Qatar Airlines is usually rated the top airline in the world, and one we’d been interested in trying in the past but never had a route that worked for us. The country of Qatar was a different story… one that until now was not on our radar for a visit. However, it turned out that by far the cheapest way to get from India to Vienna, Austria was via a Qatar flight with a 21 hour lay-over in Qatar’s capital of Doha, which is also the airline’s hub. Since the flight arrived in early afternoon and left late the next morning it gave us more than enough time to pop into the city, see some of the sights, then get a good night sleep before continuing on with the trip, so we booked it!
Qatar Airlines has its own lay-over system you can use to book hotels and tours in Doha, but we decided to use the public transit to get from the airport to our hotel, and booked it all ourselves, which did save a bit of cash. One lesson learned is that the metro starts running at 6am every day of the week except for Friday, when it doesn’t start until 2pm due to the Muslin Friday mid-day prayers. It would have been over an hour wait for the metro, so we ended up taking an Uber from the airport to our hotel, which was less than a 15 minute ride.
Qatar the airline lived up to it’s #1 rating, with nice seats, good leg-room even in economy, and good meals. Doha and Qatar the country seem sort of like a smaller, calmer version of Dubai and the UAE. If you read our Dubai report from visiting Expo in 2021 you know we thought of it as fairly artificial (think Vegas or even Disneyland), with some compelling architecture, was extremely clean, yet had incredible smog and seemed mostly to be glitz and glam with no real substance. Doha was a bit of a smaller version of that, but not as impersonal and nor as glitzy.
Like Dubai, you mainly interact with the people who have come to Qatar from other countries to work, with less than 12% of the population actually being Qatari citizens. The main block of residents are from India, Bangladesh and Nepal and make up almost half of the 2.9 million inhabitants of this small country. Qatar is one of the more progressive middle eastern countries in terms of the dress-code for foreigners. Women should avoid anything revealing, must cover their upper arms, and should wear pants or skirts that end well below the knee. Women do not need to cover their head. Men should also dress conservatively, avoiding shorts and tight t-shirts.
We took the opportunity to learn more about the history of Qatar by visiting the impressive national museum.
In the evening we took advantage of the cooler temperatures to wander down to the waterfront and admire the skyline across Doha Bay. Like most of the cities we’ve visited in warmer climates, the waterfront is usually empty during the daytime but during the evening it comes alive with the locals getting out to enjoy the cooling breezes and meet with their friends.
Lastly, Hamad International Airport in Doha was recently rated as the #1 airport in the world, so during our flight out we managed to explore a bit. Last year we visited Singapore’s Jewel Changi Airport, which was rated the #1 airport at that time, and my vote still goes to Singapore. The Doha airport was very nice, but we found Singapore’s airport more open and inviting, with a lot of quiet and very comfortable seating areas, and more impressive displays.
As with pretty much every country we visit we’re happy we were able to explore it ourselves, no matter how quick the visit. There isn’t much to bring us back other than as a transit hub if we’re on another Qatar Airlines flight, but it was interesting to drop into Doha and learn a bit more about Qatar.
