The last place we visit in Doha is Souq Qaqif which lies in the middle of old Doha. As much as it existed given that Doha is a relatively new city being founded only in the 1820s. Crossing over from the Corniche is a time consuming affair given the long red lights for pedestrians but finally we make it into the pedestrian area which seems to be quite popular with both tourists and locals.
Right at the entrance to the souq, in the main square, is a place where you can ride a camel which seems really popular with pigeons. Who eat with the camel and then drink from the water fountain nearby and live in heaven.
Entering the souq we aren’t really impressed. it seems a good place for locals but there aren’t that many things for tourists to buy. There are no souvenir shops or anything that could be even remotely attractive to them in our opinion. Except the shade provided by the covered corridors of course. And it seems we are not the only people who think so, very few tourists make it inside versus other souqs we have been into.
The majority of tourists are actually walking outside the souq using the streets in the pedestrian area to look for restaurants and some of the famous artwork in this area.
None of the artwork is more famous than the Golden Thumb. It is a 12m high bronze sculpture installed in 2019 to commemorate Qatar Asian Cup victory and a major attraction it seems.
We then make our way through the outskirts towards two other famous souq passing some interesting sculptures and some horse mounted police in traditional garb. Quite fun to see as we try to find the right way to our goal.
Finally we find the right streets and enter the famous falcon souq. This is one of the few places in the world where you can still buy a live well trained falcon. Of course most people inside are tourists, we wonder how many actual buyers these shops are getting. At least they are quite chill with photos.
The other famous traditional souq is the horse souq. Here it seems there is only one vendor and while you can see the horses, we saw already lots of them till now :). So it is now time to return and find a place to eat dinner.
This shouldn’t be a problem but most restaurants we wanted are either not open yet or quite full so we decide to just wander the souq for a while until we find something interesting.
But first is the last major attraction here, the Al Koot Fort. It is a 1920s military fort that served for some time as a museum and now seems to be closed permanently. But you can still see it from the outside, it is small but very forbidding looking.
And then we reach a restaurant that seems good enough. It has quite a few specialties from the region that we never heard before at want to try. But first we start with hummus, to have at least something we know we can eat.
The food is quite good and plentiful and full we are ready to return to the hotel. However we are planning to take a different route to hopefully escape the touts on the Corniche.
First we have however to make our way back through the souq which is a bit more lively now that the sun is down. Even the interior part are busy with tourists but as in the day not many actually enter any shops.
At the entrance to the souq to our surprise is now a date fair that you can enter and explore. While it is the World Fair we do not see anyone else outside of Qatar and a few other Arabic countries. No US representation :).
And then we take our new route back to the hotel which is both a success and a failure. Success as we avoid any touts and failure as almost all sidewalks are closed so we have to walk at night on the street. Luckily there are a lot of streetlights but still this is not reasonable, closing the sidewalk on both sides of the street with no alternative. And then near the hotel the streets are closed and the sidewalk becomes a tunnel with no exit in the dark which seems a bit scary. But in the end we make it safely back to the hotel and pack and then go to sleep, we have a very early start tomorrow to the airport.
