Desert_view

It was a hot day in the middle of August and I was shivering in the cold cabin waiting for the plane to land. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had heard millions of stories about the climate differences but how different could a hot weather be?
It hit me just as I was making my first steps out of the plane. It was so hot and humid that my clothes were soaking wet by the time I descended the stairs. I was in Doha, Qatar.
Driving through the city the only thing I was able to see was concrete, sand and palm trees. I couldn’t help but notice that the city was divided in two parts: traditional and modern. The modern part was full of tall and fancy buildings with large illuminated ads, and to me it looked like every other city in the world.
But the real beauty was not in the instant likeness of the modern part of the city to its western counterparts, but in the traditional area of the city where every building looked like a larger version of a sand castle, similarly structured and having the same yellowish color, surrounded by a constant reminder of the city’s exotic location - the very sand it was built on. I later found out that one could never completely dispose of the sand due to the sand storms that keep bringing it back. It was perhaps nature’s way of resisting man’s quest for conquer of what used to be a still, serene, kingdom of dust.
Among all that beige landscape and the pale concrete of the modern architecture stood one place where a person could see all the colors in the world – the Souq Waqif, an open market in the city of Doha where one could reward the senses and feast upon the best traditional food in the city, as well as collect some precious mementoes of the stay from the plethora of souvenirs sold there. Going to Souq Waqif was truly a comfort to a craving for a unique and alluring experience as well as a delight to my wallet due to the more than reasonable prices.
But of course, a desert could never be complete without an oasis. That is how I decided to name all the beautiful private beaches in Doha. There, in the middle of the sand, I found the cleanest sea water in the world, surrounded by palm trees and tranquility nowhere else to be found. A true heaven on Earth.