“Qatar,” says the Lonely Planet guide, “is best known for being unknown.” It’s a small consolation – I do feel slightly less like a geographically clueless American – but it doesn’t shake the sense I’m heading into the great unknown.
So I do some more reading. It’s small – a tiny peninsula (160 kilometres from north to south). It’s in the Middle East – on the Arabian Peninsula; crammed between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on the western shores of the Persian Gulf. It’s hot – average summer temperatures of between 38 and 42. It’s got a real rags-to-riches story – once a rough backwater eking out an existence in the pearl and fishing industries, the discovery of oil and gas have made it ridiculously wealthy.
Nils van der Linden 