How often do you walk in Qatar? No, but really!
And what do you usually do to celebrate the annual Sports Day? 🙂 When I asked this question in an Instagram poll, most of you replied that you’re planning to stay at home and relax. This is understandable, especially if you’re working full-time. Qatar has very few public holidays compared to other countries. But I’m here to offer you an alternative.
When my friends heard about my plan of walking 50,000 steps (or 38km) that day, they would usually comment in one of two ways:
— Great idea! Good luck (while I stay home and indulge in a pot of chicken biryani 😉 )
— Walk?? But it’s so difficult to walk anywhere in Qatar!
Let me focus on that second answer right now (I don’t have any further biryani comment for now other than “Good for you, it’s delicious!”). Qatar WAS a difficult place to walk. Note the past tense 🙂 When I moved here in 2012, this was one of the first things that shocked me. In Poland, you can walk basically anywhere. More than that, many places are closed off for cars and you don’t even have a choice. In Qatar, I found the situation reversed. Having said that, the country has come A LONG way since then and now it’s a completely different experience!
Most major roads had undergone “beautification” projects, part of which involved creating pavements & bike tracks. Multiple public parks have opened. Let’s also not forget about the amazing Doha Metro Project, which incorporates a whole pedestrian infrastructure (the underpass in Westbay being my favorite part of it).
Knowing all that, I was sure that I would be easily able to walk my way toward the 50,000 steps. My only concern were various construction projects around town, which could make this task more difficult.
HOW DID WE PLAN OUR ROUTE?
I started very simply. First, I googled how many kilometers should I walk to finish 50,000 steps. Then, I tried to project this distance onto the map of Qatar.
So the initial plan for our walk in Qatar was to walk from Lusail Fox Hills to MIA Park, and back.
What I did not anticipate was that the route would not be as straight as the map tells. As a result, I would reach MIA with 40,000 steps on the clock already. We had to modify our initial plan and in the end our route looked like this:
From our home in Fox Hills, we walked to Lusail Marina. At that point we didn’t face many difficulties. The only real issue was crossing Lusail Highway – it was a bit of a hassle to get onto the bridge. If you live in Fox Hills, you will be interested to know that it took us exactly 1 hour to walk from home to Place Vendome, where the main part of the Marina Promenade starts.
In the Marina, we followed the promenade (with a short coffee break) and crossed over to Lagoona Mall. There’s a proper pavement all the way, we had zero issues walking across.
After a breakfast break at Paul, we set off towards Katara. Again, there was a wide pavement (and a bike track!) along the way.
Overall, the distance between Lagoona Mall and West Bay was the most pleasant part of our walk.
We took a detour inside Katara Hills to enjoy the greenery of one of our favorite parks. Crossing via the underpass to Al Qassar Metro Station, we emerged in 5/6 Park. From there we walked through the Park and further, to West Bay. There was a bike track all the way, in case you were thinking of having a family bike trip there!
Our first inconvenience happened when we walked from West Bay to Al Bidda Park. It was directly related to my initial worries about having a long walk in Qatar. There was some construction along the way (I believe that’s finished now!) and there was a distance that we had to walk on the road, because the pavement was blocked off by a construction fence.
We then crossed Al Bidda Park (another very pleasant part of our walk) and headed to Msheireb Downtown for lunch. I love Msheireb Downtown but I definitely didn’t love it on the Sports Day! It was jam-packed with people, all better-known restaurants had long waiting lists for lunch, and my sweaty and tired self (already had over 30,000 steps done at this point), did not appreciate the hassle. Luckily we know some hidden gems in the area. A few minutes later we snatched the last table in Anis (one of my favorite spots there).
After lunch, we crossed to Souq Waqif when trouble in paradise started.
I’ve developed blisters along the way because I didn’t listen to my husband and didn’t wear sports socks. I am now admitting this major mistake in front of all of you, don’t be like me. One of those blisters burst while I was walking. This experience is initially not painful, but SUPER weird and uncomfortable. And then at some point it starts to really hurt! Luckily, all this drama unfolded right in front of the pharmacy. Hubby got me a first aid kit, and cleaned and bandaged both my feet. I had around 12,000 steps missing to my goal at this point and honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to make it.
But I did 🙂
From the Souq I limped to the Corniche, because we decided to visit Box Park. This was when walking became difficult (not because of my foot this time – because of Corniche construction works that were carried out at the time). Luckily there was a passage for people to walk, but it was narrow and views were obstructed by the fence. We crossed to MIA Park, where we had to maneuver between cars parked everywhere (sadly, this seems to be standard during any walk in Qatar!), to get to the gate on the Box Park side.
Once we reached Box Park which was also crowded, we wondered what to do next. With just over 40,000 steps done, we had no idea where to go. Hubby wanted to grab a coffee so I suggested we go to Desert Rose in the National Museum of Qatar.
NMoQ is, in theory, very close to the Box Park. BUT again we had to factor in the Corniche construction works. What we thought would be a 15-minute walk, turned into over an hour of walking. This was fine because we did need the steps!
Once we reached the Museum, we realized we were running short of time and we needed to make an impossible choice: coffee or finishing the 50,000 steps 😀
With heavy heart, we decided to ditch the coffee and attempted to cross back to the Souq. As a result, we got lost in the congested and dug-up area behind the museum. It would be loads of fun (I love to discover new places!), but my poor foot was seriously disturbing and all I wanted at that point was to finish the steps, lie down somewhere, and not get up until the next day preferably. 🙂
We finally reached the Souq and then, around 5:30pm, we met our goal!
This was super cool also because 3 years ago we had a 40,000 steps challenge and finished our steps at the exact same place – next to Al Mandarin, where we enjoyed a celebratory smoothie, loaded with ice cream, nuts, and shameless sugar in general.
MY ADVICE IF YOU’D LIKE TO TRY IT TO WALK SO MUCH IN QATAR:
— Plan your route in advance. Take into consideration ongoing construction, the location of bathrooms, and things you’d like to see along the way.
— Wear comfortable shoes AND socks (so important), especially if you’re not used to walking long distances!
— Apply sunscreen. I forgot about it (what a rookie mistake to make!) and ended up with a bad sunburn on my neck.
— Take a small backpack and pack the necessities (definitely water, some money, a power bank, a mini first aid kit).
— Plan your breaks carefully, and factor in a couple of stretches along the way, if you can!
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You might also like…
— Our favorite destinations within a 40-minute drive from Lusail.
— Doha Metro: everything you need to know before taking your first trip.
