Summer heat

When you walk out of the door on a hot summer day in Qatar the heat doesn’t just hit you, it slams into you like a Nissan pick up truck on a Doha roundabout.

It sucks the moisture out of you, and drains your energy – and melted the rubber off my car windows. You can hide in your air-conditioned house, but the air-conditioner can’t defeat the heat, just hold it off.

Not that we who can hide in air-conditioned houses can complain. You still see workers on the road, moving as slowly as they can, but any exertion in this sun and heat is hell. Some of the better companies train their employees how to deal with heat stress, but there is only so much you can do.

At least we have air-conditioners now. My former boss related how, in his village school, the children would move their chairs across the classroom as the day progressed to stay in the shade. At night they would sleep on the roofs of their houses – something that many immigrant workers still do.

It’s not surprising, then, that in the summer Doha becomes a dead town. Clubs also shut down, trips are delayed till the autumn, and roads become passable. Anybody whose anybody will do anything to get out of the oven in these hot summer months.

And that includes us. We will be taking our vacation, and the blog, though not dead, will be different. Even if we were going to stay here, it’s too hot to go and explore and take photos. Posts for the time being will be more focussed on interesting news and will be less regular.

We’ll back in September – with the cool we hope – and more posts.


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Qatar Doha Middle East summer