Saturday, November 3, 2007

Written by: Susan

Current location: Mumbai, India

Our journey to India started with our longest flight to date. After saying good bye to one month of the good life in Cape Town, we boarded a Qatar airways flight bound for Doha, Qatar. The total flight time was just under 10 hours with a layover in Johannesburg. Initially, when our flight was booked we had 40 minutes to make our transfer from Doha to our Mumbai flight. It seemed like a long shot making our connecting flight. We left Cape Town late, we left Johannesburg late and arrived in Doha just as our flight to Mumbai was taking off. Normally this would be annoying but secretly I think we were both excited that the airline would put us up overnight and we would be able to explore a random city for 24 hours. Anyways, the only thing we had to look forward to was a 3 hour red-eye that arrived at 5am in Mumbai and a $14 a night hotel. After already flying all day, it would be nice to have a good nights sleep.

Qatar airlines did not disappoint. They were definitely the nicest and most put together airline we’ve been on. The planes were all brand new with a selection of over 100 movies available to watch along with many other programs in over 8 different languages. We caught up on Harry Potter, Die Hard, License to Wed, Shrek 3, and the Fantastic Four. The food was excellent and the service was impeccable. They even had designer lotion and perfume in the bathroom that we could freshen up with.

So after we missed our flight and stopped gawking at the gigantic duty free shop at the Doha International Airport, we went to the transfer desk. Everything had already been taking care of. Where’s our luggage we asked? It’s been pulled off the plane and will be retagged for tomorrow’s flight to Mumbai. Where will we be staying? At a 5 star hotel in downtown Doha. Food? All food is taken care of, you’ll get vouchers for all your meals. What about our visa to get into Doha? Taken care of. It’s on the voucher. You’ll also get a free 3 minute international phone call. We’d never had an overnight layover before but we were really impressed with the level of service they provided.

They told us to go to the outside of the airport where our transfer was waiting for us. We had 2.2 seconds of confusion when we stopped outside to the crowds of people when someone came up to us and led us to our transport. How did they know who we were I wondered? We arrived at the hotel along with the 10 other transfer guests. The Movenpick hotel that we stayed at was beautiful. It was by far the nicest hotel we’ve stayed in and probably the nicest we’ll be staying in. Marble bathroom, flat screen TV, views of downtown and the Persian gulf, fluffy comforters and pillows. Pure heaven. We were as giddy as children and jumped all around at our good fortune and ordered up room service dinner and settled in for a night of indulgence which basically included high speed internet and BBC.

The next morning we ordered breakfast which looked exactly like the breakfast Julia Roberts ordered in Pretty Woman. Totally over the top and way too much food for 2 people. It came wheeled on a tray with fresh orchids, fresh fruit, eggs and bacon, a basket of pastries (who could possible eat a whole basket?), yogurt, tea, and 10 different varieties of jam.

After that we hit the shopping mall. There isn’t much to do in Doha. Besides the fact that it’s in the dessert and still scorching hot considering its winter. The downtown area of Doha is just a haven of new construction. Either every building down there has been constructed of glass in some interesting modern architectural form or is in the process of being constructed into a huge glass structure. There is not an inch of anything “old”. I wonder if they just plowed the whole city down and started new again. I’ve never seen such new construction on this scale before. Downtown exists for financial reasons only. There are only 200,000 Qatarians and over 600,000 foreigners here for the obvious oil reasons.

So we headed to the mall since apparently those were nice. Plus there was a Starbucks there which would be great since we hadn’t had one in 3 months. The first mall we went to called City Centre was a bit of a disappointment. We took a car from the hotel to the mall since we didn’t know where the mall was. It cost us $7 US. We were there 5 minutes later. The mall was literally around the corner. It was a bit annoying since had we known we were so close we would have just walked or at least bargained a little more on the rate. Huge mall but the shops were a bit kitschy. Lots of knick knacks or over the top expensive jewelry. The only saving grace was the Starbucks where we slurped away on our frappuccinos.

So we took a taxi to the other mall which was reputed to be much nicer. The other mall was called the Viaggio and looked exactly like the Venetian in Las Vegas. Complete with a Gondola ride and an ice skating rink. They had every shop imaginable including the first Gap and Banana Republic store we’ve seen since we’ve been on the road. I checked out H&M (a British clothing store) where they were selling ‘winter clothes’. Full on winter jackets, scarves, gloves, and hats. I couldn’t quite figure out who was going to be wearing those since it is still 90 degrees outside. Weird.

So that was pretty much our 24 hours in the Middle East. Uneventful, but hey we were able to get a Starbucks. 

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