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Coverage / Qatar

Qatar

Western Asia

A peninsula jutting into the Arabian Gulf, and one of the region's cultural heavyweights. Doha pairs Jean Nouvel's desert-rose National Museum of Qatar and I. M. Pei's Museum of Islamic Art with the restored lanes of Souq Waqif, while south of the capital the dunes run down to Khor Al Adaid, the inland sea reachable only by four-wheel drive, and the old pearling and dhow trades still shape the waterfront.

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What you can do in Qatar

Culinary / Cooking

Dohayear-roundQatari home cooking is one of the least-exported cuisines in the Gulf, which makes learning it in Doha a rare thing. The national dishes are built for gathering: machboos, the spiced rice with meat or fish scented with loomi, the dried Omani lime; harees, a slow-pounded wheat and meat porridge; thareed and madrouba; and the breakfast sweet balaleet of sweet vermicelli under a savoury omelette, with assida and luqaimat for dessert. The place to get inside them is a hands-on class with Chef Aisha Al-Tamimi, the first Qatari celebrity chef and the recognised ambassador of the national kitchen, whose Cooking Academy runs traditional Qatari courses alongside its wider programme. You shop the spices, learn the loomi and baharat blends that define the flavour, and cook a full Qatari spread to eat at the end. Paired with a wander through the food stalls of Souq Waqif, it turns a transit-hub city into a real culinary stop.

Museums & Galleries

Dohayear-roundDoha has spent a generation turning itself into one of the great museum cities of the region, and two buildings anchor it. The National Museum of Qatar, opened in 2019, is Jean Nouvel's desert rose, a vast interlock of 539 curving disks that wraps around the restored twentieth-century palace of Sheikh Abdullah bin Jassim Al Thani; inside, eleven galleries move through Beginnings, Life in Qatar and the Modern History of the country, weaving archaeology, Bedouin life, pearling and oil into one sweeping story. A short way along the corniche, the Museum of Islamic Art, designed by I. M. Pei and opened in 2008 on its own island, holds one of the world's finest collections of Islamic art, fourteen centuries of manuscripts, metalwork, ceramics and textiles drawn from three continents. Together they make Doha a place to read the whole arc of the Gulf and the Islamic world in an afternoon, in architecture as memorable as the collections.

Overlanding / Expedition Driving

Khor Al AdaidJan Feb Mar Apr Oct Nov DecKhor Al Adaid, the Inland Sea, is one of the few places on earth where the sea flows into the heart of a dune desert, and reaching it is half the point. The tidal lagoon sits about 80 kilometres south of Doha near the Saudi border, with no road in: the only way across is by four-wheel drive over towering barchan dunes, a drive that operators turn into a proper desert crossing, dropping tyre pressures and carving down the slip faces of the big dunes before the sand opens onto the still water of the khor. A UNESCO-recognised natural reserve, it draws flamingos and wading birds to its shallows and Arabian oryx and gazelle to the surrounding sands. Most trips run as a half or full day, but the best is an overnight in a desert camp, watching the dunes go pink at sunset and the stars come out over the water. It is Qatar's signature wild landscape, and a genuine bit of expedition driving within an hour of the capital.

Sailing

DohaJan Feb Mar Apr Oct Nov DecBefore the towers of West Bay, Doha was a pearling and dhow-trading harbour, and the wooden dhow is still the city's emblem, a fleet of them moored along the corniche. Sailing out on one is the classic way to see Doha from the water, the same vantage the pearl divers had, with the skyline, the Museum of Islamic Art on its island and the low line of the old town all reading differently from the Gulf. The traditional Qatari dhow is a lateen-rigged wooden boat, hand-built in the yards that still operate at Al Wakrah and Doha, and local operators run them as sunset and evening cruises across the bay, some continuing out to the sheltered water off Al Safliya Island for a swim. It is a gentle, atmospheric hour or two rather than a hands-on sailing course, and at dusk, with the call to prayer carrying across the water and the towers lighting up, it is one of the most memorable things to do in the city.

Best months at a glance

	J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
Culinary
Museums
Overlanding
Sailing