up a steep dune was not on the to do list for my legs. A benefit of getting old is I am beginning to listen to my tolerance levels. We drove on down to the Inland Sea, otherwise known as the sea, I dreamed of swimming the short distance over to Saudi Arabia, and we turned back north heading to our lunch stop. This turned out to be a wonderful little bonus. We knew lunch was included, but we didn’t know it was going to be so delicious, or so plentiful, or in such a nice little restaurant, bar the bloody child who kept opening the door and letting a cold breeze disrupt our enjoyment. I can now confidently recommend Doha as a wonderful place to stop for a long weekend, for six months of the year when the weather is decent. A day in the desert, Souq Waqif, Lusail Boulevard at night, the National Museum (architecturally stunning), a couple of nice restaurants, Fabio’s for half price wine, the Chedi Chatter for brunch and fish food buffets, all very pleasant, as Doha very much is. Also, several well-travelled friends have said Doha is the prettiest city in the Arabian Gulf, that is a statement I am more than happy to stand by.

8th February 2025