Arabian Days : Day 3

And so Scheherazade continues.... :P

Day 3 i.e. was spent lolling about at home. Here (perhaps because Doha is located on the east coast) it is bright and sunny at 6:30 AM. People leave home for work everyday at aout 7:00 AM. By 7:30 it is as sunny as 9:30-10:00 AM back home in Bombay. (Because of this and my obedient body clock, today I was up, bathed and ready by 7:30 AM. Miracle! ) But yes, by 5:30 in the evening its twilight and by 6:0 its dark. So it all works out I guess. Here office timings are from 7 to 3, perhaps because of this phenomenon and also to escape the harsh sunlight and heat, especially in the summer months (May-July)

For lunch, A and I walked to Al Meera Co-Operative, a LARGE supermarket situated at a 5 min walk from M and C's apartment. After browsing through the grocery and toiletries aisles and gaping at the HUGE sides of lamb and beef at the butcher counter, we sampled fried chicken at the KFC there.(In the evening C mentioned that there was a nice shwarma place in the same market, but we missed it - chalo, next time!) M and C returned by 5:00 and by 5:30 we'd all left for Doha City Center, one of Doha's largest and best malls. We walked across roughly half the 4-storeyed, almost 1km in length mall, shopping and window shopping at sports stores, clothes-and-accessries stores, kiddie wear stores, electronics stores...whew! The mall is plush and well-maintained, with automatic walkways, opulent fixtures like palm trees and cascading waterfalls, generous light arrangements and a spetacular ice rink in the central enclosed courtyard (The mall consits of a large circle of stores on every floor (looking down onto the rink) and corridors leading away from these circles) We rounded up our visit by shopping at Carrefour. Huge as always and very similar to the Carrefour at Dubai City Center. Standardisation is at once both comforting and boring!

Our traipsing around took us 4 hours (yes!) and we (at least VK and I) were beginning to wilt. So a refreshment (aka dinner) stop was taken at The Garden, a pure vegetarian South Indian restaurant, one of M and C's favourites. We sampled the pongal, the appams with stew, the bisibele bhath among other delicacies. And the best part was that the yummy sambhar and chutneys (the tomato-chilly-coconut one was to die for!) were on the house and replenished generously throughout the meal. And the food - oh my! Ambrosia. I never thought one could feast on such authentic vegetarian southie fare in the barren wilds of Qatar!