Articles tagged with "Qatar"
The Barzan Towers stand north of the capital at Umm Salal Mohammed. They were built to watch the approaches and, by tradition, to observe the moon that fixes the Islamic calendar.
Khor Al Adaid is a tidal inlet that runs deep inland through dunes in the south east of Qatar. It is a nature reserve, it is not reachable without a vehicle, and it is the country's most distinctive landscape.
Al Zubarah is Qatar's only World Heritage property. It was one of the Gulf's great pearling and trading towns, and what makes it exceptional is that nothing was built on top of it afterwards.
Qatar suits an older traveller well: everything is close, the transport is modern and the medical care is good. The desert excursion is the part that needs a deliberate decision.
Most of what a visitor uses in Qatar was built in the last two decades to modern standards, and the metro is genuinely accessible. The heritage sites and the desert are a different matter and we say so.
Qatar is one of the most demographically international countries on earth. For a traveller interested in diaspora, the interesting question here is not ancestry but how a place built by migration works.
Qatar's year runs on two calendars at once. The fixed dates can be planned around; the lunar ones move against your own by about eleven days a year, which is why we check them rather than publish them.
Qatar is a conservative Muslim country that is also extremely used to visitors. Almost everything expected of you is ordinary courtesy, and two of the rules carry legal weight.
Qatari food is a Gulf cuisine built on rice, slow-cooked meat, dates and spice routes. Around it sits a restaurant scene shaped by a population drawn from all over the world.
The British government advises against travel to no part of Qatar. What a visitor actually needs to know is the law: alcohol licensing, photography, medication and relationships outside marriage.