celebrating 41 in Doha

Two years ago I decided to celebrate my birthday with a walk of as many kilometers as I was old. I started at Stinson Beach and for two days climbed over and around hills overlooking the ocean all the way back to my home in San Francisco. I planned to celebrate my 40^th the following year by being brave enough to do miles instead of kilometers, starting at the tip of Pt Reyes, camping along the way back to SF. And then Doha happened. I gave up on making the big walk a tradition and did this instead.

I used to learn all my new homes on foot. I stopped when the first kid began walking and then by the time he could keep it up for a reasonable distance he had a little sister just starting. When we moved to Vietnam the two were nearly three and nearly five- finally big enough to cover significant ground between snack breaks. One of our first days there we rode the hotel shuttle as far as it would take us and then walked home through bustling streets.  We didn’t let the third one slow us down at all, just popped her in a pack until she would walk too. We walked a lot of miles in the Atlanta area and San Francisco Bay area, but then we moved to Doha.  We arrived in August, when it was so hot that more than 15 minutes outside seemed unsurvivable. The streets here are wide and designed to facilitate vehicle traffic. Even where there are sidewalks they can be obstructed, without warning, by construction in the middle of a block, forcing pedestrians to take their chances in the road. We spent the first five months being shuttled around in taxis that stuck to the main roads, so that is what I did too when I finally got my license.   It wasn’t until the kids were all in school that I made an effort to start walking again, and I started to learn my way around more back streets and feel like I was finally starting to orient myself at ground level (more about this here).

Suddenly in January I realized that I might be able to do a big walk (and enjoy it!) in Doha after all. I experimented with different paths using Google maps and MapMyRun and found a circle that started and ended at my home, meandered through some interesting neighborhoods, and equaled roughly 41km for my 41 years. I couldn’t measure exactly because I knew I’d be cutting across empty lots and down alleys that mapping programs didn’t recognize, but I wasn’t that hung up on exact distances anyway.

Friday morning a friend and I left my compound by the back gate and set off down roads and alleys and across empty lots. We stopped to rest on a couple of patches of green grass and paused frequently to take photos of whatever caught our eyes. We watched Aspire tower shrink behind us and West Bay loom larger and larger ahead until we reached the sea. There we turned our backs on the skyscrapers and let the wind blow us the last couple of kilometers to Souq Waqif where she left to rejoin her family and I checked into the hotel where I would spend the night.  A few hours later I met some of my drawing friends by the dhow harbor for some sketching and then a few more joined us for a delicious Lebanese dinner in the souq. One friend had told us how to go to the roof terrace of a nearby hotel and I made plans to have that be my first stop the next morning.

Saturday I left my hotel early and alone to walk home through old Doha and some southern suburbs.  The view from the top of the Hotel Mercure gave me a new perspective on the work that is happening to transform the Msheireb neighborhood from crumbling old houses on narrow streets to a shiny new multi-use development.  Streets we had walked just a month before were already barricaded and the houses were being demolished. I descended back to street level and headed into bustling streets and alleys, staying alert to vehicles forcing their way through and stagnant puddles from leaks.  I hadn't walked through this area alone before and while I never felt unsafe, I was quite aware that of all the people busy in the streets of Old Doha that morning, I only saw two women there and both were accompanied by men.  After a few hours of walking the city around me changed. Newer compounds and larger houses lined the wider, mostly empty, streets. Now I kept an eye on Aspire tower as it grew nearer and taller and my glimpses of West Bay mostly came at major intersections. An hour's walk from home, I stopped to pat a friendly camel at the camel souq then cut through the Wholesale market, relieved to be back on familiar ground and feeling very footsore. I limped the last bit, with frequent stops to rest feet and attempt capture the way the sun was making everything, from demolition equipment to minarets, glow.

Here are some things that I expected, some of which I was looking forward to and some of which I wasn't: dust and wind, major road crossings,

doves,

cats,

spiral staircases,

camels (because I was not about to plan a route that didn’t include the camel market),

bougainvillea,

and interesting alleys:

Here are some thing I hadn’t expected, most of which I enjoyed, a few of which I didn't: the lizard,

the cool wind making whitecaps and pushing our tired selves along the Corniche for last leg of the first day,

the view from the roof of the Hotel Mercure looking out over the destruction of Old Msheireb and construction of New Msheireb (a little more about that here),

a friendly Qatari man in Abu Hamour who asked me about my picture-taking and walking and didn’t suggest I was crazy, a friendly Pakistani man in Msheireb who told me about the history of his neighborhood,

appreciation for small changes in elevation, wishing that photos could include sounds (calls to prayer, doves and mynahs) and smells (cooking, camels, petunias), a friendly Sri Lankan man tending a café who told me about his travels to twelve different countries and how he wasn’t allowed to make conversation with women while he worked, this demolition site -the ragged edges and bright colors of the rooms and how the other side of the building looked completely normal,

and the enormous blisters on the soles of my feet (you're welcome for not taking a picture of these).

It was not easy and there were parts that did feel like a slog, especially at the end, but I still felt pride at covering so much ground in a place that had me so defeated the year before. I spent the following day, which was actually my birthday, hobbling around and feeling very old but very satisfied with this year’s celebration and thinking ahead to next year’s, when I am thinking of leaving the city behind and braving the desert.

Here are some more pictures: