Doha Day 2

Today was the Doha city tour. I had no idea how truly cosmopolitan this country is. Only about 25% of the people that live here are actually Qatari - the remaining 75% is a mix of Asian, European, Middle Eastern, and some American. It makes walking in the malls quite the cultural tour!

We started the day with the camel market. Camels are big business here - prices start at $5000 and go much higher, according to the camel's weight and bloodlines. Most of the owners were quite happy to have us roam around and look at their camels, but one was nice enough to invite us in and let us take pictures. This little guy is a newborn, probably 5 or 6 days old. He seemed to like all of the attention!


Along the way to each of our destinations, our tour guide Rasheed (from Sri Lanka) and our driver (from Pakistan) were great about giving us little facts about the city. For example, if you're born in Qatar to a Qatari family, you can count on a stipend of $15,000-$60000 per MONTH from the government as an adult - sharing out the oil and natural gas revenues. Wow. Gas is cheap here as you would expect - 70 cents a gallon currently. Most Qataris do not work - who could blame them? Oh, and don't even think about immigrating - there is no "naturalization" process here. :)

After the camel market we had a quick detour into a little touristy gift shop, then it was back to the old souk. Managed to get a picture of the exterior this time (since it wasn't coated quite so heavily in sandstorm!):


Bonus on this trip though - our tour guide knows one of the shop owners, so he took us to his friend's falconry shop and we were able to hold a very compliant falcon. Lots of animals in this post!


After the old souk there was another stop at the gold souk then it was off to lunch. Happy to report it was Indian food again, this time a very good buffet. I think we all ate way too much, but were very happy waddling out of there. :) Last stop for the day was another mall - malls seem to be big sources of entertainment here. This one is called the City Center mall, and it's the largest in Doha. Three stories, an entertainment stage, a large arcade, and of course, the seemingly obligatory ice rink. :)


It was a very full day, and we were all pretty tired by the time we headed back to base. The sun was setting so I tried to get a postcard shot - how did I do?



I had one report that the picture link from yesterday wasn't working correctly - I took a look and re-entered the URL, so it should be up and running again. Apologies for anyone who tried to check out the other pictures but couldn't. I've done the same thing for the rest of today's pictures - just too many to clog the blog page with. Hopefully this works better today - try clicking here. I'll try to post day 3 tomorrow, but it's been the most truly relaxing day - no photos yet!