Travel guide Qatar

They compete in size and power: 4x4s are legion in Qatar. In your little sedan, you feel tiny at the traffic lights. Qataris and immigrants who can afford the latest gleaming model do not skimp on the quality of their vehicle, with which they often take to the dunes during the winter vacations.

You'll be offered the famous Arabic coffee with dates. Served in the dallah, a long-spouted coffee pot, cardamom and sometimes rosewater are added. Its color is that of light tea. It tastes nothing like the coffee we know. As a gesture of welcome, it is poured into a cup, but never filled.

Its wisps fill the air of the Souq Waqif and many of the lounge cafés. Smoking shisha, of which there is a menu in a variety of flavors, is a real pastime enjoyed by Qataris on the terraces, mainly men, but also women. It's an opportunity to chat and catch up with friends after work, or with family at weekends.

Fard, safawi, sukkary, mabroom, segai, khenaizi... these exotic names refer to dozens of date varieties. The two most popular in Qatar are ajwa, small, dark and fruity, and the queen of dates, medjool. They have been known in the Muslim world since time immemorial, and are particularly popular during Ramadan.

Although Qatar is a desert, not to say a peninsula of pebbles and dust, it has a desert of sand dunes to the southwest of Doha, bordered by an inland sea and the Gulf Sea. It comes alive in winter, when Qataris set up their caravans and camps, and enjoy 4x4 races in the dunes every Friday.

Traditional wooden boats, these ancient trading and fishing vessels carried goods and commodities to the Arabian Sea and beyond. While they have now been replaced by motor cargo ships, they are still used here for dinner cruises or boat tours of Doha Bay to admire the West Bay skyline at night.

The darling of the Qataris, an obvious choice since it accompanied them in the rough years, when nobody was interested in them before the advent of oil. Qataris flock to the Al Shahaniya camelodrome to watch the champions compete after intensive training. You can also take a camel ride on some beaches.

You'll discover the falcon souq, and even a dedicated private clinic, right in the middle of Souq Waqif. Falcon hunting (a Unesco World Heritage site) is a national sport practised in complete privacy by over 3,000 Qataris, and a festival is held in September with demonstrations and competitions (the most beautiful, the fastest...).

What could be prettier than these dyed arabesques? Ladies like to have their hands, arms and feet decorated, especially for weddings and other family celebrations. This ephemeral tattoo with Arabian geometric patterns made by women in Souq Waqif or in beauty salons, follows the curves of the hand with aestheticism.

A strong cultural trait. Qataris, while shunning promiscuity and rare in the country, always welcome foreigners when they meet them. They want you to feel at home, to love their country, and are very hospitable. They are proud of the accelerated development of the last twenty years.

They account for around 90% of the population and are subdivided into three groups. Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and Filipinos form the workforce; Arabs from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and above all the Maghreb make up the middle class. Western expatriates occupy the top of the social and executive pyramid.

Today, oysters make their pearls quietly at the bottom of the Gulf Sea, but there was a time when they were the sole resource of modest Qatari fishermen, for millennia and until the arrival of Japanese cultured pearls in the 1930s, which led to the collapse of the trade just before the oil boom.